
The Rise and Fall of the Independent Developer - sant0sk1
http://furbo.org/2011/07/13/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-independent-developer/
======
onan_barbarian
One of the issues here that wasn't mentioned, facing independent developers,
is the almost pathological tendency of some people/groups in the F/OSS
community to clone any even mildly successful product for no particular
reason. I'm a big fan of free and open source software (especially when it's
genuinely new or fills an actual gap, like the GNU tools and Linux), but there
are times I wonder whether there are a lot of vested interests out there who
would like to drive the cost of software to zero and make us all work for a
wage providing 'services'.

There are entire categories of software now where people are now conditioned
only to accept an open source product. Can you imagine anyone building a new
computer language now, commercially? If it was even vaguely successful it
would be cloned and forked so quickly it'd make your head spin.

Between the ideologues like Stallman, who effectively think it's immoral to
make money off selling the software itself (I know his position is supposedly
more nuanced than that, but free software effectively amounts to this if you
have to hand out source to all and sundry) and the open-source-friendly
companies like IBM and Google - who have every reason to drive the $$$
available off software to zero, it's easy to feel a bit beleaguered.

~~~
onan_barbarian
To clarify my point, my problem is not with open source in general, it's with
'feature-by-feature clones of an innovative piece of software'.

The process of building, say, VisiCalc is a lot riskier and harder than
turning Excel into Libre Office Calc. If Bricklin had known he was going to
have to compete with free in a matter of a few months after release, he might
have done something else entirely.

This may be hard to understand for people that haven't ever designed anything
difficult, but frankly, it's _so_ much easier to clone something than build it
the first time. Even just knowing that something is possible is a huge leg up.

If you think routinized F/OSS cloning of software is an actual service to
innovation, you need your head examined. If nothing else, it makes going into
a patent frenzy with every idea far more tempting.

It's hard for me to prove a counterfactual, of course, and show all the
wonderful things that have been discouraged by the prospect of immediate
shitty open source clones. I fully accept that open source allows us to build
innovative things on top of other software layers - it's not necessarily all
bad. But it's not necessarily all good either.

~~~
wladimir
So you think Excel was an "innovative piece of software" in the first place?
It wasn't. Many spreadsheets existed before that.

A much more practical angle: there is no MS Office or equivalent for operating
systems such as Linux and BSD, so the OS people had to write their own.

To be honest I think the developers of LibreOffice are heroes. Not many people
in the open source scene want to be seen working on 'boring clone' projects
like an office productivity suite, and would rather innovate. But the fact is,
it is a necessary evil for many users, and the availability of OO has helped
Linux adoption a lot.

~~~
onan_barbarian
You appear not to have read the post you are responding to. I'm particularly
baffled as to why you are reassuring me that other spreadsheets existed pre-
Excel given that my post mentions VisiCalc and Dan Bricklin. As we used to say
in high school: "No shit, Sherlock".

Nor are you making a germane response to my post, which is not that
LibreOffice is bad and Excel is good, but that if the creator of Visicalc had
been in the situation where a few short months after he created his
spreadsheet someone was going to clone it and give it away for free, he may
not have bothered.

------
noonespecial
The sad reality is that if you make something of value, there are rotten
people who will come and try to steal from you. The author thinks he's
discovered something new. I don't think he has. "Patent trolling" might be a
bit of a new angle but business has always been risky.

In some parts of the world, if you farm a little too much, gangs come by in
rusty toyotas with AK47's and help themselves (and might kidnap your children
for good measure). In our society, we've allowed these men to wear suits and
pretend they are contributing members and in exchange, they no longer use
guns. This seems like a valid compromise until we as a society outgrow this
sort of behavior. (Here's hoping)

There are tools for managing risk. Create an LLC and have professional
liability insurance. Sure bad stuff can happen. I had an over-zealous zoning
official try to revoke the business license for my house because I was
"manufacturing" software (and manufacturing is zoned industrial, donchaknow).

I wish there weren't patent trolls, but at some point you have to admit that
you can't spend your life worrying about all of the bad stuff that _could_
happen. Take a few reasonable precautions and then do your thing.

