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Ask HN: is it possible to sell an idea for a UI improvement?

• wmf 15y ago
  Probably not. There are potential problems where you disclose an idea, the company realizes that it's something they're already working on so they don't license it, then when the product comes out you sue them for "stealing" the idea, and then they have to pay lawyers to smack you down. Also, the transaction cost for negotiating such a thing may be almost as much as the idea is worth (e.g. would you negotiate for a month to get, say, $5K?). It may be possible to get a patent and sell it, but that's a pretty heavyweight process and doesn't have a good record of success.
  • bitops 15y ago
    Darn. It would be nice if there was a way to do it. I'd be happy to take a one-time spot payment and then never bug them about it again. With open-source, I could go in and make the change myself, but if the owning entity will benefit from it, it only seems fair to me that they should share that benefit. Even if it's just once as a way of saying thank you.
    • coryl 15y ago
      Just design a mockup of it in Photoshop (or code it, depending on whatever it is) and post it up your blog. At least then you'll get credit for it.
• linguistbreaker 15y ago
  The only way I could see that happening is if you had a very good social connection in the right place at Apple. Engineering that connection would likely be much harder than mocking up or coding the fix. If the software in question has an extensible architecture or plugin API that could be your path to getting the feature you want though.