Closed for Business

http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/23/closed-for-business/

by johns • 14 years ago

85 53 14 years ago

mattgemmell.com

bryanlarsen2• 14 years ago

Your whole article is based on a publicity stunt. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4280871

Dead trigger makes its money from in-app purchases. In practice it is no more free now than it was before.

Piracy is rampant on iOS too. It's slightly more harder on an iOS device, but it's not exactly difficult.

Tyrannosaurs3• 14 years ago

Dead Trigger was a bad example - personally I'm not wild about mixing purchase and in-app purchase at all - but in the overall discussion others stated similar experiences, in one case a developer quoting piracy rates of 90% on an app which I believe had no in-app purchases (sorry, can't find the link now).

Football Manager 2012 handheld will be one I'll watch with interest. The publishers Sports Interactive have said that it has it's targets for Android and if it doesn't hit them there won't be another version. That's a massive franchise (in the UK at least) so I'm keen to see whether it can justify it's existence (selling price $5).

bryanlarsen2• 14 years ago

That sounds like a much better example. Being an existing franchise, it should avoid what I believe to be the primary problem for both Android and iOS: app discovery.

I remember an anecdote about a 90% piracy rate. It turns out that the game was prominently listed on a popular pirate board, but was buried deeply on the app store.

Combine that with a tendency for pirates to install huge numbers of games that they'll never likely play, and a 90% piracy rate isn't surprising.

Personal anecdote: Massive sales cause me to buy games that I'll likely never play. I just dropped over $50 on Steam because of their massive summer sale. $20 went to the latest Humble Bundle. A few months ago I bought a bunch of games for 10 freaking cents each on the Google store. I've purchased two sequels and one in-app since for those games, but my total outlay is still well under $10.

So I believe that the biggest problems on both Android and iOS are pricing and discovery. Piracy is a problem, but not as much as pricing and discovery, IMO.

_ea1k• 14 years ago

Are you talking about this? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sigames.fm....

If so, it seems to be doing pretty well so far for a $10 app.

Tyrannosaurs3• 14 years ago

There are a lot of good points here but one thing I would say is that closer is better for business in the way it exists now.

The overall point - that it's a failure of business models - is one of the two truths that seem to me to be becoming evident in the whole "piracy" debate.

The second (which applies to "consumers") is if there's no valid business model it's highly likely that you're going to see an impact on content creation and availability for platforms where piracy is widespread.

But I find exciting that over the next 10 or 20 years markets will change fairly radically as a result of these things. Personally, I'm no fan of piracy, I think people should be paid for their work. However, I also think that the genie is out of the bottle now and it's going to be a fact of the world going forward and it's for all of us to learn to live with.

excuse-me2• 14 years ago

"it’s open - with the corrosive mentality that surrounds such openness."

That's must be why Oracle and IBM have never made money supporting their products on Linux - it's that corrosive mentality of having the core of the underlying kernel be open source.

rgsteele• 14 years ago

"Existence of some viable open source models doesn’t change the reality for the vast majority of developers. We don’t have a rich daddy like Mozilla. We don’t have an operating system for which we can use a paid-support model. We just want to make apps, then sell enough copies of them so that we can make some more.

"The only principle that enters into it is that of survival: keeping food on the table, and making sure the lights stay on. Open doesn’t sit well with those goals."

excuse-me2• 14 years ago

The article seemed to be saying that since android is based on a FOSS kernel, and FOSS is a cancer (in Balmer's famous words) then people will pirate Android apps. Of course iOS is based on an essentially public domain BSD kernel where you are free to copy it all you want.

But you could read it to say, the Google app store is more open than Apple's restricted/approved walled garden and this allows more pirate apps. The article isn't very clearly written.

Of course the open access also avoids the many stories we get on here about - my original app was arbitrarily removed by someone at Apple because they thought it was the copy of another app - and I can't talk to anyone about it.

gfosco• 14 years ago

Doesn't Android provide a license verification service, much like the recently discussed iTunes receipt validation process? I have an app, GPS Aids, which checks online if my license is valid. Again, this can be blamed on the developers, for not taking any reasonable steps to prevent piracy. If the app has to be cracked, it's going to reduce the piracy rate quite a bit.

As an aside.. I would never pirate a $1 app, that is just ridiculous. I've spent way more than the average person in the app stores.

thijser• 14 years ago

Yes, and the licensing service is actually one of the most used developer libraries embedded in Android apps ( http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/dev ), although it's quickly being overtaken by the free + in-app billing model at the moment.

sehugg• 14 years ago

Yes, and there are widely distributed tools (Lucky Patcher) that remove that license check. As long as you can jailbreak (or sideload) there will be a way to bypass the copy protection, unless there is a server-side feature with server-side receipt validation. Ever has it been thus.

angrow2• 14 years ago

"A price-tag of one dollar is passive smoking. You’re killing people around you, for your own short-term benefit."

