4 ms·

I have personally discussed this issue with a couple of people who worked for the big dev-tool vendors in the 1990s. The consensus is that open-source has almo

I have personally discussed this issue with a couple of people who worked for the big dev-tool vendors in the 1990s. The consensus is that open-source has almost completely destroyed the commercial viability of the dev-tool market. Eclipse is an example of open-source tooling that now has support from former commercial tool vendors. There still is a small market (in terms of volumes) for dev-tools sold to enterprise clients. But AFAIK enterprise clients prefer to buy from "enterprise strength" vendors. Which makes it very difficult for a smaller developer to compete. The biggest stumbling block to being a tool vendor is the demand for support. Even if you can make money on selling the tools in the first place, the on-going support is likely to cost you more than you can charge in on-going fees.

mkempe 9y ago
Concur. I had a decent business selling software dev tools, gave up in the late 90s. The market shrunk, and today it is extremely limited. Even very profitable companies developing embedded systems (which used to be a goldmine, e.g. medical devices) prefer to use open source.
amerkhalid 9y ago
Agreed. Developers are hard bunch to sell to. We go out of our way to find free tools and almost look down on people who use decent IDEs or other tools. One example, when I finally got legit license for Sublime Text, all of my friends made fun of me for paying for a free software.
- jetti 9y ago
  I think it depends on your market. I would imagine it would be easier to sell to developers on Windows rather than Linux (possibly macOS). I can think of a few tools that we pay for to make our lives easier to develop on Windows: Visual Studio, Resharper (Ultimate, which comes with a few other JetBrains tools) and Artifactory. On the flip side, when I'm on my personal laptop I run Linux and have no tools that cost me money. It isn't that I'm opposed to it, I just haven't found anything worthwhile to pay for that is definitely better than the open-source/free versions.
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  > all of my friends made fun of me for paying for a free software That's a pretty unethical attitude. A developer, who by definition makes her living by creating software, more than anyone else should be able to appreciate that developers have to make a living. I'm not exactly sure what this widespread attitude is caused by. Perhaps a mixture of a lack of empathy, a feeling of powerlessness and not having significant say in an organisation's direction.

mkempe 9y ago

Concur. I had a decent business selling software dev tools, gave up in the late 90s. The market shrunk, and today it is extremely limited. Even very profitable companies developing embedded systems (which used to be a goldmine, e.g. medical devices) prefer to use open source.

amerkhalid 9y ago

Agreed. Developers are hard bunch to sell to. We go out of our way to find free tools and almost look down on people who use decent IDEs or other tools. One example, when I finally got legit license for Sublime Text, all of my friends made fun of me for paying for a free software.

jetti 9y ago
I think it depends on your market. I would imagine it would be easier to sell to developers on Windows rather than Linux (possibly macOS). I can think of a few tools that we pay for to make our lives easier to develop on Windows: Visual Studio, Resharper (Ultimate, which comes with a few other JetBrains tools) and Artifactory. On the flip side, when I'm on my personal laptop I run Linux and have no tools that cost me money. It isn't that I'm opposed to it, I just haven't found anything worthwhile to pay for that is definitely better than the open-source/free versions.
BjoernKW 9y ago
> all of my friends made fun of me for paying for a free software That's a pretty unethical attitude. A developer, who by definition makes her living by creating software, more than anyone else should be able to appreciate that developers have to make a living. I'm not exactly sure what this widespread attitude is caused by. Perhaps a mixture of a lack of empathy, a feeling of powerlessness and not having significant say in an organisation's direction.