4 ms·

I'm not making any statement on whether it's good or bad, right or wrong, but ... Software developers aren't immune to piracy's effects, either. Whether we lik

by byuu 11y ago

I'm not making any statement on whether it's good or bad, right or wrong, but ... Software developers aren't immune to piracy's effects, either. Whether we like it or not, we're quickly shifting into a world where art is only viable as a labor of love. Everything being digital means copying is free. Scarcity has gone out the window. Now if only our increased productivity and automations led to lesser and lesser working hours, we'd all have a lot more time for artistic endeavors on the side. But yes, it's becoming increasingly difficult to sustain yourself solely as an artist. Life isn't fair, unfortunately. Would the world be better if we had purely gratis art? I don't know ... the production values would certainly be a lot lower. But maybe people doing things solely because they enjoy it, rather than for the paycheck, would result in more passion and creativity; and less cash grabs. Or maybe everything would be awful. Either way, it seems futile to rail against something none of us can possibly change, and wish for the good old days of $15 CDs with one good song on it, or $200 OS installation CDs, or $800 paint programs.

w4 11y ago
> Software developers aren't immune to piracy's effects, either. Whether we like it or not, we're quickly shifting into a world where art is only viable as a labor of love. Everything being digital means copying is free. Isn't this one of the big reasons for the rise of SaaS apps, though? Developers, unlike musicians, have found a way to combat piracy in a way that both consumers seem to prefer (lower upfront costs and usage based pricing) and developers benefit from (more revenue over time in exchange for delivering real value). Besides, being forced to provide 3 months of free usage without any say in the matter is hardly defensible due to piracy. It's even less defensible when the party enforcing the free usage is the party that stands to benefit most from it.
- rayiner 11y ago
  Do consumers prefer SaaS? The reaction to Windows and Office becoming subscription software seems pretty uniformly negative.
  - w4 11y ago
    Even if users grouse about it, they seem to prefer it versus a big one time upfront purchase based on their usage/purchase patterns. Of course, what they'd probably really prefer is a low one time upfront purchase, but that's typically not tenable for the software business.
    - teacup50 11y ago
      Users rarely get a choice when vendors decide to switch to rent-seeking licensing models, so where is it that they seem to prefer it?
  - bphogan 11y ago
    I know lots of people who are happy to pay $49 a month instead of the $2000 that Adobe Master Collection was.
  - georgemcbay 11y ago
    For me it depends on the software and how much value new features bring to that software. For two examples: I've actually been pretty pleased with Lightroom/Photoshop as SaaS because these apps still often have new innovations that actually make my life easier as a hobbyist photographer. Thus I don't mind paying per month because I'd probably already be upgrading to the new version every year anyway and this is just spreading a similar cost out over time. OTOH, Office's switch to SaaS is what finally pushed me over the edge to using free ("as in beer") alternatives... they can keep rejiggering the UI this way and that way but I can't imagine what they would add to Word or Excel that would make them seriously more useful to me, it was never a must-upgrade for me (YMMV if you work in an enterprise office setting or whatever) and thus the SaaS move is not good for my usage.
    - scholia 11y ago
      The free alternatives are just 1990s-style office suites. Compared with Office 365, you don't get the free 1TB of cloud storage, the 50GB mailbox, the full online versions of Office, the ability to stream Office programs without installing them (so you can use them on, say, a cybercafe PC), the add-ons and extensions, the cross-platform tablet and smartphone apps, the free upgrade to the next version of Office, and so on. Office 365 is a huge ecosystem play, whereas OO/LO have no ecosystems. Otherwise, UI changes are annoying, but the basic Office UI hasn't really changed since 2007. It changes less often than, say, Gmail.
belorn 11y ago
> increasingly difficult to sustain yourself solely as an artist. The number of ways to sustain yourself has significant increased in recent times, and some of those don't even use copyright as a mean for revenue. They are by nature immune to piracy. Taken Patreon and kickstarter. You can not pirate art which has not been created. An artist can decide how much wages they demand rather than find an other job, which incidental is how the job market works. If they agree to a certain amount, they get paid and do the work agreed on. Everyone walks away happy, the artist got paid, and art is created. What is getting harder to do is getting repeatable paid for work you done in the past. Most programmers do work for hire, and they survive quite well on not being paid for every copy of work they once made. So long there is a strong interest for new work to be created, old work will be what validate the artist current pay. I know a web comic that update twice a month and the author current gets paid $5k a month to do so. No copyright is involved, no police and no SOPA. Just an artist and their fans, enabled to be sustained by the basic model of people wanting more art to be created and a way for that to happen. When we describe the future as "people doing things solely because they enjoy it" we limit the market available to artist to how it was done in the past, and it seems artist themselves are instead choosing to find new ways rather than to close up shops.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  > The number of ways to sustain yourself has significant increased in recent times But so has the offer; anyone with a computer can create and publish music nowadays, which is both good and bad; good for the creative industry, bad for income for said creative industry because only a small percentage will ever see money. Same with the webcomics you noted; all you need is a computer with the worst drawing software to recreate something like XKCD. Everyone can do what they want / enjoy, but only a very, very small percentage of those will be able to sustain themselves off it - especially, or mostly, in the creative industry.
  - greggman 11y ago
    Do you have any evidence that there are less artists that can make a living in the current environment vs the old one? Is it possible there are more artists making a living in the current environment ?
WalterBright 11y ago
On the other hand, historically, art hasn't paid very well. I suspect the modern artists-get-rich era started with Elvis. That era may be an aberration and be drawing to a close. In my own profession, writing compilers, you simply can't sell them anymore. That hasn't deterred me from continuing to do so, I just adapt and find other ways to make a living from the business.
- Animats 11y ago
  " I suspect the modern artists-get-rich era started with Elvis." A little further back than that, but not much further. Frank Sinatra, maybe. With radio and recordings, for the first time a musician could get revenue from people far away. "In my own profession, writing compilers, you simply can't sell them anymore." Compilers, operating systems, browsers... Maybe software as an industry only had a limited lifespan. In the early IBM mainframe era, machines were expensive, vendor-provided software was usually included, and there was not much of a third-party software industry. Now, software is very cheap, and ancillary to advertising or services.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    It's the internet that killed paid commodity software. Before the internet, you had to pay someone to burn a CD/floppy and mail it to you, and of course it had to be worth that person's while to do it. Internet downloading removed all the friction, and prices went to zero. However, there's still plenty of opportunity doing service, maintenance, custom work, training, etc.
    - jfoster 11y ago
      They also had some quite significant costs involved in making you realise that their software existed, though.
      - WalterBright 11y ago
        Marketing and promotion is just as costly, if not more costly, than it ever was. I know too many wonderful open source projects that failed and left their author bitter because they thought that merely creating a great program was good enough. The "build it and they will come" is a stupid Hollywood fantasy. Even the Beatles went nowhere until they hooked up with promoter George Martin.
busterarm 11y ago
I'm 100% for this, but if Apple feels that way as well, they could do us all a favor and just come out and say it. If any file hosting service can get shut down for piracy, Apple should be held accountable to the same laws. Telling artists to work for free while they benefit sounds a lot like asking someone to work on spec, to which I respond: Fuck You, Pay Me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U)

