48
the
attention
of the big computer firms, but enough to provide opportunities for a growing
band
of
homebrew
coders
who set out to develop niche products.
In many cases these programmers are making a decent living in the process, thanks to the availability of
high-
speed
internet connections, cheap web-
hosting services
and online-
payment
systems, all of which make it quick and
easy to distribute software and collect money from customers. The
trend
is also a response to the sorry state of
the
technology industry
, following the bursting of the dotcom bubble
4
. Where they could once command salaries of
$100,000, programmers now worry about their jobs disappearing to India. So instead of waiting for things to
improve, some have decided to strike out on their own.
Brent Simmons is one such programmer. With the help of his wife, he runs a software company from his garage in
Seattle. They make a clever piece of software, which runs on the Mac OS X operating system and makes it easy to
read news and then post comments on to a weblog. "I like being able to design and implement software and have
the final say," says Mr Simmons. "It's a higher level of creativity than working on someone else's software. I get to
refine and market my own ideas." At $40 each, Mr Simmons needs to sell 2,000 copies of his program each year
to
earn
what he would be paid as an employee elsewhere.
Jonas Salling from Stockholm, meanwhile, has
attracted
a loyal following for his handy software utilities. One allows
data from Microsoft's Entourage personal-information manager for Macintosh computers to be transferred to Sony
Ericsson
smartphones
. The other allows such phones, and certain Palm handhelds, to be used as wireless remote-
controls via a Bluetooth link. So you can, for example, advance slides in a presentation by clicking on your
phone's
keypad
. The number of people who actually want to do this is quite small, but they want to do it enough to
pay Mr Salling $10 for his software, which has won several awards.
Even more successful are Gaurav Banga and Saurabh Aggarwbi, based in Sunnyvale, California. They sell VeriChat, a
nifty piece of software that allows people to send and receive instant messages on
smartphones
, or on PocketPC and
Palm
handheld computers
. VeriChat is sold on a subscription basis, and brings in $20 per user per year, collected via
PayPal.
Another homebrew coder is
Nick
Bradbury, who lives in Franklin, Tennessee. He wrote one of the first web-
publishing tools. Then he started Bradbury Software, which sells a web-page editor and a news-reading program.
Self-
employment
, he notes, has more than just financial benefits. "I put in more hours, but those hours are
very
flexible
, which in my case means I can spend a great deal of time with my two kids," he says. And he finds it
very rewarding to know that his software is making people's lives a little easier--"something I rarely, if ever,
experienced while working in the corporate world."
The phenomenon of the homebrew coder is not new, of course. For two
decades
, programmers have distributed
their wares as "shareware"
5
, initially through dial-up bulletin boards or via disks given away with computer
magazines, and later via the internet. People can try a piece of software free of
charge
, and then send a cheque to
its creator if they want to continue using it. This often entitles them to a registration code that unlocks extra
features. But online
payment
services such as PayPal and Kagi have
simplified
and sped up the
payment
process,
making the
shareware
model far more
attractive
for programmers. Software developers are essentially cutting out
the traditional distribution channels, which are not efficient.
Mr Bradbury also points to improvements in
development tools
, which make it easier for independent programmers
to build complex software, and to a growing number of niche markets, as programmable devices such
as
smartphones
proliferate
. While new opportunities abound, however, this world of independents is an unforgiving
meritocracy. For homebrew
coders
, the fact that their fortunes depend directly on the quality of their products is
both the risk and the reward.
Adapted from the Economist 3/13/2004
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