Sharing software Industrialization (I)

Sharing software Industrialization

Author/Jiang Tao

Introduction

In the Internet era, shared software is everywhere. NetAnts for download, Winamp for listening to songs, and Foxmail for receiving emails. Thousands of shared software products have emerged in China, however, people still have a lot of vague and even wrong ideas about shared software. Shared Software and free software do not mean free and copyrighted software. The essence of shared software and free software is commercial software, only the sharing software of industrialization can lead to a successful development.

History of Shared Software

Shared Software is not a product of the Internet. As early as 1982, two software developers Andrew fluegleman and Jim button developed two large application software PC-Talk (Communication Software) on their newly purchased ibm pc) and PC-file (database management software), but they do not want to spend too much time and money on Software Promotion, so they chose a novel software sales method, the announcement board BBS is used to issue software. They allow users to copy the software. However, in the electronic documents of the software, users are required to pay the software author for the software to ensure subsequent development and technical support.

This is actually a marketing method of "first try and then purchase". We can often see this sales method in other traditional product marketing. Their products all achieved good results. Jim button made several improvements to PC-file and gradually developed the business into a company with millions of dollars of assets. Seeing their success, many software developers have also adopted this sales method. These two software laid a good foundation for later similar software, including those more successful software and thousands of less successful software, to move towards the same market.

Highlights (freeware and public domain)

Fluegleman called the PC-talk software he developed as "freeware" and registered a trademark for it. This means that no one can sell their software in the name of "Free Software" without his permission. This restriction is obviously not conducive to the development of this new industry. Later, as PC-talk stopped development, "Free Software" gradually lost its original registration meaning and was eventually used to refer to software that does not require users to pay fees, however, this does not mean that the author has waived the copyright. Only public domain software means that the author has waived his rights and anyone can use it for free.

Misunderstandings about Shared Software

Most users in China have started to access shared software from the Internet. They are used to free content and have a lot of misunderstandings about shared software, even many software professionals do not know the true meaning of shared software. These mistakes can be summarized into the following five misunderstandings:

Misunderstanding 1: WareIt's not commercial software, it's free.

Definition of shared software by the American software sharing professional Alliance:"Ware" is software that offers a "try before you buy" (tbyb) capability.The American software sharing Foundation explains the shared software as follows:Specified ware is a marketing method, not a type of software or even strictly just a Distribution Method.

From the perspective of the history and development of shared software, shared software is commercial software. In essence, it adopts the marketing method of "buy first", and shared software is an important branch of the software industry.

In January 1980s, shared software primarily relied on software publishers to issue a disk to release a trial version of the software, and received a software registration fee through mail order or credit card. With the popularization of the Internet, the spread of shared software, charging, registration become very convenient, all can be achieved through the network, the sharing software has developed rapidly, more and more types of software, shared software allows users to try out all the functions of the software before selecting the software. Users are excited for this method and have bought the official version. Doom, Duke nukem, and quake, the most famous shooting games, quickly became popular.

 Misunderstanding 2: WareSmall software with low pricing

Ware is not a small software, but it is easier to use it to sell the market at a lower cost than retail software.

The price of megaware depends on the size of the software and the market. For example, the most common audio editing software cooledit has a registration fee of $399, which is higher than the price of Windows Professional edition in the retail market. There is also a well-known multimedia software control package multimedia tools, with a registration fee of up to $999, while Borland's Delphi development tool Professional version B is less than $799.

Misunderstanding 3: WareSmall market

The shared software market is not smaller than the retail software channels. the sales revenue of well-known foreign shared software such as WinZip and ACDSee is as high as tens of millions of dollars, sales of such a product may be much higher than sales of a large software company in China, not to mention comparison of profit margins.

There is another example of our domestic Mp3-CD maker author Zhou Yi, Mp3-CD maker is to burn MP3 files to the disc, restored to a small software music CD. The curiosity about shared software allows Zhou Yi to study whether the authors of shared software that earn revenue by selling registration codes can make money. The results were surprising. Most Shared Software authors reply, none of which say they do not make any money, but most of them refuse to disclose specific figures. Some say they do not need to find a job, others indicate that they can hire two or three more people to work for them. Although there are no figures, you must know that in the United States, the author of shared software that earned less than $30 thousand a year is definitely going to look for a job. That's 0.3 million RMB, not a small number! Even more surprising, the authors of WinZip and ACDSee are millions of dollars! Create overseas markets and earn USD! From 2000 became Zhou Yi's goal, half a year later, Mp3-CD maker's monthly sales of more than $60 thousand, and continues to grow.