by byuu 11y ago

w4 11y ago

> Software developers aren't immune to piracy's effects, either. Whether we like it or not, we're quickly shifting into a world where art is only viable as a labor of love. Everything being digital means copying is free. Isn't this one of the big reasons for the rise of SaaS apps, though? Developers, unlike musicians, have found a way to combat piracy in a way that both consumers seem to prefer (lower upfront costs and usage based pricing) and developers benefit from (more revenue over time in exchange for delivering real value). Besides, being forced to provide 3 months of free usage without any say in the matter is hardly defensible due to piracy. It's even less defensible when the party enforcing the free usage is the party that stands to benefit most from it.

rayiner 11y ago
Do consumers prefer SaaS? The reaction to Windows and Office becoming subscription software seems pretty uniformly negative.
- w4 11y ago
  Even if users grouse about it, they seem to prefer it versus a big one time upfront purchase based on their usage/purchase patterns. Of course, what they'd probably really prefer is a low one time upfront purchase, but that's typically not tenable for the software business.
  - teacup50 11y ago
    Users rarely get a choice when vendors decide to switch to rent-seeking licensing models, so where is it that they seem to prefer it?
- bphogan 11y ago
  I know lots of people who are happy to pay $49 a month instead of the $2000 that Adobe Master Collection was.
- georgemcbay 11y ago
  For me it depends on the software and how much value new features bring to that software. For two examples: I've actually been pretty pleased with Lightroom/Photoshop as SaaS because these apps still often have new innovations that actually make my life easier as a hobbyist photographer. Thus I don't mind paying per month because I'd probably already be upgrading to the new version every year anyway and this is just spreading a similar cost out over time. OTOH, Office's switch to SaaS is what finally pushed me over the edge to using free ("as in beer") alternatives... they can keep rejiggering the UI this way and that way but I can't imagine what they would add to Word or Excel that would make them seriously more useful to me, it was never a must-upgrade for me (YMMV if you work in an enterprise office setting or whatever) and thus the SaaS move is not good for my usage.
  - scholia 11y ago
    The free alternatives are just 1990s-style office suites. Compared with Office 365, you don't get the free 1TB of cloud storage, the 50GB mailbox, the full online versions of Office, the ability to stream Office programs without installing them (so you can use them on, say, a cybercafe PC), the add-ons and extensions, the cross-platform tablet and smartphone apps, the free upgrade to the next version of Office, and so on. Office 365 is a huge ecosystem play, whereas OO/LO have no ecosystems. Otherwise, UI changes are annoying, but the basic Office UI hasn't really changed since 2007. It changes less often than, say, Gmail.

