4 ms·

When I first learned that software had a price during my very young years, I was in quite disbelief. Isn’t it just bunch of invisible bits? Can’t it be copied w

When I first learned that software had a price during my very young years, I was in quite disbelief. Isn’t it just bunch of invisible bits? Can’t it be copied with almost zero cost? Why someone would pay for it anyway when kids like me can make it? It’s hard to charge money for things people can’t physically posses. In early years, almost all software companies employed a trick to design big attractive boxes with bit of goodies. When Gates wrote BASIC, many programmers themselves in the community didn’t thought any software was worth paying for. It has taken almost a generation to internalize that bits have price and we have got rid of most of those boxes finally. On the side note, crypto currency is the new new intengible assets that is hard to internalize. Ironically, Gates has wrote them off as not worth calling them assets because they aren’t store of a value.

MoBattah 8y ago
Elaborate on the boxes? This isn't the old trope by Bob Wallace about 'I sell manuals'?
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/azAAAOSwD99av12v/s-l1600.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/azAAAOSwD99av12v/s-l1600.jpg There's a shrink-wrapped cardboard package that contains Windows 98. It's the size of a cereal box, and at least as colorful. Today, I'd be intensely annoyed if I had to wait for and pay for a large box to ship - I'd much prefer an instant download, but the box was much more tangible than an email with a download link and license key.
  - MoBattah 8y ago
    "Well all games used to come as a CD in a box, simply because it wasn't viable to download them from the internet." Was this not the reason software was distributed in CDs? I can understand MSFT/Apple using that packaging for customer experience.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      At one point the packaging was required by the retailers, who wanted it to conform to a standard shelf size. Eventually it could shrink to CD or DVD jewel case size. Might be a discussion of this on filfre.net somewhere.
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      In the even earlier days, software fit on floppy disks. And it absolutely could be downloaded over a modem - it took about 1 hour to download 1MB over a 2400 baud modem, not much longer than going to the store. The problem was that you couldn't convince consumers to pay for software downloaded over a modem. (The infrastructure wasn't in place anyway - nobody was going to send their credit card number unencrypted to a random BBS sysop, and encryption was outlawed as a munition.) Many software firms in fact had huge problems with piracy over modem, and would build copy-protection into their software so you needed the original physical disk to run the software. The idea that you could pay for a license key that unlocks software you download over the Internet only happened in the early 2000s, driven by combination of remaining restrictions on encryption being dropped, easy-to-integrate payment solutions for webpages coming to market, and widespread broadband adoption meaning that most consumers could easily download a big file.
  - interfixus 8y ago
    At the time of Windows 98 you probably wouldn't have wanted to download the damn thing. If you are of a younger generation, you may not believe it, but many of us in those days made do with something called dial-up connections to the internet. I well remember downloading the StarOffice - precursor to LibreOffice - suite in the days before it was taken over by Sun, meaning 1999 at the latest. Took a little over five hours, and was done at night when rates were lower. I actually stayed up, nursing the process along. And afterwards guarded the downloaded installation file, almost with my life, although it took up an inordinate amount of precious storage space. It was 50MB and a bit, you see.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - techopoly 8y ago
      Ah yes, the memories of those agonizingly slow (and noisy) Internet connections. Ironically, software, particularly games, still can take 5 hours to download. It's just that they're inordinately huge now. Battlefield 1 with its patches can run over 110 GB.
    - ethbro 8y ago
      Ah, when downloads were overnight affairs. And every morning a Christmas, spoiled only by a reset connection.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Games companies often had what they called "feelies": my copy of Ultima 7 came with a cloth map of Britannia and a small black "moonstone". You didn't have this for business software, but you did need something to keep the disks in. I think the largest such thing I saw was 100+ floppy disks; here's Raymond Chen on floppy installs of Windows: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10/?p=34513 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10/?p=...
  - vultour 8y ago
    Well all games used to come as a CD in a box, simply because it wasn't viable to download them from the internet. I still remember the amazing box for GTA:SA that came with a large map and a little booklet to introduce you to the game.
    - mbrameld 8y ago
      To be a little pedantic, sometimes they came on floppies or even just as source code printed in a magazine you had to copy by hand.
nradov 8y ago
The box designs were driven more by attracting attention from retail customers in physical stores than by perception of value. Just like cereal boxes. The user manuals were absolutely necessary for complex software. Most users had only a single low resolution monitor back then so online documentation had poor UX.

