You may recall the announcement, about two weeks back, that RadicalCodex, etc. are changing from commercial and closed source — to donation driven and open source.
I wanted to take a minute to give everyone a quick update on what’s happened since then, and what still needs to happen.
First up, let’s talk about the donations so far:
There have been two.
Granted, I expected the number to be low initially as I have not really pushed donations yet… plus the project is still young. Even so… only two? Doesn’t fill me with a large amount of optimism (considering the fact that several thousand extra people grabbed RadicalCodex after the change-over to be free and donation-driven).
Those two people who donated? Awesome people. Dare I say… some of the most awesome ever.
On the development front:
There were a few bits of code used in RadicalCodex (which is the application I’m focusing on first) that could not be released open source (licensed code). So I spent some time this weekend factoring those bits out and replacing them with open source friendly code.
Also, while I’m at it, I’m updating the book cover view to use OpenGL. Which was the plan from the very beginning, and this is a perfect chance to do it (as I’m doing so much refactoring anyway).
This work will probably take another week or so before it’s done. But, once it’s done, that opens up a lot of cool possibilities (both in terms of usability and display quality… plus just general eye candy).
The bug tracking database is online… and I’m only letting a very small number of people use it for the moment. Why, you ask? Because I don’t want any bug reports or feature requests until the next revision is out.
That’s about the gist of it for now. I’m hoping that once the next rev of RadicalCodex is out (which will likely be a “2.0″) that donations will start picking up.
June 15th, 2009 - 9:31 pm
While I hope you get a lot of donations, I really don’t think you will. I just think your application fills too small of a niche. But I would really love for you to prove me wrong.
June 15th, 2009 - 11:30 pm
These are my personal reasons to *not* donate.
1. The app just doesn’t do that much.
There may be some sync functionality, but that’s only useful for someone who does have a syncable device. Rest is just a fancy view of ebook files. I get most of the fuctionality from just plain KDE4. All I’m missing is the fancy view of the covers.
2. It sucks on 64bit.
… how is that even possible? Well, it’s a 32bit app and it has some dependencies that are hard to get. At first I managed to run it with squares instead of letters and then it crashed. After some recompiling and repackaging of libraries, setting environment variables and writing a runner script, I ended up with something that couldn’t open or import e-book files. Maybe it would run better in wine… I haven’t tried that.
3. Most of my books and comics are in the old paper format. There’s nothing like turning off the computer and reading a real book.
When I’m reading something on the computer, its mostly on the internet. A great example: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=34690.0
Something that would: identify the CMS/forum software, extract all available information, filter it and format it for comfortable reading would be *priceless*.
So, there you have it.
June 16th, 2009 - 7:24 am
I agree with Peterix. If you lack of a syncable device (99% of the possible audience?) Comix does well the same things plus is faster. In the windows world ComicRack is FAR BETTER and still free of charge.
My two cents.
June 16th, 2009 - 9:48 am
Could you be so kind as to give an example of those bits out to be replaced with open source friendly code?
I wonder about the what open source unfriendly code looks like
June 16th, 2009 - 11:19 am
Because open source is not a viable business model.
June 16th, 2009 - 1:23 pm
@somebody
*Highfive*
Bryan… seriously man, donations are something people do out of the goodness of their hard. You can’t badger people for them. No matter how good you think your work is.
June 16th, 2009 - 9:08 pm
I read this article and thought of Bryan…
http://tomuse.com/wp-plugins-developer-business-model/
You’d think popular WordPress plugins would get donations.
Nope. Less than 0.025% of the downloaders ever donate.
So, even if you have something people love, need, and use every day… if it’s “free”, they just wont pay you.
June 18th, 2009 - 12:54 am
Now that I think of it … Dwarf Fortress is one project that is:
Entirely supported by donations (the developer’s sole income).
Closed source.
Cross platform.
It’s a fantasy world simulator in the making. It generates a huge world with nations, possibly thousands of years of history and gives you freedom over its future – within some bounds that expand with every release.
The guy barely breaks even.
June 18th, 2009 - 4:45 pm
Hi Brian,
I’ve just downloaded radical codex again. I downloaded it once before it went open source.
Here are the reasons it won’t stay installed on my system and why you won’t get a donation from me.
1. I’m not a huge comic book fan.
2. I do have a few ebooks but the only thing it offers me that evince doesn’t is fitting the page width with a click.
3. I find nautilus an adequate but far from perfect way of organising. RadicalCodex doesn’t do anything neat like tagging and sorting by tags to make it f-spot useful.
4. It won’t sync with any of the ebook readers on my shopping list and strangely it seems that syncing with the sony reader is a matter of copying files onto a mass storage device (something I can accomplish by other means).
5. I donate to and buy software (I donate more than I buy) for two reasons: firstly because I want to encourage more development and secondly because it is of use to me.
Like the other commentators on this post, it seems to me that you’ve taken a very small market segment, supplied an early version of software that doesn’t have major differentiation much from the surrounding FOSS software.
Now if you were developing a video editor that showed promise, I’d be onboard.
June 18th, 2009 - 11:34 pm
@somebody
open source is a great business model. but there needs to be (1) a need for a better solution and (2) the better solution. I don’t see these programs filling any hole that isn’t already being taken care of.
June 19th, 2009 - 10:52 am
It is unfortunate that you haven’t received more donations, but not very surprising. It is as someone said in a previous comment that your application is maybe too niche for such a model. You need a big critical mass of users to reach a feasible amount of donors. I also do think that most of your downloads are from ppl that listen to the show and are curious about what you have created. I doubt that many of them use it on a regular basis, but rather downloaded and installed just to try it out. Not because it is a bad app, but rather because it probably is too niche. I have run into this trap myself.
I also encourage you to make the donation a step in the download process. I think it was Radiohead who had a screen in the download process where the customer could set their own price on the album before download. You could set $0, and many did, but the point was that everyone who downloaded at least stopped for a moment to think about what they thought the album was worth. I think this is a clever way to present a donations model, because even though you can download it for free, you are kindly encouraged to pay at least some amount. Another important difference is that doing a donation is an extra step and if you have that step already incorporated in the download process it becomes even less of an extra hurdle for the user
June 19th, 2009 - 1:49 pm
@Wrinkliez
Simply put: NO. People wont pay for something that they can have for free.
Our economy works that way – everyone wants more things/money. It’s normal.
June 20th, 2009 - 7:31 am
I download it~ though it was a converter for Sony reader, but it was just another comic reader. Wish there was conversion options like cbz/cbr to lrf, epub ..etc thats what is missing on linux ATM. They have `Calibre` but that thing sucks. Need a nice skin job and converter. Sorry im too poor to donate but yea the app is pretty much done already, people can just use `Comix` and that baby is free and in my opinion better.