Yes, I don't like sharewares. I don't like the term. I don't like the culture. But foremost, I don't like what's happening to the small software industry.
Thanks to The Daily Grind and Bob Walsh, I read this post about Andy Brice, who submitted a fake and useless program (not even a program as a matter of fact) to many software directory sites (using submit-everywhere.com, a service I'll be using for the next version of slimKEYS upon recommendation from my friend Pascal).
Even the name of the software, “awardmestars”, was a bit of a giveaway. And yet it still won 16 ‘awards’.
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According to the report I received 2 weeks after submissions began “awardmestars” is now listed on 218 sites, pending on 394 sites and has been rejected by 421 sites. Approximately 7% of the sites that listed the software emailed me that it had won an award (I don’t know how many have displayed it with an award, without informing me). With 394 pending sites it might win quite a few more awards yet. Many of the rejections were on the grounds of “The site does not accept products of this genre” (it was listed as a utility) rather than quality grounds.
Because there are so many freeware and shareware applications out there, it's really tough to get out of the croud and prove to your potential customers your application is worth more than another. Worse, web advertising has generated a whole new fantom industry, relying on Google Juice and naïve surfers who click everywhere. Let's face it, the web is heavily polluted, and though we can thank Google for their search engine, they are directly responsible for the current mess.
That's why I've always tried to stay away from the "shareware" word. It doesn't mean what it used to mean. My software is no different, I'm just avoiding the term, let's say for marketing reasons. slimKEYS is a commercial software. It means there is a company, though still small, behind it, with serious objectives.
A year ago, I decided to let my customers decide how much they should pay for slimKEYS. I must admit it was more for marketing reasons than real price dilemma. I thought I'd attrack curiosity, and have more people try it. I'm not disapointed. It turned out not so bad, and was a great experience... but with a single real flaw. No, it's not those who bought a license for free. I'm glad they're not using a pirated version, or an invalid license. The flaw is seriousness. It doesn't sound serious. It looks fake. It looks like I don't give a damn about maintaining slimKEYS, which is false. That's why starting with the next release, slimKEYS will now have a fixed price of 10$, for seriousness.
Now, let's see how many awards a "serious" application can obtain...