They're killing their competition _and_ benefitting from it? Those poor fools!

xianshou2• 14 years ago

Actually, it's quite a good analogy. No one benefits from this strategy in the final analysis because a race to the bottom makes all developers paupers. Smoking a cigarette relieves the pains of addiction (delivers short-term profit), kills you in the long term (destroys your business model), and imperils the health of the people around you (makes iOS and Android less desirable platforms).

That said, I disagree with the careless linking of FOSS principles and bad market practices. Linux, BSD, Apache: these technologies and others have had enormous positive impact that has enriched the industry as a whole more than paid versions could ever have benefited individual developers. However, the existence and promotion of FOSS in no way guarantees the cancer of one-dollar apps. Only developers' persistent undervaluation of their own work can do that. Specifically, their rush to capture the long tail of cheapskates at the cost of forgoing the bulk of the consumer surplus makes the entire market less desirable. Everybody loses when we must wade through a swamp of low-cost crap rather than the garden of costlier but higher-quality services we'd wish for.

angrow2• 14 years ago

Casting price competition as a sin might be the most preposterous possible reaction to market failure.

There are definitely barriers to making a living selling apps, but blaming them on your fellow victims is utterly foolish.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

His entire premis would require that there could never be a software business on the PC because it is open (it is far more open than Android). Thereis, so he is wrong.

jack-r-abbit4• 14 years ago

> here’s a tutorial on how to “sideload” Android apps (in practice, as with most articles that mention “backups” of software from nebulous sources, this is a tutorial about piracy)

Uh... Sideloading is not about piracy. One of the nice things about Android is that you are not locked into getting your apps from a store. I've sideloaded apps my company is creating. I've sideloaded apps that friends have made. I've sideloaded advance betas from companies I've had a relationship with. Sideloading is just installing a file.

veridies2• 14 years ago

Yeah, I've sideloaded a number of betas or prerelease applications and have never pirated an Android application. This article's making some pretty big assumptions.

trimbo• 14 years ago

> Stories like this come as no surprise, but the industry press rarely deals with the core problem - and nor does Google.

Yeah, except the part where Google announced encrypted applications from the Android Market at Google I/O. The presenter got light applause and seemed confused, asking for more applause. It seems that no one figured out the implications of that. Apps will be encrypted with a device-specific key from the store. People have been complaining about this since forever, Google is taking a major step to address the piracy problem, and no one has noticed.

w33ble• 14 years ago

Yeah, that was one of the biggest announcements they made this year. If it works (and why wouldn't it?), it'll put an end to the piracy problem while at the same time allowing you to side load any non-pirated application you want.

What wasn't clear to me was whether or not it was going to be enforced on older versions of Android. I imagine it will be though.

tomp• 14 years ago

Not everything in the world is a business model. If Linus was in for the money 20 years ago, the world that we live in would be seriously fucked up (much more than it is today). Same goes for Google's Android - it's open, it's free. It's focused on abundance, on sharing.

srathbun• 14 years ago

Hmm, if all this is true, then how can any successful company have an open source software product? Bacula http://www.bacula.org/en/ is a great backup solution available fore free, with installers, yet they run a successful business.

Mavrik• 14 years ago

If I put it the same way the author did: "If you don't like Android's openness, this is your bus stop."

We don't NEED another iOS... iOS and WP7 is enough.

beefsack• 14 years ago

Where is the evidence to support the claim that the lack of purchases is due to piracy?

zzzeek• 14 years ago

easy to pirate, extremely open and customizable, designed with 1000% nerd philosophy at every step, made the author millions: minecraft

veridies2• 14 years ago

But that's one (immensely popular) example. It's the very most popular indie game in the world, or close to it.

B-Con• 14 years ago

> Piracy is a symptom of failure to find an effective business model.

I hate this assumption, it's grounded in nothing but unwarranted optimism about humanity.

Maybe people pirate because they're cheap, selfish, and don't like spending money on things they can get for free. As the article established, people were mass-pirating apps that were easier to install legitimately and cost less than a buck anyway. If you pirate that, odds that you just need a better business model to entice you to not pirate are slim to none.

That may not apply to everyone, but it does apply to a lot of people.

There is absolutely zero reason to believe that there is a perfect equilibrium where business maximizes its goals and users have no incentive to pirate. The two are constantly at conflict (money is pretty much a zero-sum game, and ultimately it all does come down to money in some way or another), and it's hard to compete with free. No matter what you offer, if it has a cost then it's hard to compete with that same offering minus the cost.

mindcrime4• 14 years ago

You search the internet for pirate copies of apps, then copy them onto your (regular, unrooted, non-“jailbroken”) device, and launch them. The system is designed for piracy from the ground up.

OK, I admit, I couldn't read past this sentence. This is so much complete and total bullshit that I closed the tab in disgust.

The ability to sideload apps on a non-rooted, non-jailbroken device is exactly what any and every device I own absolutely must support and this is non-negotiable. If I own a piece of computing hardware, I will have the freedom to install and run any software I want, regardless of where or how I obtained. Oh, and I don't use pirated software.

