Hacker News Mobile - Linux Easy To Support = Lower Software Prices

[-] mmelin 25 days ago link

This is interesting, but I'm worried about the way they're implementing the discount. They explicitly don't sell different versions for different operating systems, instead they show a lower price to browsers that identify themselves as running on Linux. Isn't this basically what Amazon got busted with back in the early days? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com_controversies#Differ...

[-] BryanLunduke 25 days ago link
We thought about exactly this issue a bit (and even discussed it with some in our community) before we implemented the discount.
What we decided was this: 1) We're going to be completely up-front about the discount and talk to people about why we are doing it. 2) Companies that offer the same piece of software for multiple platforms often split that software into different editions (Nero is a good example)... and then can offer different prices per platform by just adjusting the specific edition's price. Since we allow people to run our software on any platform we support... we can't do that. But we can do something that is effectively similar.
All that said, we're definitely interested if anyone has ideas on how to do this better. This is merely the best that we've been able to come up with so far.
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[-] itsnotvalid 25 days ago link

I think a more justified way is to sell linux only licence on discount, and allow them to be upgraded to universal ones by topping up the cost.

Of course if that user operates on Linux, the likelihood of needing support at the first place would have already been lower...

[-] eik3_de 25 days ago link

If you're using Chrome on Mac or Windows, just add

  --user-agent="Linux"

as a command line parameter when starting the browser and you get 'You are running Linux. Well done! 25% discount applied!'

For Firefox you can use something like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-rg...

And don't forget to donate the saved money to a charity of your choice..

[-] dools 25 days ago link
I think anyone capable of doing this will display a lower support requirement anyway - problem solved ;)
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[-] aychedee 25 days ago link
Top tip: Start using Linux on commodity hardware. You'll save money, learn a lot more, and won't be such a support burden on small software companies.
On the other hand, I think it's okay morally if you identify as a Linux user to this company's web site and get the discount AS LONG as you never make support requests.
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[-] humbledrone 25 days ago link
Yes, spread this around and encourage it, so that it becomes widespread enough that the vendor has to stop offering the discount for Linux users. Or, maybe you can convince them to switch to the much-less-convenient platform-specific versions.
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[-] saulrh 25 days ago link

I doubt we'll see them, but it would be pretty cool to see some support stats, split up by user OS. Number of support requests per copy, average emails and time taken per request, successful closure rate, most common cause of problems, that kind of thing.

[-] pmr_ 25 days ago link

I can relate to this a lot. The amount of support requests we have to handle for our libraries originating from Windows users is staggering and the kind of question is sadly often close to something that was asked before (how to link, how to build) and no amount of documentation and installers seems to prevent it.

[-] aychedee 25 days ago link

What a great idea, if I remember correctly Illumination Software is written by a husband and wife team and this seems like a really nice way to shape your customer base without being rude about it.

[-] joshbaptiste 24 days ago link

Thank you sir.. watched the screen cast on youtube, and immediately purchased. I have an ongoing Python/Gtk app for work and this simplifies my UI tasks tremendously.

[-] Egregore 25 days ago link

Can anybody please point me to some real life usage of their software. What is it compiled into, for example if I want to create an iPhone app? Can I create games with it?

[-] BryanLunduke 25 days ago link
For iPhone and iPad apps it compiles into pure Objective-C (and even includes an XCode project). You can certainly create games, though there are no animation features (unless you code them yourself using Custom Blocks). So the graphics would be static images.
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[-] cabirum 25 days ago link

That means they are unable to deliver the same quality across multiple platforms, still want to sell their software to Mac/Windows customers.

[-] rbanffy 25 days ago link
Or it could just be that Linux users are better problem solvers in general and don't need as much hand holding as others.
Having fought against both Windows and Mac about what my work machine should be, I can certainly see why a developer may need less support on a Linux machine. Linux (and traditional unixes in general) allow the owner to make everything work the way he/she thinks would be more appropriate.
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- [-] disgruntledphd2 25 days ago link
  I would say that it has more to do with the people than the platform. Linux users (mostly) have gone through the process of setting up Linux, searching the web for driver problems, figuring out how the damn thing works without any technical support. Seems obvious to me that this would translate into lower support requirements.
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  - [-] rbanffy 25 days ago link
    I don't think that's still a valid assessment of how Linux works today. It's been a long time since my last driver problem. While it's true Linux users may be more adventurous and resourceful than their Mac or Windows (or HP-UX, AIX, Solaris) counterparts, I don't think that's because they need these abilities to set up their computers.
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[-] archangel_one 25 days ago link
Possibly the Linux platform offers advantages to them that makes problems less likely to occur - for example, maybe they find the package manager more reliable than Windows Installer, which I'd well believe.
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- [-] BryanLunduke 25 days ago link
  archangel nailed it. While this isn't the only cause for why we're seeing this, it certainly is one reason.
  A simple example:
  One of the types of apps you can build with our tool is Python/PyGTK apps. The root benefit here is that, because Python is interpreted, there is no compile time -- when you click "Run" you instantly get to start testing your app out.
  Because Python and PyGTK are readily available in just about every distro's repo, this is never an issue. But, on the flip-side, setting up Python/GTK/PyGTK on Win/Mac can be a bit of a nightmare even for the nerdiest among us.
  (We provide our "HTML5" web app option as the default option on Mac and Win for this very reason... But, even then, we still get support requests on trouble-shooting someone's Mac where PyGTK just won't work quite right.)
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