~~~
rbarooah
Neither an LLC nor liability insurance will stop your business being destroyed
and years of your life being wasted if a troll decides to target you.

Would you suggest an LLC for each product so that they can only be attacked
individually?

~~~
noonespecial
Actually, if they are suitably different, _yes_. It has the added benefit of
making it easy to sell the product/business down the road or convert to a
different kind of Corp to get investors.

If a product is good enough to make money on it's own, it's good enough for
its own LLC.

------
bugsy
He's got his history completely wrong. From the first days that home computers
were affordable at all, there were tons of very small software shops. I recall
purchasing programs from computer stores that came in poly bags containing a
photocopied manual on card stock and a cassette tape with a photocopied label
that had been glued on by hand. If you called the company for support,
sometimes you woke the guy up.

------
programminggeek
All businesses have risk.

Even if you are an indie one man shop you are in fact a business and there are
risks. Same thing goes for being a lawyer or accountant or contractor. If you
screw up, it could cost you financially in a very big way, even if you didn't
intend to do anything wrong.

Even successful businesses can crumble, even billion dollar businesses can get
beat up by litigation to the point it isn't even worth continuing.

To say that the sky is falling for indie devs is a bit silly. There are plenty
of places you can build, innovate, distribute, and succeed. Sure, the iTunes
App Store thing is big today, or maybe Facebook, or maybe Steam, or maybe
Wii's downloadable channel, it doesn't matter. Any one of those could be gone
in a year or two.

Here's an example, there are people out there who make millions of dollars
selling e-books and mediocre/overpriced software on Clickbank right now. Some
of those people get sued I'm sure for their products. More people show up. You
could take the same ebook and sell it on Kindle or Nook if you got shut down
or you could sell your software on the Mac App Store or Chrome Web Store if CB
went under.

There are so many platforms to distribute and build software and businesses on
now, it really is hard to complain about the death of the indie developer
because there are so many new companies getting started every day on all these
different platforms that didn't exist even 5 years ago.

As a business owner you can't control all risk, but you certainly can and
should plan around them.

If one channel gets shut down, move on to a different one or a different
product.

Great devs and great companies aren't built on one hit one time wonders.

~~~
maxxxxx
The problem is that a lawsuit easily can take out a small developer. Even if
the lawsuit is completely frivolous. I can't afford tens of thousands of
dollars for a lawsuit. If I get sued my company is probably done. It doesn't
matter if the suit has merit or not.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I haven't gone through this or anything, so maybe an actual lawyer would be
happy to speak up in this thread. But my simpleminded understanding is that
your typical frivolous lawsuit goes like this, only less transparently:

TROLLCORP: "We're suing your company for ONE MILLION DOLLARS."

CEO (through a lawyer, of course): "Well, oops, we've only got ten thousand in
the bank plus a couple of old Macbooks. After that we're just going to declare
bankruptcy and you won't see a dime."

TROLLCORP: "Well, okay, frankly, we don't want to see you go bankrupt.
Bankruptcy court is no fun at all. We don't need to pay for a tedious legal
battle. We just want the money. How about you just give us the ten thousand
plus 5% of all future revenue from your products?"

CEO: "If I spend the ten thousand on a lawyer, I can file some motions to
delay your lawsuit. _Then_ I can go bankrupt. You'll get nothing then. So, how
about one thousand bucks and 0.5% of future revenue?"

TROLLCORP: "Two thousand and 2%."

CEO: "Done."