Given that people are already talking about a "war on general purpose computing"[1], it's downright shameful for this guy to run around promoting the idea that open devices are designed to enable piracy.

[1] http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

megamark16• 14 years ago

I felt exactly the same way upon reading that line. I'm a very tech-savvy guy, I could easily download and install any app I want on my Android device, but I don't. I'm very cheap, I almost never pay for software, I use mostly open source software. I would rather pay for an app I find to be of value then install some old busted version from the internet, with who knows what kind of malware included in it. I'm not paying for the software, per say, I'm paying for the continued support of the developer by way of updates. Most people I know who use Android phones either don't know or care about installing pirated versions of software, of they know enough to know better than to trust something they downloaded from a random website to run on their phones.

tptacek6• 14 years ago

So, to paraphrase:

"Guy doesn't agree with me on something fundamental. Shame on him."

yock• 14 years ago

I don't think that's what he said at all. I read it as a criticism of a bad premise. Do you mean to imply that there is so such thing?

drcube2• 14 years ago

Congrats, you've summed up every debate ever. I guess we can shut down this website, huh?

How about, "People who want to violate my property rights by crippling the digital devices I own (and/or refusing to let me own such open devices in the first place) because they'd make a little more money that way are morally wrong."

fpgeek• 14 years ago

The entire premise is flawed. This developer didn't leave Android. They got rid of their entry fee to try to make more money via in-app purchase. Despite the publicity stunt, that is a run-of-the-mill business decision with little or no wider significance.

squarecat2• 14 years ago

Valid or not, the point is undermined by the author's abrasive response to counterpoint: https://twitter.com/mattgemmell/status/227818567851180032

epaga• 14 years ago

I wouldn't call that abrasive. The "counterpoint" was quoting a previous article of his out of context, acting as if he was saying it was OK to steal content - which he was not, he was explaining WHY people steal content.

Having your words twisted is definitely insulting.

squarecat2• 14 years ago

Twisted implies malicious intent, which the other individuals clearly did not have.

And, whether you agree with Mr. Gemmell or the other two gentlemen, this was a misunderstanding at worst and the assertion that the "piece is really personally insulting" is laughable. (It's probable that he responded out of frustration, which is only human, but perhaps he could have used the opportunity to clarify himself.)

marbletiles• 14 years ago

So very many things wrong with this piece.

1. Show him the money: I'm not sure he's comparing apples with oranges here. He makes a good living from iOS, but (crucially) by consulting for others who themselves may not have a sustainable business model. There is an increasing amount of evidence suggesting the indie dev model isn't sustainable on iOS, either, from AppCubby and Sparrow to the iconFactory and more.

2. Open vs Closed: I don't think one data point (the app store) is enough to damn open platforms. The Mac is open by his definition, and so is Windows. Are those both "bad for business"? Hardly.

3. Open vs Open: He then conflates "open" (as in I can install anything I want on it without going via a store) with "Open" as in open source, when the two are very different. Piracy is possible on a on a closed-source open-install platform, the open/closed nature of the source is absolutely irrelevant here.

He tries to join the two with a hand-wavy "piracy is easy on Android because it has an open mentality", when the source license has zip to do with this. It makes all the later jabs about Stallman more than a little strawmanish.

4. Choice vs Free: This is more a pedantic point, but you can't go from "too much choice is bad" (which I'd agree with in certain contexts) to "and so freedom is bad". He doesn't back that up, by the way, just asserts "but freedom is bad". No, it is not bad. Sometimes freedoms collide, and sometimes they can be traded. But "overwhelming choice is bad" and "overwhelming freedom is bad" are not synonymous statements.

5. Lock it down (unless it's a movie or album that I want): His conclusion in this piece is basically "Close it down and keep prices high to beat the pirates". Which is an interesting contrast with http://mattgemmell.com/2012/02/17/the-piracy-threshold/ where he says "Open it all up and keep the prices very low or I will pirate".

There's more to be had in this post, but I think I've reached enough errors to abort. At least this one didn't end with "disagree? amuse me by telling me".

rythie• 14 years ago

Lots of people don't get to work on cool stuff at work, but they get paid and work in a convenient place for their life situation.

A lot of people have energy to give to open source because they get something out of it that's not money. Most people who play sports are not paid, or do art, dance, blog or lots of things really.

If you don't want to work for free, don't, I'm sure someone else who's bored or wants to sharpen their skills will step and fill the void you left.

radley• 14 years ago

We're Android-only developers and we're doing fine. Piracy was around long before smart phones so you gotta know how to work with it.

We expect piracy of our apps and priced them accordingly. Our users pay the $2 simply for the ease of automatic updates & notifications. If you pirate the app you'll always be a version (or 15) behind and have to keep up on your own. If it's worth it, you clearly need the $2 more than us. Kewl.

For something you want to seriously scale, you have to do it for free anyway. It's still land rush for new markets. Nothing's changed there.

Closed for Business

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