wired.com— An innovative plan to sell a package of apps at a deep discount -- and give a load of cash to charity -- is probably the most successful shareware sale ever. But the Mac blogosphere says it was just a heist.
Dec 20, 2006View in Crawl 4
"How does a sales event that triples its expectations and donates an estimated $200,000 to charity become controversial? The promotion was wildly profitable for Ryu and his partners, but shafted the developers, who were paid relatively low fees for participating. According to several sources, the shareware developers were paid a flat fee ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 for their shareware apps -- approximately $100,000 total (between all the developers) -- leaving an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 for Ryu and his partners after costs."****s!
dkoon:"However, Ryu says that developer feedback has been positive, with nine of the 10 developers saying they are "very happy" with the bundled sale. The 10th developer, who did not want to be identified, said he was disappointed the project focused on the charities and the low price of the bundle rather than the quality of the shareware."One out of ten complained. Work on either your math or your reading.
Yo, Gruber haters.Just because the participating developers are happy with MacHeist doesn't mean they weren't somewhat exploited.While the Directorate gets mad props for making so much money so quickly (and donating $200K to charity and providing users with a nice software bundle), maybe next time they'll give the developers a bit more love.(If you bury this link, you're missing the point.)
You're all just jealous you didn't come up with the idea...Risk = Reward... welcome to the world.Had they not sold one bundle, MacHeist would have lost $100,000, and the developers wouldn't have sold the copies they did... I'll admit that other than Disco and another license of TextMate ( which I got as a bonus, as I'd already bought the bundle ), I had no interest in the other items, having used them, I've purchased another game from Pangea whom I'd never heard of... A couple of the other ones I'm enjoying as well... so guess who wins?At the risk of being dugg down, you all need to grow up and stop whining about something that has no effect on you. you aren't the developers, if you care so much, go by full versions of them and stop flooding Digg with your complaints.
wtf!! they used flat fees??? That's nuts. Although .. it's a brilliant initiative, the developers shouldn't be complaining since they agreed to the deal and did get some extra out of it. But it's still odd that they used flat fees :s Also, it was a rather big leap of faith for the MacHeist team. But somehow I'm certain they knew it was going to work since they paid flat fees :/ Next time the developers will know better.
"You're all just jealous you didn't come up with the idea"I actually liked the idea, but I feel that developers are the single most importnat factor in any computing environment, and should be subsequently looked after and respected.
irelandDec 20, 2006
"How does a sales event that triples its expectations and donates an estimated $200,000 to charity become controversial? The promotion was wildly profitable for Ryu and his partners, but shafted the developers, who were paid relatively low fees for participating. According to several sources, the shareware developers were paid a flat fee ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 for their shareware apps -- approximately $100,000 total (between all the developers) -- leaving an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 for Ryu and his partners after costs."****s!
Closed AccountDec 20, 2006
<a class="user" href="http://digg.com/celebrity/Rachel_Ray_s_FHM_shoot">http://digg.com/celebrity/Rachel_Ray_s_FHM_shoot</a>EDIT: Mispost, please ignore. (there should really be a way to delete a comment when editing)
frabjousDec 20, 2006
dkoon:"However, Ryu says that developer feedback has been positive, with nine of the 10 developers saying they are "very happy" with the bundled sale. The 10th developer, who did not want to be identified, said he was disappointed the project focused on the charities and the low price of the bundle rather than the quality of the shareware."One out of ten complained. Work on either your math or your reading.
mokolabsDec 20, 2006
Yo, Gruber haters.Just because the participating developers are happy with MacHeist doesn't mean they weren't somewhat exploited.While the Directorate gets mad props for making so much money so quickly (and donating $200K to charity and providing users with a nice software bundle), maybe next time they'll give the developers a bit more love.(If you bury this link, you're missing the point.)
sw0rdfishDec 21, 2006
You're all just jealous you didn't come up with the idea...Risk = Reward... welcome to the world.Had they not sold one bundle, MacHeist would have lost $100,000, and the developers wouldn't have sold the copies they did... I'll admit that other than Disco and another license of TextMate ( which I got as a bonus, as I'd already bought the bundle ), I had no interest in the other items, having used them, I've purchased another game from Pangea whom I'd never heard of... A couple of the other ones I'm enjoying as well... so guess who wins?At the risk of being dugg down, you all need to grow up and stop whining about something that has no effect on you. you aren't the developers, if you care so much, go by full versions of them and stop flooding Digg with your complaints.
t3hxDec 21, 2006
Uh-oh, MacHeist fanboys... yet another kind.(I'm a Mac user, and am sick of these stupid MacHeist stories...)
spoboDec 21, 2006
wtf!! they used flat fees??? That's nuts. Although .. it's a brilliant initiative, the developers shouldn't be complaining since they agreed to the deal and did get some extra out of it. But it's still odd that they used flat fees :s Also, it was a rather big leap of faith for the MacHeist team. But somehow I'm certain they knew it was going to work since they paid flat fees :/ Next time the developers will know better.
irelandDec 21, 2006
"You're all just jealous you didn't come up with the idea"I actually liked the idea, but I feel that developers are the single most importnat factor in any computing environment, and should be subsequently looked after and respected.