Posted by gillispie on 5/17/2012 11:14:00 AM (view original):
people need to learn to not respond to colonels. its not like anyone agreed with him, before you refute him, and you will never convince him personally. it just makes him post more, which EVERYONE agrees is a bad thing.
i'm an eyeballer too. however, i will absolutely make a donation for this tool, even if i don't use it, because its cool, and because i am glad there is somebody doing what yatzr is doing and am MORE than happy to support the effort.
on the donation VS pay thing, i agree, non GD users are basically paying for the tool, IF you just pay 10 dollars for just the tool. pay more, and now, its a donation (viola!). but anyway, for those with reading comprehension skills, you will note that this tool was made by request of existing donors, so he put it out, so any other donors could see it and take advantage. he did not ask people pay to 10 dollars for the tool, or solicit new users. however, *IF* a new users wants to pay 10 dollars for the tool, they can. OR, you can make a donation for the tool. its your choice. but its NOT sneaky wording by him. he gives software away free and allows people to make donations, and then gives them some extra stuff as a thank you. that is the spirit of the system, its not a gimmick. i can see the source of confusion, for HD people who don't play GD (i don't play GD), but when you think about it, its pretty obvious he is playing above board here. WAY above board, you could say. hes a guy who made something free and people liked it so much they donated money to him, and THAT is the spirit of it. pretty cool, if you ask me.
Your explanation of the "donation vs pay thing" is just... wrong.
He most certainly asked for $10 - at least $10, that is - give him more if you'd like (so your donation would be $X - $10). If I go to Subway and ask for a sandwich, they don't say "This sandwich requires a donation of at least $5." No, they say "This sandwich costs $5. Give it." Then there's this little jar with the word "Tips" on it right by the cash register in case you want to make a donation to the workers (which, as long as they aren't stingy with the ingredients, they'll usually get). So, the cost of this tool is $10, then you can donate on top of that. But to call the $10 purchase a donation is just ridiculous. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then call it a duck. Donation just sounds better to people than cost, so it most certainly is sneaky wording. Try making a $2 donation and see what happens.
He totally solicited new users - why do you think this thread is here? To get new users. It wasn't to say "hey, check out this tool I made - ok, thanks, bye"... no, it was "check out this scraper tool I made for a donation of at least $10." If he wanted to send it out so any of his donors could see it and take advantage (as you erroneously assumed), then I'm sure he has options to distribute this information just to them, be it on the site he posts his tools on gdreports.com or through a donor list that I would assume he keeps w/ an email address. But then he wouldn't get more "donations", so that'd be foolish if he wants more users (read as: more money).
So he's using logic that he's already built for GD and likely went through a very small customization process for HD to get more money. I mean, no offense to him, but it's not exactly a robust or well designed application - it's a very plain form with a couple controls and some tables with Excel export functionality. I'm assuming most of this logic is modularized, so the customization is very minimal (and if it wasn't developed like that, it should have been). Maybe it has some huge use in GD that warranted a $10 price tag, but what I see just isn't worth it. And yet, people will pay it. Just like they used to pay (sorry, "donate") $3 for a "flashlight" on the iPhone, which was just a white f'n screen - that developer made $10k in the first week that app was out there, for starting a new project and then pushing it to the app store.
I wouldn't say he's playing "WAY above board"... I'd say he used to be looking down on the board back when this initially started and he made the free tool. Then he saw that he could make some money off of it and here we are with a more money-driven approach. Yes, it is pretty cool that he made it for free initially and people donated to him - no, it's not pretty cool that he took that as "hey, I can charge for this" and then limited the distribution or functionality of the applications based on "donations".
Just say the thing costs $10 and be done with it. How that is confusing to anyone is beyond me. I'm not trying to come down on the guy for trying to make some extra money, and yes, it's great that someone is doing dev work on HD since WIS apparently isn't anymore, but just be straight with people about it.