As with any parasitic transaction, the parasite has no rational interest in
killing you. Dead companies don't pay. The danger, of course, is that they
won't be reasonable and will accidentally push too hard, in their attempt to
convince you to search under more sofa cushions for loose change that they can
take. Or that they are, in fact, happy to kill your company because they think
it will be an instructive demonstration for the other companies they sue. Or
that they will gradually consume your time and suck your blood and your
company will eventually die of exhaustion in 2% increments. But, you know,
this is why it's good to be a _small_ company. Having nothing means having
nothing to lose.

~~~
5hoom
The "can't squeeze blood from a stone" defence is probably your best bet if
you're a really small operation, but as you say you'd just better hope the
patent troll is behaving in a rational manner & not trying to make an example
of you. I would assume that a rational troll would only harass you if you were
getting noticed & making a profit, but who knows what kind of reasoning goes
on within the lizard hind-brain of your standard patent troll types...

------
felipemnoa
If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. It does suck that now
independent developers have to also worry about patent litigation. However, it
will not stop the most resolved developers from continuing forward.

On the bright side, patent trolls are patenting the most obvious patents right
now. In 20-30 years all of those patent will expire. I'll be amazed if 20
years from now we will still continue to patent obvious things like one click
button transactions. If so, we all deserve to go down the ship of financial
failure since it is us, society, that allows such things.

Meanwhile, if we could only find the best ways to make patent trolls' lives
more painful... At least it would dissuade the casual patent troll.

~~~
rbarooah
The implication is that products for which there is a demand won't come to
market.

It might not be easy, but society is harmed if we make it artificially harder
to respond to market demand.

~~~
felipemnoa
I understand, but unfortunately short term (like next year) is hard to change
that (or maybe we can we just haven't figured it out). It is still better to
continue moving forward, we'll figure something out along the way.

~~~
rbarooah
What do you mean by 'moving forward', and what do you expect to happen that's
going to change things in the longer term?

~~~
felipemnoa
I mean don't just give up. I don't know what will change, but things have a
way to work themselves up if one continues to hammer at the problem. There
will always be issues when trying to do something important. This is just
another one.

And as I write this I realize that I sound a bit corny. The shame... (no
sarcasm intended)

~~~
rbarooah
It's not particularly corny, and it's hard to disagree about not giving up in
principle.

That said, human political systems can and do lead to sustained bad results.
In my mind, 'things working themselves up' really means, 'someone finds and
implements a solution'.

Meanwhile actual indie developers are as we speak, prevented from working on
adding value to the economy because they are forced to spend their time and
money dealing with trolls.

------
endlessvoid94
Unrelated, but interesting nonetheless: the current software industry has a
strikingly similar feel to the early texas oil prospecting days.

Independents are suddenly able to take a little bit of risk, take on some
money (then: banks, now: angels and VCs), and work by themselves or in small
teams to produce something that lots of people need (then: oil, now: good
software).

Some of the biggest fortunes in history were made back then (1900 - 1930s),
just as some of the biggest fortunes are now being made in this industry.

The digger I deep (no pun intended), the more similar these two stages of
history look alike. I'm sure there are other eras that also share these common
threads.

------
daimyoyo
What I'd like to see is a collective legal fund to protect devs from patent
trolls. Like insurance, everyone pays into the system and if you need
representation, high quality lawyers would be there for you. That seems to me
to be the best solution to this problem short of abolishing software patents
altogether.

~~~
rbarooah
I like they idea, but I don't see how it reduces the risk. If someone has a
valid patent, you're still in trouble.

~~~
dhess
An independent developers' patent pool, then.

~~~
rbarooah
Patent pools are no defense against trolls.

~~~
dhess
Fair point.

------
mkn
_In the days where software was distributed on magnetic media, such as reels
of tape, cassettes, or floppy disks, it cost a lot of money to get the product
to a customer._

One of us is misremembering. _I_ seem to recall an interview with Gates and/or
Ballmer where they talked about the realization that the cost of 5 or 6
floppies at wholesale was insignificant compared to the revenue from the
software, that it was a no-brainer cost-wise. CDs were the first time when
cost became an issue, iirc (again) because you had to pay for one or more
masters to print the production copies. I'd feel better if his history was
right.

 _This time the retail channel itself is very cheap, but the ancillary costs,
both financially and emotionally, are very high._

 _And, of course, only large companies and publishers can bear these costs. My
fear is that It’s only a matter of time before developers find the risks and
expenses prohibitive and retreat to the safety of a larger organization. We’ll
be going back to square one._

I can't even address the "emotional costs" he talks about, but there is a
precedent for dealing with risks of this kind. For consulting engineers, it's
called "errors and omissions insurance." It strikes me that if there isn't
something like that for developers, one plausible reason is that this kind of
liability hasn't actually been a problem. Is there errors and omissions
insurance for developers?