belorn 11y ago

> increasingly difficult to sustain yourself solely as an artist. The number of ways to sustain yourself has significant increased in recent times, and some of those don't even use copyright as a mean for revenue. They are by nature immune to piracy. Taken Patreon and kickstarter. You can not pirate art which has not been created. An artist can decide how much wages they demand rather than find an other job, which incidental is how the job market works. If they agree to a certain amount, they get paid and do the work agreed on. Everyone walks away happy, the artist got paid, and art is created. What is getting harder to do is getting repeatable paid for work you done in the past. Most programmers do work for hire, and they survive quite well on not being paid for every copy of work they once made. So long there is a strong interest for new work to be created, old work will be what validate the artist current pay. I know a web comic that update twice a month and the author current gets paid $5k a month to do so. No copyright is involved, no police and no SOPA. Just an artist and their fans, enabled to be sustained by the basic model of people wanting more art to be created and a way for that to happen. When we describe the future as "people doing things solely because they enjoy it" we limit the market available to artist to how it was done in the past, and it seems artist themselves are instead choosing to find new ways rather than to close up shops.

Cthulhu_ 11y ago
> The number of ways to sustain yourself has significant increased in recent times But so has the offer; anyone with a computer can create and publish music nowadays, which is both good and bad; good for the creative industry, bad for income for said creative industry because only a small percentage will ever see money. Same with the webcomics you noted; all you need is a computer with the worst drawing software to recreate something like XKCD. Everyone can do what they want / enjoy, but only a very, very small percentage of those will be able to sustain themselves off it - especially, or mostly, in the creative industry.
- greggman 11y ago
  Do you have any evidence that there are less artists that can make a living in the current environment vs the old one? Is it possible there are more artists making a living in the current environment ?

WalterBright 11y ago

On the other hand, historically, art hasn't paid very well. I suspect the modern artists-get-rich era started with Elvis. That era may be an aberration and be drawing to a close. In my own profession, writing compilers, you simply can't sell them anymore. That hasn't deterred me from continuing to do so, I just adapt and find other ways to make a living from the business.

Animats 11y ago
" I suspect the modern artists-get-rich era started with Elvis." A little further back than that, but not much further. Frank Sinatra, maybe. With radio and recordings, for the first time a musician could get revenue from people far away. "In my own profession, writing compilers, you simply can't sell them anymore." Compilers, operating systems, browsers... Maybe software as an industry only had a limited lifespan. In the early IBM mainframe era, machines were expensive, vendor-provided software was usually included, and there was not much of a third-party software industry. Now, software is very cheap, and ancillary to advertising or services.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  It's the internet that killed paid commodity software. Before the internet, you had to pay someone to burn a CD/floppy and mail it to you, and of course it had to be worth that person's while to do it. Internet downloading removed all the friction, and prices went to zero. However, there's still plenty of opportunity doing service, maintenance, custom work, training, etc.
  - jfoster 11y ago
    They also had some quite significant costs involved in making you realise that their software existed, though.
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      Marketing and promotion is just as costly, if not more costly, than it ever was. I know too many wonderful open source projects that failed and left their author bitter because they thought that merely creating a great program was good enough. The "build it and they will come" is a stupid Hollywood fantasy. Even the Beatles went nowhere until they hooked up with promoter George Martin.

busterarm 11y ago

I'm 100% for this, but if Apple feels that way as well, they could do us all a favor and just come out and say it. If any file hosting service can get shut down for piracy, Apple should be held accountable to the same laws. Telling artists to work for free while they benefit sounds a lot like asking someone to work on spec, to which I respond: Fuck You, Pay Me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U)