Pricing of software also refers to "proprietary or closed source software" which is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder.
Definition is taken from Wikipedia.
Questions tagged [pricing]
56 questions
287
votes
39 answers
Why don't all companies buy developers the best hardware?
I must be missing something.
The cost of employing a programmer in my area is $50 to $100 an hour. A top end machine is only $3,000, so the cost of buying a truly great computer every three years comes to $0.50/hour. ($3000/(150 wks * 40…
Eric Wilson
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62 answers
Why do programmers write closed source applications and then make them free?
As an entrepreneur/programmer who makes a good living from writing and selling software, I'm dumbfounded as to why developers write applications and then put them up on the Internet for free. You've found yourself in one of the most lucrative…
Ken
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27 answers
What is the most egregious waste of money you have seen, and what did you do about it?
Often we as programmers see large organisations wasting huge sums of money on bloated and inefficient solutions to problems. This pains me greatly because I like organisations to benefit from best of breed solutions. However, my abilities as a…
Gary
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36
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3 answers
Why do programming language (open) standards cost money?
Isn't it counter-productive to ask for 384 Swiss franks for C11 or 352 Swiss franks for C++11, if the aim is to make the standards widely adopted?
Please note, I'm not ranting at all, and I'm not against paying; I would like to understand the…
Tamás Szelei
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31
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7 answers
How do you decide how much your software will cost?
If you are a solo developer, or have a leading role in a software company, you might have to decide how much your software will cost one or another day... What is your experience with calculating how much your software costs for your customer? Why…
Tamara Wijsman
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27
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5 answers
On what basis would you split donation money among your open source team members without any strife?
I am a developer of an open source project which is hosted in SourceForge.
It started out as a little app then after some releases, it got more and more popular and it started consuming more time and responsibility from me. So I have enabled the…
Vigneshwaran
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20
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3 answers
Does the GPL allow anyone to obtain GPL software without paying for it?
I've spotted a nice WordPress (GPL) theme for sale.
I know somebody who bought it.
I have 2 questions:
Has the company selling it the obligation to send the source code to whoever (customers or not) ask it?
Can the person who bought it give me a…
Serge
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18
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10 answers
Dealing with change requests from clients for an old system that only take 5 minutes to implement
Possible Duplicate:
How should I charge for programming things which take two minutes to fix?
On some systems I created, every now and then I get tiny change requests from clients that are very easy for me to do, but the client can not do it…
Moomoo
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16
votes
7 answers
Why does Microsoft charge a fortune for its developer tools?
Microsoft charges thousands of dollars for most versions of Visual Studio. Compare this with companies like Apple and Google and with organizations like GNU and Eclipse that give away developer tools for free, it makes me wonder where the difference…
Kyle Cronin
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4 answers
Where do I begin when dealing with my first corporate client?
I recently developed a desktop client that automates much of the work involved during online research. I developed this tool in 2-3 hours, and it has reduced an hour's worth of work to about 5 minutes. The softwas has had some visibility, and some…
Dan Tao
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16
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3 answers
Software monetization that is not evil
I have a free open-source project with around 800K downloads to date.
I've been contacted by some monetization companies from time to time and turned them down, since I didn't want toolbar malware associated with my software.
I was wondering…
t0x1n
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5 answers
How Do You Determine Your Hourly Rate?
In pricing a service or product it is general practice to not merely charge for the effort spent and the costs involved + margin but from the value delivered down. As an independent consultant, how do you set the price of your work?
What is the…
rsman
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12
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4 answers
Hourly or per project billing?
How do you bill your programming projects? Do you do it per hour? Per job?
Please include what kind of project you are doing in the answer. (Mobile, Web, Desktop, etc... You can be more specific if you want.)
BONUS:
If you'd like to give specific…
Moshe
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11
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7 answers
Are end-to-end and integration tests worth it for non-mission critical stuff?
It's well known that end-to-end and integration tests are costly. Of course if we develop applications where people might die if things go wrong it's a worthwhile investment. However in applications where errors are not the end of the world, would…
Marc
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10
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6 answers
Software cost estimation
I've seen on my work place (a University) most students making the software estimation cost of their final diploma work using COCOMO. My guessing is that this way of estimating costs is somewhat old (COCOMO dates of 1981), hence my question:
How do…
David Conde
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