Share software industrialization
Author / Jiang Tao
Introduction
In the Internet age, shared software is everywhere, downloading Netants, listening to songs Winamp, Foxmail that collects mail, China has emerged thousands of shared software products, but people still have a lot of blur even mistakes for sharing software. understanding. Sharing software and free software will never mean free and no copyrighted software, the essence of sharing software and free software is commercial software, only to commercialization, industrialized sharing software to move towards successful development.
History of sharing software
Sharing software is not the product of the Internet. As early as 1982, two software developers and Jim Button have developed two larger application software PC-Talk (Communication software) on their newly purchased IBM PC. PC-file (database management software), but they don't want to promote too much time and money for software, so they have adopted a novel software sales method, using bulletin BBS to issue software, they allow users to copy software But in the electronic documentation of the software, it is required to pay a fee to the software author to ensure subsequent development and technical support.
This is actually a marketing tool for "first trial", we can often see this sales method in other traditional commodity marketing. Their products have achieved good results, and Jim Button has made a number of improvements to PC-File and gradually developed business into companies with millions of dollars. When they see their success, many subsequent software developers have also taken this way of sales. These two software are later similar software, including those more successful software, and thousands of less successful software, have laid a good foundation to the same market.
Tip (free software freeware and public domain)
Fluegleman called the PC-Talk software he developed as "freeware" and registered a trademark for this name. This means that anyone is not allowed to sell its own software in the name of "free software" without his permission. This limitation is clearly not conducive to the development of this new industry. Later, since PC-Talk stopped development, "free software" gradually lost its original registration meaning, which was ultimately used to refer to software that does not require users to pay the fee, but does not mean that the author gives up copyright, only Publicization of public Domain means that the author gives up his rights, anyone can use it without any.
Message misunderstanding of shared software
Most users from China have generated a lot of wrong understanding from the Internet from the Internet, which is used to free content, and even in the software industry, many professionals don't know the true meaning of sharing software, these misunderstandings It can be summarized as the following five misunderstandings:
Misunderstanding 1: ShareWare is not commercial software, free
US Sharing Software Professional Alliance's definition of sharing software: "Shareware" is Software That Offers a "Try Before You Buy" (TBYB) Capability. The interpretation of shared software is as follows: ShaReware is a marketing method, not A Type of Software or Even StricTly Just a Distribution Method.
From the history and development of sharing software, shared software is commercial software. Its essence is the marketing tool using "first purchase", sharing software is an important branch in the software industry.
In the 1980s, shared software relies mainly on the software distributor to issue a disk to issue a software trial version, and collect software registration fees by mail or credit card. With the popularity of the Internet, the propagation, charges, registrations are very convenient, all can be achieved through the network, sharing software has developed rapidly, more and more software varieties, sharing software allows users to choose software All functions of the trial software, users are called this way, and they have purchased a formal version. The most famous shooting game Doom, Duke Nukem and Quake are quickly popular in this marketing. Misunderstanding 2: Shareware is small software, low pricing
ShareWare is not small software, but only compared to retail software channels, it is more likely to sell market costs than retail software channels, and small software is more likely to take this approach.
Shareware prices mainly depend on software scale and market, such as the most common audio editing software Cooledit, its registration fee is $ 399, which is also high than the retail market. There is also a more famous multimedia software control package MultiMedia Tools, with a set of $ 999, while Borland's Delphi Development Tools Professional B version is only $ 799.
Misunderstanding 3: Shareware is a small market
The size of the shared software market is not less than the retail software channel, and the famous shared software such as Winzip, ACDSEE sales revenue is tens of millions of dollars, such a sales of products may be higher than that of China's large software companies. More, not to talk about the comparison of profit margins.
There is also an example of our domestic example MP3-CD Maker Zhou Yi, MP3-CD Maker is a small software that bits the MP3 file to the CD and restores a small software for music CD. The curiosity of shared software, let Zhou Wei go to study the shared software author who rely on the registration code to get the income can not make money. The result is surprising. Most shared software author reply, no one says they don't make money, but mostly refuse to reveal specific numbers, some people say that they don't need to find work at work, and some people have shown that they still work for them. Although there is no number, but to know, in the United States, you can do less than $ 30,000 in the United States. It is definitely to find a job, but it is 300,000 yuan, not a small number! Further discovery is more surprised, Winzip, ACDSEE's author is actually a million dollars! Do overseas markets, earn US dollars! From 2000, Zhou Wei's goal was taken in 2000, and MP3-CD Maker sales exceeded US $ 60,000, and continued to grow.
