[Paid Software Announcement and Discussion] mikereidis:
EDIT: I wrote this page before Google banned Headunit from Play and before I made it free and open source, but please feel free to read my thoughts written before that below.

Soliciting donations sucks. Thanks much to those that have and those that will. But VERY few people do. At some point I will likely have to return to a commercial model.

Those who donated, or bought Headunit on Play before the ban will become most honoured customers retroactively. :)

Business Issues:

Yes, I am (attempting) to run a business here. I hope I don't have to explain or apologize for trying to make a minimal income to help support my wife, kids, cats, pay for a house, cars, and all the usual basic accoutrements of life like food, electric, fuel, etc, etc...

I have been working 60-70 hour weeks for over 4 years now on my apps, mostly the Spirit FM apps: Spirit1, Spirit2, Spirit Transmit. I have no other income except my apps.

I am somewhat disappointed that I've been making a small fraction of what I made for decades doing contract or salaried work for a plethora of tech companies.

I have seen my Spirit FM income dropping for the last few years, and have entered into the connected car apps space in an effort to make a better income.

I hope to serve your app desires and appreciate the financial support of everyone who can afford at least roughly the price of a meal at McDonalds, or there-abouts.

Open Source:

Yes, I know EVERYONE wants free and open source software... I LOVE open source; my career has been built mostly on Linux (and Android) since 1997.

But NONE of the 20-odd companies I've done contract or salaried work for in those 18 years has open sourced their code.

Very, VERY few companies turn a profit with open source. How many app devs can you show me that make a decent living exclusively or primarily with open source ? Over 99.9% are based on closed source.

Kickstarter / IndieGogo etc ? LOL. Show me a lone app dev who has done well with that route.

If someone were to sponsor me with a decent income I'd be happy to open source everything. But that's not too likely and I'm not seeking that.

Google is keeping their AA code secret and unpublished, and they do the same with their premium apps like GMail, while the AOSP apps like EMail languish.

Pricing:

Pricing software is a funny thing. If no technical support or packaging are provided (and there are no advertising costs), the incremental cost of 1 more copy of an app is zero.

And yet if you hire people (or yourself) and pay a decent, competitive rate, the R&D costs for the 1st copy can be in the $millions for many modern apps.

There is no such thing as a "fair price"* for an app. Many think apps must be $0.99 for something simpler, or up to $10 for something more complex, and in rarer cases, $20-40-100 or much more.

(*Fair Price: If we talk about technical support, a "fair price" becomes more feasible. If my time is worth $60 per hour (and it should be much more in this field for very short term work), then 10 minutes of total time spent to support someone is worth $10. But that ignores ALL the time it takes to build and test apps.)

The number of people who will buy an app at some given price are a major determinant for a developer trying to make a decent living.

A popular non-root app for "Joe Average" that millions of people might use might be $0.99 or free with ads.

An app only for Android enthusiasts who root, ROM and install Xposed on the other hand will have a very limited market, and price must be high for a chance to make a decent living.

I've noted that there are several examples of specialist Automotive apps that sell in the $20-40 range. Then there are apps like Torque that may sell for $3-5 but have a much bigger market, and the income allows people to be hired, above and beyond supporting a single independent developer.

At this time, I've put this Headunit app for sale at less than $9 US or 8 Euro (after 20% VAT Euro prices are under 10 Euro, but I get none of that).

Note that Google takes 30% (42% markup !) so I only get about $6 US per app. That hardly buys a Big Mac these days...

My desire is to license this Headunit app on a per device basis, though Google doesn't provide any easy method to do so. So if you use this app in 2 cars, but with only one Play store purchase, I'd appreciate consideration via Paypal. There is NO DRM in this app and I REALLY hope not to use any form of copy protection. DRM is mostly trouble.

I reserve the right to change price at any time. As the app becomes more fully featured, I may raise the price as needed to get sufficient income to work on this full time.

Without sufficient financial support, I'll just have to spend more time on other app opportunities. So if you use and like this app (or just want to support such) please support me so I can support you.

And please help spread the word about this app. I'd rather spend time working on wonderful new features and fixing bugs (LOL) than spending time doing marketing stuff, or spending/wasting money on advertising.

Thanks ! :)

Mike.