Money and CHDK - page 2 - General Chat - CHDK Forum

Poll

CHDK, would you pay for it?

Yes, it must be payed.
1 (1.6%)
A donation, but how?
24 (39.3%)
Maybe, but for who?
12 (19.7%)
No, it'll spoil the developers.
11 (18%)
No, I'll never spend one single dime on software!
5 (8.2%)
None of above.
8 (13.1%)

Total Members Voted: 57

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Money and CHDK

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Offline dzsemx

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Re: Money and CHDK
« Reply #10 on: 23 / May / 2008, 13:10:36 »
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money will cause only problems...
the feeling of the success is priceless :D
i'm hobby developer too and i made a freeware thing... only i made it for my taste and i published it (without source)...
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Offline adcz

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Re: Money and CHDK
« Reply #11 on: 31 / May / 2008, 12:59:48 »
I think that Devs should at least receive a free camera to experiment on. It's only fair. And if somebody like's a particular build, they should be able to donate to the creator.

I posted about this in Helping Get CHDK More Popular:
Quote
Next up, is money issues. A lot of you might be thinking, this is open-source, so no money should be involved. Ideally, that would be the case. However we live in a capitalist world, making this quite hard, especially if this project is going to become popular. There are expenses everywhere - servers space, bandwidth, advertising (yes, advertising is a must!). Also, the devs of CHDK need money to buy cameras to take apart, and work with. I doubt that they would want to throw away $300 for an S5, just so that they can write a program. DataGhost did Smiley but not a lot of people are like DataGhost. We need a way to make money for these Devs, so that they can be able to continue their work. Also the selection of cameras this is available for is not too big. It should definitely be expanded, to other brands even. All of this takes money.

I am not saying to start charging money for CHDK, that would be awful. Would destroy the advantages of Open Source. I suggest taking an "Ubuntu" alternative Smiley. Ubuntu offers its OS for free, support for free, however it also offers paid support (for companies), and PRECONFIGURED COMPUTERS. I suggest we do one of the following:
* Start Selling Memory Cards with CHDK pre-configured for a certain camera
* Start Selling Memory Cards with certain features pre-configured (customers say what they need)
* Start Selling Canon Cameras with MemCards w/CHDK
* The standard merchandise - shirts, pants, cuts, hats, buttons, etc

If you think about it, all of these options are good for both CHDK AND the public. Have you ever gone to RadioShack, with their $40 1GB cards (a few months ago). People are willing to pay $40 for a gig at their local store. Everybody knows that now, you can buy 4GB for $15. I suggest selling 4GB cards for $20. Newbies will still save tons of money, and we get our $5 bonus. Same thing for selling cameras. Stores overprice...a lot. At a BestBuy (a normal store), a Canon S5 costs $350 + tax (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8297513&type=product&id=1172881524725). I bought my S5 for $270. That means they overpriced their cameras by more than $80! I don't think it is fair to trick people like that, into buying expensive cameras. I suggest we team up with Canon, buy a few of their cameras in bulk and start selling them, with CHDK pre-installed for say..$290 in the case of the S5. I assume they will sell it for around $250 to us, so that is $40 earnings right there. We are not tricking the customers, it is fair. We are the lowest price on the market. $60+ savings. Plus we give the extra bonus of CHDK preinstalled. A lot of people don't want to mess around with their cameras. This way, we mess around with them for them. And of course the standard merchandise will get people interested "ooh? CHDK? what's that? oh cool! I'll go download it!". You might call me a capitalistic, but I am just trying to help the general public!
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Offline acseven

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Re: Money and CHDK
« Reply #12 on: 04 / October / 2008, 13:18:04 »
There are lots of Developers out there. Who is going to choose to which is a camera "awarded"?

It is not that simple, I guess.
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Offline reyalp

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Re: Money and CHDK
« Reply #13 on: 04 / October / 2008, 18:09:50 »
Quote from: fudgey on 25 / April / 2008, 12:13:07
GPL is not incompatible with money. :D

But I do think the complete lack of commercial effort in this community helps us keep Canon from getting disgruntled. We certainly help their business by bringing ideas and implementations for their product development to review and try out and direct people to buy their products instead of their competitors'), but attempting to take the money they think deserves to them might not be a bright idea.
I agree with this. The GPL philosophy doesn't prevent you from asking for money, or even selling binaries (long ago, the FSF used to sell tapes), but CHDK runs less risk of pissing canon off if it is clearly a hobby without money involved.

edit:
One alternative is the charityware like vim.
« Last Edit: 04 / October / 2008, 18:13:52 by reyalp »
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databoy

Re: Money and CHDK
« Reply #14 on: 05 / October / 2008, 03:22:29 »
From a commercial point of view, Canon has one up on their competition.

Think about it. Manufacturers work on turnover.

The more features your product has for the same price over the competition, what are camera are you going to buy?

In my part of the world; Perth, Western Australia, The camera retailers I have spoken to have not heard of CHDK. We are a population of just over 1 million people with a resources boom and disposable cash. I have seen people walk out of the shop because the salesman did not know how to operate the camera he was demonstrating.

If I was Canon I would be dumbfounded. I would be telling salesmen about CHDK. A person with a budget of $500 is not going to buy a $1500 DSLR. Let's face it; if we had the spare cash we would all love to own a DSLR.

Sales is about making money. Computer manufacturers do it with all the crapware preloaded on the computer. CHDK is free. Load CHDK onto SDRAM, demonstrate all the features and make a sale. You have a happy customer and you have earned a sale.

A few of the guys at:
KAP Discussion Page - All Discussions
have businesses selling kites and accessories. They supply CHDK as part of the package. Without CHDK they would not make a sale.

The moral of the story is: give a person something for nothing and make your money on the accessories.
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