MoBattah 8y ago

Elaborate on the boxes? This isn't the old trope by Bob Wallace about 'I sell manuals'?

LeifCarrotson 8y ago
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/azAAAOSwD99av12v/s-l1600.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/azAAAOSwD99av12v/s-l1600.jpg There's a shrink-wrapped cardboard package that contains Windows 98. It's the size of a cereal box, and at least as colorful. Today, I'd be intensely annoyed if I had to wait for and pay for a large box to ship - I'd much prefer an instant download, but the box was much more tangible than an email with a download link and license key.
- MoBattah 8y ago
  "Well all games used to come as a CD in a box, simply because it wasn't viable to download them from the internet." Was this not the reason software was distributed in CDs? I can understand MSFT/Apple using that packaging for customer experience.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    At one point the packaging was required by the retailers, who wanted it to conform to a standard shelf size. Eventually it could shrink to CD or DVD jewel case size. Might be a discussion of this on filfre.net somewhere.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    In the even earlier days, software fit on floppy disks. And it absolutely could be downloaded over a modem - it took about 1 hour to download 1MB over a 2400 baud modem, not much longer than going to the store. The problem was that you couldn't convince consumers to pay for software downloaded over a modem. (The infrastructure wasn't in place anyway - nobody was going to send their credit card number unencrypted to a random BBS sysop, and encryption was outlawed as a munition.) Many software firms in fact had huge problems with piracy over modem, and would build copy-protection into their software so you needed the original physical disk to run the software. The idea that you could pay for a license key that unlocks software you download over the Internet only happened in the early 2000s, driven by combination of remaining restrictions on encryption being dropped, easy-to-integrate payment solutions for webpages coming to market, and widespread broadband adoption meaning that most consumers could easily download a big file.
- interfixus 8y ago
  At the time of Windows 98 you probably wouldn't have wanted to download the damn thing. If you are of a younger generation, you may not believe it, but many of us in those days made do with something called dial-up connections to the internet. I well remember downloading the StarOffice - precursor to LibreOffice - suite in the days before it was taken over by Sun, meaning 1999 at the latest. Took a little over five hours, and was done at night when rates were lower. I actually stayed up, nursing the process along. And afterwards guarded the downloaded installation file, almost with my life, although it took up an inordinate amount of precious storage space. It was 50MB and a bit, you see.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - techopoly 8y ago
    Ah yes, the memories of those agonizingly slow (and noisy) Internet connections. Ironically, software, particularly games, still can take 5 hours to download. It's just that they're inordinately huge now. Battlefield 1 with its patches can run over 110 GB.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    Ah, when downloads were overnight affairs. And every morning a Christmas, spoiled only by a reset connection.
pjc50 8y ago
Games companies often had what they called "feelies": my copy of Ultima 7 came with a cloth map of Britannia and a small black "moonstone". You didn't have this for business software, but you did need something to keep the disks in. I think the largest such thing I saw was 100+ floppy disks; here's Raymond Chen on floppy installs of Windows: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10/?p=34513 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10/?p=...
- vultour 8y ago
  Well all games used to come as a CD in a box, simply because it wasn't viable to download them from the internet. I still remember the amazing box for GTA:SA that came with a large map and a little booklet to introduce you to the game.
  - mbrameld 8y ago
    To be a little pedantic, sometimes they came on floppies or even just as source code printed in a magazine you had to copy by hand.

nradov 8y ago

The box designs were driven more by attracting attention from retail customers in physical stores than by perception of value. Just like cereal boxes. The user manuals were absolutely necessary for complex software. Most users had only a single low resolution monitor back then so online documentation had poor UX.