Big news today. NewsGator announced in a blog post and a subsequent press release that it is bringing the price of its entire range of RSS client applications to $0.00. Yes, as unbelievable as that sounds, it is indeed true. NewsGator Inbox, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile, NewsGator Go! for BlackBerry/Java, iPhone and HTML mobile applications and NewsGator Online are now all free of cost. Free as in free beer. No advertisements or any other sort of catch is attached.
This does not mean, however, that they’re stopping development on the products or leaving software development and going on a spiritual trip around the world. All of the products impacted are going to remain in active development and won’t be seeing any change at all except that you’ll now be able to obtain them without whipping out that credit card. NewsGator has promised to refund the money of all those people who bought any of these applications on or after 9 December 2007. They will also honor their contract of one year of unlimited support for all those customers who bought the application within the last one year.
So we’ve established that they’re a kind-hearted, good company that intends to do the right thing for everyone around. But now for the big question - why do this? NetNewsWire and other products are quite successful and, I assume, pretty good profit makers. So why cut off a healthy revenue stream? Greg, of NewGator, explains their reasons behind the decision. The first one is that they want these applications to serve as bait for the big companies to buy their enterprise appications such as NewsGator Enterprise Server and Social Sites. He reasons that if the clients are already using NewsGator products in their daily routine, they’re more likely to buy the enterprise software.
The second reason might turn out to be a bit controversial. NewsGator wants to collect “attention data” with the help of these products. I’ll hand over the mic to Greg himself:
If there is a specific feed you love, and you’re constantly emailing its articles to friends or saving articles in your clippings, that’s interesting…and if there are a lot of people doing this, it’s probably a good indicator about the “relevancy” of that content for other users. Similar with individual articles that are getting a lot of attention from users. Basically, by using your data, in combination with aggregate data from other users, we can deliver a better experience for everyone. And that’s a good thing - both for us and for you.
The FAQ assures us that there will be an option to turn the feature off if the user chooses to do so.
Regardless of how and why they’re doing it, the crux of the matter is that NetNewsWire is an excellent RSS reader and it is now freely available for you to download (direct link). Grab it before NewsGator has an opportunity to change their collective minds. And thank them for this grand gesture. I think they deserve it. While you’re at it, do pray that a few other software companies get inspired by this move and follow suit.
"While you're at it, do pray that a few other software companies get inspired by this move and follow suit."
Pray tell, how would these software companies make money? Big companies can afford to do this but the vast majority of software developers on the Mac couldn't afford it. And given the choice between paying for software or seeing more than half the market die which is preferable ;)
NB That said being able to make money while developing freeware is something that many devs would love to do, unfortunately the opportunities to do so are extremely rare, and as with anybody the urge to have food on the table and a roof over your head beats out the need to do what you want