The script that copies the data from the old system to the new one is what they wrote in Erlang.

That is a forum for shareware developers.

One of the biggest posters there makes a bingo card creator app that does like 1.5k a month sales. If you do that 10 times you can make some pretty decent money.

The key is finding a niche I think.

I've been an Open Source developer for over 10 years...and while it's nice to have a lot of users (particularly if you want to make money on the software in some way), the kind of users you have is more important than the quantity. I'd take one good Open Source fanatic over a dozen Photoshop pirates any day. The pirates don't do anything and they have little respect for the developers of the software. If I were building the GIMP, why would I want them to use my software?

If the goal of the GIMP developers is "kill Photoshop", then I guess piracy is a negative...but if the goal is "make awesome software", then there's nothing pirates can do to impact them in any way. I kinda suspect the goal for most Open Source developers is "make awesome software" first, and stuff related to proprietary competitors is way down the list, or not even relevant. (Again, assuming money doesn't enter into the equation...in which case, the story is somewhat different.)

For what it's worth, I've been a GIMP user since the very first public release (I remember the first mention on Slashdot), and I haven't used anything else in that time...never needed to. Regardless, I think GIMP is clearly one of the great success stories of friendly, consumer-oriented, Open Source software...and it gets better and more successful with every release.

What a terrible thing to say about someone who is dead, regardless of whether they stole anything.

In short - hell, yes.

>In 2008, is it too late to start writing software, actual installable software, and sell it on the internet?

Hahahaha .. funny. Of course, not. Here's some anecdotal and motivational evidence for you:

# Project 1 - a software to deal with file transfers - feeds about 10 people for past 10 years. 3-4 major competitors of the same level and in the same niche. End-user oriented, effectively outdated at the moment, but still selling well due to a market inertia. The program itself is about 3-5 months of work to write from scratch (e.g. by just looking at the screenshots and a feature list).

# Project 2 - network sniffer application - brings about 800k a year in sales. Oriented on professional market, sales cycle is outsourced to a dedicated company and so it the support.

# Project 3 - a remote computer/desktop access app. I don't know exact numbers, but they are in the range of #2.

These are not, of course, very typical, but they all are single-developer projects. Moreover their success is a result of persistent focused effort rather than a fad or a blind luck. On the other hand if you work on a project in your spare time, it's not unreasonable to expect 10-30k a year. Assuming you are catering to a general home user crowd and your app in fact works and doesn't look like crap.

Also, if you investigate shareware development a bit you will see that there's an established and mature "shareware support" ecosystem. In a simple case you just write an app and other people will gladly do the rest - anything from creating a website and producing boxed version of the app (i.e. "publishing") to payment processing and a front-line support (i.e. "e-com"). Some care is needed dealing with these guys though, because frequently they rely on ignorance of the developer to milk him out of disproportionate % of a revenue.

Good luck, dude. You asked a great question and the answer is that the shareware is very much doable and it is in fact less delusional get-rich scheme compared to web-2.0 craze.

That's a bad paraphrase, but the original quote was pretty good.