Quote: Originally posted by Guru on July 31, 2004
The biggest misconception about this business is that people think we make big time money out of it !!
Well I can tell you in all honesty that it delivers us by no means any profit. The sales just cover a tiny fraction of the development costs.
If we would make the calculation of costs versus return we would be left with an enormous loss. (that's why it is not our main business, we pay for food too !!)
In fact, we (the developers) would be fools to continue in this business if our goals were making huge profit.
We just do it because we are interested in the "science" behind it. We want to unveil the mystery of randomness. The sales are just a little bit of encouragement to keep going on, nothing more.
I have spent 25 years writing software and making a living doing it. I can assure you that guru is right with his claim. It is exceedingly difficult making money with software. 15 years ago you could buy the Borland 4.0 compiler and write a software package in your spare bedroom. Then came the hard part, finding people who were willing to pay for it, lots of people. In the last 5 years, software technologies have gotten so much more complex, and to write a world-class system you need 4 or 5 domain expert skills, and the costs are therefore much higher. There is even more pressure to make a profit. When I say 'world-class' software today, it must run on a browser and be Internet-based. This is probably not likely the case for the two packages that are being attacked here. (I have not looked at either of them, my comments here are meant to be generic).
There may be about 25 potential buyers here, judging from comments, that are frothing at the mouth to buy one or both of these programs. Oh boy, so if they cost $100 each (again, I don't know what they charge), they'll make $2500. Since they are downloaded, no cost. I have to pay my senior developers about $50 an hour, and I have to charge $125 an hour to my customers to stay in business. So $2500 provides for about 20 hours of programming services.
I don't know guru's cost structure and how he runs his business. But I do know I would not want to be in that business.
On another note though, it does look to me as if Gail Howard had the early adopter advantage and had enough momentum to be quite profitable from the looks of it.
In summary, calling the developers con-artists is completely uncalled for. Where is the con?
The lotteries themselves are the cons.
