Connected to yesterday's post on the heist of MacHeist, I thought I'd post a counterpoint from one of the participants. Why? As I looked over the software in the bundle for $49, I started getting pretty interested. RapidWeaver was an app I'd used before, back when it was in beta. Good idea, but not good enough for me to bite (I haven't used any of its html; nasty to hack, iirc, if only because of all the danged images the tempaltes used). Now it's a while later, and between it and a few others, I thought $49 ain't that bad a price.

As I've said before, there are three types of people:

    1.) People that are honest (or at least not up on crack site URLs)
    that will pay to use your app if they like it.
    2.) People that aren't going to pay for your app no matter what
    happens, but might use it if they can get hold of a license code or
    cracked version.
    3.) People that would pay to use your application if they can't find
    a cracked version or license number generator, but would use the
    cracked version if they find it.


Let me redefine #3 -- "Other/People you can do something about". Turns out this group includes people who would simply leave your software alone rather than pay full price. They're not going to crack it. They're going to do something worse, forever ignore it.

That's what MacHeist is getting around. I'd never try NewsFire, an RSS reader (I'm very happy with NetNewsWire Lite, which recently responded to a bug I'd filed for this free software!), outside of this bundle. But if I've got it, I'll give it a shot. I've never paid for RapidWeaver, though I'd like it. I'd probably never pay for Disco, a CD burning and tracking application. But for $49? Why not? Heck, if I clean up Digest Handler, would I take a flat MacHeist fee? Better believe it.

So on to that counterpoint from the horse's mouth.

Realmac Software | Weblog:
Over the past week the blogosphere has been alight with accusations that MacHeist is ripping off the developers. This is total rubbish. While MacHeist may be taking a bigger cut of the profit than the ten developers involved, I actually think the guys at Macheist deserve it. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up something as slick as this.

You also have to remember that MacHeist is only going to get a single hit of cash from this project, where as the developers will be reaping the benefits for a long time to come, paid upgrades anyone?
...
We also have thousands of potential new users. While a lot of people won't have purchased the bundle specifically for RapidWeaver they'll probably give it a whirl and hopefully love it. So when RapidWeaver 4 ships, they may just be tempted to pay for an upgrade. It's a win-win-win situation :-)