3 ms·

Microsoft did quite well for decades with Windows, never once charging developers to distribute on the platform. Apple does quite well with macOS. The value pro

• ascagnel_ 3y ago
  Instead, Microsoft charged thousands of dollars per seat per development tool, and even more for access to documentation (I have an old set of MSDN CDs around somewhere). It’s two sides of the same coin, and I think the idea of taking a percentage of revenue does a better job of aligning platform owners and developers.
  • umeshunni 3y ago
    Indeed. In the Microsoft model, small developers, who couldn't pay the thousands of dollars for development cost and figure out their own distribution lost. In the App Store model, everything is free (or very cheap, $99), till you make revenue.
    • nightski 3y ago
      This is not really true. It was relatively easy to obtain a copy of visual studio for rather cheap if you tried. I know because I used their tools all through high school, college, and beyond and was rather poor during those times in the late 90s/2000s. I always managed to stumble on free licenses. They never tried to leech your revenue later on either.
      • ascagnel_ 3y ago
        Microsoft was very active in giving free licenses out for education, but those licenses often wouldn't allow for commercial use. If you've never been through a license audit, their legal team would usually make you pay through the nose or suffer through a lawsuit if they found you weren't using the right license for your dev tools. That said, they'd generally target bigger businesses over smaller dev-only shops.
• throwaway-blaze 3y ago
  Microsoft charged $1500/seat for MSDN access...