Deadhouse Gates

I read a news announcement about a new freeware program that does some cool stuff. I check it out and it is vastly superior to an existing freeware program. Yet when I read the comments, the new, superior freeware program is being flamed. Why? Because the guy making it also offers a for-pay version that has more features.

I check out the forums of a game I enjoy playing. Normally people are singing the praises of this game. Now, the forum is full of flaming and angst. Why? Because the developer started offering optional premium content for players if they want.

Let me tell the whiners a truth about life: Money is exchanged for goods and services.

Before the current generation of vocal “free beer” people started taking over forums we had a concept called shareware. Someone would make something cool and offer a version of it to try. This version might time out or it might have fewer features or it might just work on the honor system. If users liked it, they bought it. End of story.

Nowadays, we have it better. People make free stuff and release it. No nags. No missing features when compared to other “free” competitors. No time outs. But the developers will also release an even better version. Despite that, you will still have people flaming the free version as being “crippled” or “trialware” even though it’s actually freeware. Even if the free program is better than free programs that have no “better” version as an option, people will still flame the one while praising the other.

Now, I’m all for people expressing their opinions, but that’s not what a lot of these people are doing. They’re basically trying to bully developers (or shame them) out of even making the optional premium version.

I think a lot of the free beer crowd actually think that there’s so alternative universe where the premium content might have been free if the developer could just have been shamed out of their “greed”. But that’s just not going to happen. Professionally developed software costs money to make. Someone has to pay for that cost.

And so the problem comes that a lot of us don’t mind paying for extra stuff. I have plenty of favorite games that I’d like to see continued updating of that I’d be willing to pay for.

The mere existence of premium stuff doesn’t hurt me. If I want it, I’ll pay for it. If I don’t, I won’t.