From a simple consumer's perspective, I'm content with all software I already have, and don't have extra money to burn. The few times I need more software, I can usually find free (and open source) solutions pretty quickly, and I've never had to compile it myself.
From a seller's perspective, I've made software that I found useful and nobody's ever willing to pay for it. The few times I did make money off software, it was because it was shiny, during the era when shiny software got attention and made money. And even then, it was short lived.
I personally think we've exhausted all categories of software possibilities. What society could really use now is to reinvent existing software in a reasonable way, with better principles:
- Make software much more interoperable with other software, and invent decent protocols for this.
- Make software less invasive of our lives, and less manipulative of our minds, moods, and attention spans.
- Make software that encourages you to get the job done and move on with your life, rather than optimizing for endless consumption.
Put another way, imagine there was no software at all right now, but we still know everything we know about software. And imagine avaricious people didn't call the shots, but the software engineers who care make the decisions. Imagine we could still collaborate with one another as fast as we do now. All you have is hardware and a bunch of specs and firmware. Now, what could humanity come up with?
> From a seller's perspective, I've made software that I found useful and nobody's ever willing to pay for it.
If you don’t put time, effort and ingenuity into sales and marketing you won’t get anybody to pay for your product or service, in the overwhelming majority of cases. If you build a better mousetrap the world will not beat a path to your door.
From a seller's perspective, I've made software that I found useful and nobody's ever willing to pay for it. The few times I did make money off software, it was because it was shiny, during the era when shiny software got attention and made money. And even then, it was short lived.
I personally think we've exhausted all categories of software possibilities. What society could really use now is to reinvent existing software in a reasonable way, with better principles:
- Make software much more interoperable with other software, and invent decent protocols for this.
- Make software less invasive of our lives, and less manipulative of our minds, moods, and attention spans.
- Make software that encourages you to get the job done and move on with your life, rather than optimizing for endless consumption.
Put another way, imagine there was no software at all right now, but we still know everything we know about software. And imagine avaricious people didn't call the shots, but the software engineers who care make the decisions. Imagine we could still collaborate with one another as fast as we do now. All you have is hardware and a bunch of specs and firmware. Now, what could humanity come up with?
That's what we should be working towards.