Convert Everything Search into Paid

[HungerFreeze]

I believe that you should change Everything Search into a paid program. I'm a firm believer that freeware is an insanely dumb idea. A programmer is doing all of this work, and then others take the fruits of his labor. Is this fair? An argument can be made that programming can be easily replicated, so that helping one person is no different than helping a million. I disagree. First, helping a million users takes a team of people to support. More importantly, if a programmer is able to help a million people, he should be compensated for contributing so much to society.

Up till now, every freeware started off great given the usually idealistic quality of the person, but they all eventually lag off. This lag occurs because it's unrealistic to expect that the programmer continually do things for free. How is he supposed to survive? Is it fair? And for the same reason communism doesn't work–people should be given what they worked for. However, I believe that capitalism doesn't work because people end up taking more than their fair share. In the ideal economic system, people in society give each other what is "fair". This should be the basis of an ideal economic system, not that people equally share in the fruits of their labor (communism), not that people compete to take as much as possible for themselves (capitalism).

Please forgive my rant. I wanted to say my mind for once. Please consider converting this great program into a paid model. I believe that the compensation model of the programming industry is a mess because there are 2 unfair methods: one is squeezing as much money as possible from users and one is just giving things away. Right now, some programs are way too expensive because owners are unfairly squeezing as much as possible instead of charging what's fair. Paying $20/month for Adobe Acrobat because you can is wrong. You can say that this is what the market gives. But we need to realize that the market might be wrong. In fact, it's frequently wrong. For example, consider that we've got scientific research papers that cost so much to get access, and this lack of access stifles innovation and progress.

Then we have the other side of the spectrum when we have a program like this that's free. We are stealing from you. You are working hard, and then we benefit from all your hard work without giving anything in return. It's wrong.

Please don't take this to mean to charge us as much as you can, which is what many software companies are doing. Charge what is fair–a formula based on what you put into it, what we get out of it, how much it would cost to improve it, etc. A sliding scale that can also depend on how much a person can afford. (There are mechanisms to execute this idea, which we see with gaming software that exploit people's pride.)

I can tell you that I'd be more than willing to pay for this program. And that's fair.

[void]

Thank you for your post HungerFreeze,

I would like to keep Everything free.

There's a lot of interest in the Everything Site license for the Everything Server which will allow me to work more on Everything and grow as a company.

[HungerFreeze]

I would like to keep Everything free.

I know your heart is in the right place, but I don't believe it's right to do work for others and get nothing back. I believe it's a form of legalized theft. You can argue that you get back in return the glow of admiration by others. That is true, but that won't put food on the table and pay the rent so you can sleep. It's actually benefits us if you get paid. That way you can focus just on this software and make it even better!

In tech, people are more educated and thus more cooperative. We see a lot of freeware. But if everyone just stops and thinks about the long-term, they would see that such a system is unsustainable. The developer doesn't get any money to eat so they can't improve the software. So all freeware eventually becomes old and thrown away. If the developers had gotten paid for the benefit they created, they could have continually upgraded the software. And society would have benefited because we now have an even better product. Everyone wins.

We need to make the practice of freeware anathema. I'm surprised it persists in a group that's so thoughtful.