Just pulling out one topical point in this recent discussion:
On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 18:51 +0100, David Picón Álvarez wrote:
Why does it make more sense for X to buy it at monopoly pricing, having close to zero input in the software's feature set, having no freedom to get someone else to improve the software at competitive prices, than pay in advance, perhaps in installments, pooling with other users, and potentially backed with an insurance if the software ends up not being produced, after which A gets an unencumbered copy of the software which has at least more of a chance to being taylored to their needs?
Via LWN, I found out that there is a new games company which is trying to run their business on a model close to this:
http://lwn.net/Articles/257457/
The idea, as I understand it, is that they will release a demo of the game and a pledge people can pay into. Once the pledge reaches a certain amount, and people pay up, the game is released as free software under the GPL.
The comments from LWN posters are pretty much what I would expect: asking for $40,000 seems to be asking too much. Yet, that would only buy ~6 man-months here in the UK, if that, which is practically nothing for a new game. And that would be at cost, too - and you can't run a business without turning a profit.
If they sold the game on a proprietary basis, at maybe $8 a pop, they'd only need ~5000 sales to break even and I doubt anyone would be complaining about the price. Psychologically, there is a lot going on there in terms of price, even before you get to "why should I pay for something so others can have it for free?".
It will be interesting to see how they do. Pledges to liberate existing software have been relatively successful, and a number of games have become free software after having a proprietary existence without the need of a ransom at all.
I'm of course not saying that the success of this particular company will dictate whether or not the model can work: it might be that the games they produce are crap, and the business would fail under any model. But it will be interesting to see if they can make it work. I don't think they can; but I'd be quite happy to be proved wrong.
Cheers,
Alex.