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This is a straight-forward question about software pricing and all is legal and above board.
I have a coworker/friend who has produced a software package that can perform date-conversions on the fly, changing one date format to another form via a function call. But he does not know what to sell these key routines for. He will not give them away nor sell them cheap. He has put a lot of time and effort into this software package development. And they do work! I've played with them. He is currently making his presence known on the internet, via a fairly new website. Any ideas on what the selling price should be for these key routines and others?? My friend would like some help and suggestions on pricing.
I hope this question/request passes the moderators requirements and for not being in the programming question area.
Why can't this question be submitted. Resolve the 1 issue(s) before posting. Where is the issue?
Thanks,
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Um.
Generally speaking, your friend is on a loser. It will take an experienced developer a couple of minutes to convert date formats, it's not at all complicated: a couple of lines of code.
So why would they pay for them? Particularly when more complex data manipulation software is available for free? For example: DateTime Extensions to Make Some Simple Tasks a Little More Readable[^] - you can probably find "date format conversion" packages with a simple google as well.
So "he won't sell them cheap" sounds to me like he is going to sell a total of zero copies, unless they do something really complicated and different, but your description does not sound like that is true.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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samtoad wrote: I hope this question/request passes the moderators requirements and for not being in the programming question area.
I think this is exactly where you should be posting such questions.
Although I agree with OG your friend is extremely hopeful if he expects to even give such a package away let alone sell it.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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samtoad wrote: date-conversions
I misread as Data conversion, as in unstructured to structured, etc. Maybe that would be more useful, again, depending on specifics.
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Just to add a comment on your approach: when you say "I have a coworker/friend who has produced a ..." and "he does not know what to sell these key routines for" that doesn't inspire any confidence in his abilities: if he can't work out how to find a site, sign up, and post a message then in all probability his computer knowledge and skills are extremely poor.
That's not saying your skills are poor, or your friends skills are poor - but that's the impression that divorcing yourself from the request gives.
Generally speaking, you need to come over as professional and knowledgeable to sell software: if you want to sell to professionals at least. If you want to sell to student then forget it: they will pirate it or copy'n'paste from SO anyway ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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It almost always is ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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That message is from 2004! 
Cheers,
विक्रम
"We have already been through this, I am not going to repeat myself." - fat_boy, in a global warming thread 
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Oops. 
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He should keep his day job.
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To be of value it needs to fix an existing problem.
IMO, date conversion is not really a problem.
so, not much value.
put it on github.
I'd rather be phishing!
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samtoad wrote: changing one date format to another form via a function call
What function, DateTime.ToString?
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Maybe if it's for some language/framework which doesn't have anything like that built-in.
Certainly not for .net, which has good date/time parsing and formatting support already.
Or are you talking about converting between different calendars? Which is of very little use in the modern business world.
The main shortcoming with such a plan is that while you can sell applications, you really can't sell utility/library functions which form the foundations of applications.
Those sorts of things are given away freely so others can build applications.
Furthermore, consider I bought a library of functions from you for $10. Then I reverse-engineer them, using your library to help validate the correctness of mine (or finding bugs in yours). Maybe I could even do bench-mark testing to show that mine is faster. Then I offer copies of my version for $5 each, on the same platform you use, maybe even with source code. I'd need to sell only two copies to get my money back and the rest is gravy.
I think the more profitable model continues to be the "if you like it, please consider donating a few bucks to a poor starving developer in his mother's basement" model.
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PIEBALDconsult:
Thanks for the kind feedback!. This is the first time I have done this.
Just for thought, my project is a Date Conversion Software Package that supports 148 different date formats. It supports six date delimiters. The actual DLL software library written in "C". There is a DLL function call that can perform date conversion from one to another date format.
Thanks....
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Your project? I thought you were talking for a co-worker of yours!
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I'm sure you're proud of it, but don't expect many (particularly on a site of developers) to be likewise impressed.
samtoad wrote: supports 148 different date formats
samtoad wrote: can perform date conversion from one to another date format
These statements are already red flags for me. They imply that you have grabbed the wrong end of the stick.
One big issue with "conversion from one to another date format" is that having dates and times as strings within an application is generally going to lead to trouble. It is far better to parse into a structure, use it, then format it if necessary.
The main thing to consider is how we might convert a date/time "from one to another date format" with .net (if we ever actually wanted to do that at all).
.net provides System.DateTime and System.DateTimeOffset structures, each with a few methods for parsing strings, and each with a ToString Method.
Those methods take parameters for specifying the format.
See also Custom date and time format strings | Microsoft Docs[^]
This is a very flexible way of doing this and much better than hard-coding "148 different date formats".
The application developer is able to specify those few formats the application may require.
The application can parse an incoming value, use it as needed, then only format it into a string when it comes time to output it.
Plus the fact that it's written in C and is expected to be distributed by DLL means that it isn't multi-platform.
Will you compile and provide versions for other Operating Systems?
Many of us on CodeProject use .net and that means that we'd have to use P/Invoke to call your routines -- but, of course, we'd use the built-in routines instead.
