The unbelievable wealth of software available for computer today is amazing. But why is it that very few commercial software vendors sell software that runs directly on the desktop? The business has changed radically from the early days of $795 WordPerfect software for DOS to a commercial software business that doesn’t make any real money unless it’s selling servers.

As an entrepreneur who’s been in the software business for a long time, the fact that one can’t build a decent business selling desktop software is quite frustrating and will ultimately hurt the software development business. Right now there are thousands of unemployed and under-employed software developers who are working on their own pet projects while they look for other jobs. These products, in the early days of computing, might have turned into a real business. Today, however, that’s an unlikely proposition — there aren’t enough folks out there who will pay $99.95 for a piece of software to run on their desktop computers.

The Internet is often blamed for this problem, but I doubt that that is true. As I indicated in earlier posts, people have been breaking copy protection schemes ever since they existed and just swapped floppies. While the Internet has made sharing bits easier, it didn’t cause it.

Actually I believe that the real culprit was the fact that WordPerfect cost $795. Computing companies failed to believe that computers would be used at home and that the software that people would want at home would be the same software that they run at work. So they all figured that corporations would pay for the licenses to make sure they wouldn’t get in any legal trouble. Then they figured that home users would buy the licenses because it was the right thing to do. The trouble with that theory is that the value of the software changes when a home user gets it — it’s a nice to have not a need to have. But home users would settle for less functionality either — “lite” versions of the office software wasn’t going to cut it. So what happened? People started pirating software for their home use and so a habit was formed.

I remember in the 80’s being diligent about purchasing software licenses, being a software developer myself. But I remember those habits fading when I realized how ridiculous it was to pay thousands of dollars for software that everyone else was copying for free.

Don’t get me wrong — I do not condone copying software. But desktop software has become a commodity in the minds of home users and the prices must change to reflect that. Microsoft ought to sell XP and Office XP at the educational institute pricing (or less) for all home users and charge a premium for corporate customers.

But it may be too late now — the industry is probably already hosed for selling mass quantities of inexpensive software. Bad habits are really hard to break. I’m concerned that software developers throughout the world today are bearing the brunt of the effects of the greedy software publishers of yesterday.