{"id":21788,"date":"2018-06-12T14:49:17","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T18:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=21788"},"modified":"2025-10-25T11:22:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T15:22:13","slug":"on-paying-for-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/12\/on-paying-for-software\/","title":{"rendered":"On Paying for Software"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seth Godin<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

I like paying for my software when I’m buying it from a company that’s responsive, fast and focused. I like being the customer (as opposed to a social network, where I’m the product). I spend most of my day working with tools that weren’t even in science fiction novels twenty-five years ago, and the money I spend on software is a bargain–doing this work without it is impossible.<\/p>

To name a few, I’m glad to use and pay for: Overcast<\/a>, Feedblitz<\/a>, Discourse<\/a>, Zapier<\/a>, Dropbox<\/a>, Roon<\/a>, WavePad<\/a>, Bench<\/a>, Nisus<\/a>, Zoom<\/a>, Slack<\/a>, SuperDuper<\/a>, Mailchimp<\/a>, Hover<\/a>, TypeExpander<\/a>, Tidal<\/a>, and many others. I wish<\/em> I could pay for and get great support and development for Keynote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

afarrell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

One of the reasons that I switched from Linx to OSX was so that I could pay for more of my software. Why? Because then I more of the software I used could be maintained by someone who had the time to dig into bugs and UI problems and to fix them. But in Linux, couldn’t I just edit the source myself? Realistically, no. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to source-dive in a totally new project in a language I never use, especially without someone willing to give me a walkthrough of the architecture and fundamental models of the program. It is waaaay more efficient for these to be fixed by an engineer working not in their spare time, but as their full-time job.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seth Godin (Hacker News): I like paying for my software when I’m buying it from a company that’s responsive, fast and focused. I like being the customer (as opposed to a social network, where I’m the product). I spend most of my day working with tools that weren’t even in science fiction novels twenty-five years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2018-06-12T20:26:14Z","apple_news_api_id":"ceb596b7-0edd-4750-8bf1-ca1c832d2d1b","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-25T15:22:16Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AzrWWtw7dR1CL8cocgy0tGw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[101,473,448,30,891,991,96],"class_list":["post-21788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-business","tag-keynote","tag-linux","tag-mac","tag-nisus-writer-pro","tag-open-source-software","tag-web"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21789,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21788\/revisions\/21789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}