 _From our experience, it’s entirely possible that all the revenue for a
product can be eaten up by legal fees._

The author uses the phrase "from our experience," but I wonder what that
experience actually is. At this point, it's not even anecdotal, because he
doesn't supply the anecdote! We can't even begin to ask if his experience
generalizes. For example, did he get good counsel? Was he actually infringing?
Should he have settled? Did he avail himself of the FSF or ESF if applicable?
Should his product have been more profitable?

I think I'm either blessed or cursed with too much curiosity to take this guy
at his word.

~~~
allwein
>The author uses the phrase "from our experience," but I wonder what that
experience actually is. At this point, it's not even anecdotal, because he
doesn't supply the anecdote!

Craig is a very well-known developer and author in the Mac and iPhone
developer community and works at Iconfactory. They're one of the first
companies that was addected when the Lodsys patent issue came to light. Even
if you didn't know that, the very previous entry on his blog is an open letter
to Apple about the problems his company is having with the patent issues. It's
a little disingenuous to call someone out about omissions in a blog entry
while taking zero effort to familiarize yourself with any of their work.

~~~
boucher
It seems perhaps as disingenuous to think that because you know a (very)
little bit about the Lodsys issue that the anecdote that all of a products
profits can be consumed is true even in this instance. After all, Apple has
been standing up in defense of individual developers on this issue.

~~~
smashing
This is not true. While this may be true in the future, Apple is not currently
involved in the legal defense of companies involved in the Lodsys lawsuits and
there is no timetable for which they will enter into such an involvement.

------
soitgoes
Does anyone have any statistics about the number of independent developers /
startups that suffer a significant negative financial impact because of a
patent infringement lawsuit? My gut feeling is that it's a very small
percentage. A few years ago, I think Paul Graham wrote an article suggesting
startups shouldn't worry about being sued because in practice it rarely
happens to them.

------
rbarooah
Does anyone think that a legislation preventing NPE's from suing for patent
infringement would be practical? They'd still be able to hold them - just not
sue.

It seems like something that large corporations as well as independents could
get behind.

~~~
wtracy
How do you prove that an organization is an NPE? All they have to do is hire a
couple of college kids dirt cheap and they can show that they are "developing"
a product.

Denying patent protection to anyone who doesn't already have a finished
product out on the market opens a whole new can of worms.

~~~
rbarooah
The law already deals with vague definitions. It really wouldn't be too hard
to write something that erred on the side of making it somewhat hard to prove
that you were practicing.

------
zentechen
Should move the corporate to China and clone the heck out of everything.

Facebook -> RenRen

Twitter -> Weibo

YouTube -> Tudou

Google -> Baidu

Flickr -> YuPoo

See <http://www.randomwire.com/chinese-web-20-clones>

Yeah, Trolls, go ahead and sue them.

------
danssig
Well, the good thing about it is maybe this will force a "Silicon Valley" to
finally appear in Europe where the odds aren't stacked so badly against the
little guy.

------
sreitshamer
I wonder what 37 signals would do.

------
benihana
It's really hard to want to continue reading when the third sentence says
this:

 _Little has changed with the process of software development since the
1980’s_

I understand the point: that things are the more the same than ever, that this
guy is a salty old sonofabitch who's forgotten more than i've learned, but
seriously. Little has changed with the process of software development since
the 1980s other than the tools? The entire way we think about why we're
building software and what we're trying to get out of has changed and is still
changing.

------
hxf148
Our startup (<http://infostripe.com>) is built on independent spirit. So far
we have been doing well. It's a struggle sometimes but always worth the
effort.

~~~
bretthopper
Every comment you've made has a link to your startup in it. There's a
difference between self promotion and spam.

~~~
hxf148
It's true, I do mention my startup a lot. It's just that we are a small (aka
unfunded) startup with lots of dev and little marketing.. when I see an
article that is relevant and I have a thought on it I link to try and reach
out. I don't have much time to really get into comments as I'd like. I read a
lot though. I will try and find other ways to contribute.