Dates and times are not strings, you need to stop thinking of them as strings.
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Quote: supports 148 different date formats
Oops, I found a 149th: (e.g.) 3rd June 2020.
Oh, and 150th: (e.g. Saturday June 3 2020).
ah, and then there's DD-MMM YYYY, so you need 151.
Sorry, forgot about YYYYMMMMDDDD, I make it 152.
Um, you might be better just using a generic date to string formatter, like pretty much every language (capable of calling a DLL) does already.
And if the list of public holidays serves any purpose, by limiting to the USA you've just eliminated (and alienated) 96% of the world's population from being potential customers
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Besides Excel, SQL Server, BI, Access, and the .NET "Convert" function, one has any number of resources for "importing dates"; which is usually the only time one "converts".
So, the price is what someone wants to pay, where "integrating" said package is probably more trouble than it's worth ... for "a date".
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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I certainly can agree with a lot of those who have commented: Making a solution to a solved problem is not a big profit opportunity.
Yet... In a Western framework, we have very limited understanding of calendar issues in a global framework. Date.ToString() may be far from sufficient. I was working with some Koreans: If you asked them about their age, they first had to convert their lunar calendar to a sun calendar, and then correct for their convention of giving your age as the year of your living: At birth, you are starting your first year, not your zeroth.
Another case: When I was working with web archiving, there were native Americans who wanted access control to their archived web pages to be restricted by their concepts of season: Some documents should be accessible during the seeding season only, others only during the harvesting season. (They also wanted some documents to be available to males only, others to females only - but that is not calendar related.)
Some Asian cultures restart their year count from some astronomical or social event, indicating the base as part of their year indication - similar to our BC/AC, but on a lot more dynamic scale.
And so on. Date.ToString() does not cut it. MS has done a lot to support various calendars, but you can't take for granted that it is supported in all applications. (In those I devlop, there is certainly not support for all sorts of Asian calendars!)
So there may be a market for the library that the TS (or some "coworker/friend" of his) has created - but mostly in Asian markets. Western software developers generally ignore such issues, taking for granted that the only calendar adaptations required is adapting to the time zone and 24/12 hour clocks.
Lots of Western software have no chance of succeeding in Asia, because the developers have no understanding of Asian culture and the requiremnts that the software should satisfy.
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This is an interesting discussion. I've been writing software in umpteen environments (for use only in the UK though) for over 40 years. If there is one thing that STILL causes trouble, regardless of language, libraries, OS etc - it's dates: conversion and date arithmetic. This is despite all the manifest libraries and OS supported date formats etc.
I've written, or extended, date manipulation libraries etc over the years because none of them do eveything I need. (Borland C++'s Date Class was particularly lacking I seem to remember!) I was doing some elapsed time processing in Excel only the other day and realised that the calculation was occasionally a day out because of the fractional time element that was being stored internally after extracting times and dates from an external database, so had to find a way to 'round' the dates.
Having not used all possible libraries or environments, maybe there is one out there that can handle (correctly) all the possible permutaions of date representations in all languages and for all time-zones and counting systems, but I'd be very surprised. Certainly I am still regularly having to account for the unexpected behaviour of Microsoft's Date objects in various edge cases after using them since the dawn of Windows 3!
Dates are difficult, especially if you mix in people's interpretations of them: If I was to say that something was going to happen "overnight Tuesday at 2 am" would that be early morning on Tuesday or Wednesday, for example. 8)
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There's no way to make money from selling code for converting dates, even if that code converts between dates in different calendar systems. To be used one has to supply either the source code or a DLL (or similar), and as soon as it's been released it's likely to be widely available on the net (for use at no charge). The only way such code can repay the time and effort spent in development is by being incorporated in a date conversion application -- see examples here -- but I suppose there's very little demand for such software.
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I've seen one done by Jon Skeet in C# and Java but he's giving it away
GitHub - jskeet/nodatime: A better date and time API for .NET[^]
To be honest I don't know that it would be sellable as there are free frameworks on time available.
Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians.
Help end the violence EAT BACON
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I bet your friend/coworker is a junior dev like you.
Why would anyone in their right mind pay for something that's widely available for free, and even already available in most modern frameworks (for the last 20 years)?
I think y'all would do society a bigger service if you went back to sweeping standing water off sidewalks.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Hey fella, I suggest you take a closer look at the https://www.developersdateware.com/supported-date-formats.html page.
Quote: PRODUCT NAME
(SKU #XXXXXX)
DESCRIBE THE PRODUCT HERE. FOR EXAMPLE: You can enjoy THIS BENEFIT using THIS FEATURE OR using THIS FEATURE you can DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. YOU CAN MAKE THIS DESCRIPTION AS LONG AS NECESSARY.
Price: $00.00
The lack of a demo & description of the formats is possibly helping put your cash-register into power-saving mode!
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enhzflep wrote: helping put your cash-register into power-saving mode
I'll have to remember that one...
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