Re: are 3d software companies making a profit on our back... 2004-02-23 - By wh3947a
Back
> are graphic software companies deliberately holding featurres out
> when they release a new version of their software.
It doesn't require any conspiracies.
You can view any functioning software company as a black box that
converts money to software and then software into money.
And, just to make things easier, time is money in my explanation.
Any given feature request has an unknown cost. The people who are
planning out the features for the next release need to figure out what
that cost will probably be. Usually, through no fault of their own,
they get it wrong, and that's expected, because it'll take too long to
get it right.
At the same time, they need to prioritize stuff because each feature
also has a set value. Again, it's all guesswork here, because some
people will insist that they *need* some feature, when they are mostly
lying. Likewise, they may want some tiny little change, but don't
think it's important enough to mention. And you can't know how
important a feature is until people actually play with it. It's even
more difficult because you want to surprise your competitors with the
features in your next version and, at the same time, any feature list
leakage often times means that the users are very unhappy if that
feature gets dropped later. So it's better to not mention stuff until
you are ready to do it. Anyway, they need to hit the proper
combination of features that makes you want to buy version 4, 5, 6,
etc. Except for the dotcom era where people spent too much time
playing ping pong, there's generally more features that could be done
than there are programmers, money, and time available, so they need to
prioritize on the features. Generally, a whole chunk of the requested
features drop off of the list at this point.
To sum up what we've covered so far, you want to provide people enough
perceved value in features to be a fair exchange for the purchase or
upgrade price. You want the value (That would be the money going from
you to the software company) to be equal to or greater than the cost
(That would be the money they spend on developing the software).
Now, sometimes they get the guesses on the cost wrong, which probably
means that either a) it's a month away from when stuff needs to be
done and they haven't started on it yet, or b) it works, but it's
really buggy. Either way, something that's partially done won't be
ready. So it gets cut out (trust me, it's like getting your spleen or
perhaps liver ripped out, if you are the programmer). This kills the
rest of the features that nobody implements.
The other fun part is that adding programmers allows you to spend more
money and make more features, but there's a principle of diminshing
returns with that. More programmers require more communication,
training, etc. And that also means that you have to make more money
each release, either by selling more copies of software, selling lots
of upgrades, or raising your prices.
Now, the thing to understand is that there's two ways to make money
off of a piece of software. The first way is to break the laws of
space and time and write the perfect piece of software. Whenever
somebody needs it, they buy the already-perfect software, are
perefectly satisfied, and the programmers sit under a tree and watch
the money rain down as they drink strawberry smoothies. Obviously,
this never happens.
The other way is to release many versions, charge a moderate upgrade
fee, and, the whole time, add new features to attract new customers
and add features that make the current users want to upgrade.
(There's actually a third way, too, which is what my employer does.
Where I work, you pay a certain amount of money every month to
continue to use our software and our data. This is a rare thing)
No company with clueful management will ever want to, on purpose,
leave a working feature out of a piece of software. You want to
release that feature because it adds value to the program, which means
you can charge more for the upgrade and attracts new users. Besides,
you've already dropped a huge chunk of the features on your wishlist
in the process of getting a new version together, so you want nothing
else than to tackle the next items on the list. The only exception is
some amount of time spent on making changes that don't add features
but make later features easier to add, which is a more long-term payoff.
All of this also generally means that nobody offers free upgrades
long-term. By not charging for upgrades, you are reducing the amount
of cash that is available for your development.
There is one case where you do strip out features. One principle of
economics is that you want to charge each person as much as you can.
If was a rich artist, I'll think nothing about paying $1000 for a
piece of software. Similarly, if I'm a high school student without a
job, I'll maybe pay $99 for a piece of software, or maybe I'll just
download it from a warez site. So you tend to want to charge people
different prices, without annoying either side. Hence, the "lite"
versions of a package.
So, because that's really the only way to make money, most software is
on a release tredmill where each version attracts new users and is
cool enough that people want to upgrade. About the only thing you can
tweak is to be able to program more efficently, the length of the
release cycle, and the pricing structure. So, at my company, it's a 3
month release cycle, thousands of dollars per user yearly, and I do
the job of about 5 people at one of our competitors. Eovia has a 1
year release cycle, the prices you see on the website, and some pretty
good programmers themselves.
The overall problem with software development is that there's
equations that you write that make it all simple mathematics. The
problem is that you don't know the actual numbers in the equations
until it's too late for them to have done any good.
Hopefully this can allow people to understand why most team leads of
software projects have nightmares most nights, and why versions have
the sorts of features that they do. The problem is, because there is
competition in most industries, most of this must happen behind closed
doors.
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