You develop software for a living. Why are you such a cheap bastard?
你們開發軟體是為了生活，為什麼你們卻是一群如此廉價的混蛋？

      We’re not talking about your personal spending habits. If you are any good at what you do, you probably make a fair amount of money and spend it on whatever catches your fancy.
這兒說的可不是你們的個人消費習慣。如果你們真擅長你們所做的事，你們很可能掙了可觀的錢並在任何吸引你們眼球的東西上花掉了。

      We’re talking about the tools you use to do your job. Developers expect, no, demand free tools and services to do their jobs. Whether it is analytic services, integrated development environments (IDEs), application programming interfaces (APIs) or software developer kits (SDKs), developers almost always refuse to pay for the tools they use to do their jobs. Many developers would rather go out of their way to build their own tools or use bug-ridden free tools than plunk down the money it would take to buy a service or subscription that could actually help them do their jobs more efficiently.
這兒說的是你們工作上使用的工具。開發者期待...不，要求免費的工具和服務。不管是分析服務，整合式開發環境（IDE），應用程式設計發展介面(API)還是軟體開發套件（SDK），開發者往往拒絕購買工作工具。很多開發者寧願不怕麻煩地自己開發工具或使用錯誤百出的免費工具也不願意擲錢買真正能幫他們有效搞定工作的服務或訂閱。

@dan_rowinski   many will spend a week trying/configuring free tooling instead of paying for something that works out of the box.      許多人花費一周的時間去嘗試/配置免費工具，而不是購買資源盒以外的東西。      — Max Katz (@maxkatz) 2013年5月21日

Oxymoron: Developer-Focused Businesses Models      矛盾修飾法：聚焦開發者的商業模式

      The Mobile Revolution as we know it is about six years old now. About halfway through it in 2010, lots of companies saw an opportunity to make apps for the rush of developers building apps for the Apple App Store and (as it was called then) Android Market. The idea was to make their lives easier and make some money at the same time in a nascent market.
我們知道，移動革命距今將近六年了。2010年即革命中期的時候，很多公司看見 Apple App Store 和 Android Market （未改名前）開發者著手應用程式的淘金熱。當初的設想是，在新生市場裡讓開發者過得輕鬆的同時掙些錢。

      We saw a bunch of startups and (a little bit later) enterprise technology companies move to provide tools for these mobile developers. Companies like Localytics, Kinvey, StackMob, Appcelerator, appMobi, Sencha and many more all had the idea of providing developers with tools to help them do their jobs. Almost all of them have shifted their business models away from the “developer tools” avenue of making money. Because developers just don’t want to pay.
我們看到，很多創業公司和（中期之後）技術公司轉向為這些移動開發者提供工具。Localytics , Kinvey, StackMob, Appcelerator, appMobi, Sencha 以及更多公司都有給開發者提供工具以助其工作的想法。但幾乎所有公司的商業模式都從“開發者工具”這條掙錢大道上轉移開了，因為開發者不想付錢。

@dan_rowinski   engineers are cheap. they also prefer engineering solutions to paying.      工程師是廉價的。 他們喜歡工程解決方案勝於付錢。      — Alice Marshall (@PrestoVivace) 2013年5月21日

      Appcelerator, StackMob and Kinvey have gone with an enterprise-focused business model. Localytics' prime target is to sell to marketers that crave data to do their jobs. appMobi sold its HTML5 developers tools to Intel. Sencha makes money by, among other things, selling cloud services to developers (a common theme with several of these companies). Enterprises and marketers pay for data, tools and services. Developers? Not so much.
Appcelerator , StackMob 和 Kinvey 已經隨著企業集中型商業模式消失了。 Localytics 的首要目標是賣給急需資料來工作的行銷商。 appMobi 把 HTML5 開發員工具賣給了 Intel 。 Sencha 通過向開發者出售雲服務掙錢（幾家此類公司的主旋律）。企業和行銷商花錢買資料、工具和服務，開發者呢？很少見。

The Culture Of Free      免費文化

      Developers are spoiled. The big platforms basically give them all the tools they need for free. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook basically give their tools to developers, hoping to entice them to write for their platforms. In Microsoft’s case, sometimes they even straight out pay developers to build for Windows or Windows Phone and entice them with thousands of dollars of free tools.
開發者們被寵壞了。基本上，大平台們免費給了他們所需要的所有工具，期望能誘使他們為自己的平台做開發。舉例來說，微軟有時甚至直接付費給開發者，讓他們為 Windows 或 Windows Phone 做開發，同時，還有成千上萬美元的免費工具引誘著開發者。

      Almost by nature, developers can be arrogant, stubborn people. It makes them good at their jobs. But it also means that they almost always won’t use something that is not free or open source. They will spend a week building something that they could pay for out of the box and have running in an hour.
開發者們基本上是自大而倔強的人。這一點使他們擅長他們的工作，但也意味著他們幾乎從不使用不免費或不開源的東西。他們會用一周時間開發一個資源盒外可以買到的、在一小時之內就能運行的東西。

      Developers have come to expect free. In an odd, preternatural kind of way, they gravitate toward it. And the tech industry enables them to do it. The goodies at developer conferences like Google I/O are always tasty treats for developers (this year they all got expensive Chromebook Pixels, last year a smartphones and tablets). For the big software companies, it is about building a community around their brand and getting developers to publish apps and services for their platforms. Part of the core mission for Google at this year’s I/O was to update the Google Play Developer Console to give developers a suite of free tools like a new Android-focused IDE, analytics and translations services.
開發者們一醒來就想著“免費”二字。他們以一種古怪而異常的方式被免費深深吸引著，而技術產業使他們可以這樣。開發者大會上的好東西比如 Google I/O 永遠是招待開發者美味（今年是昂貴的 Chromebook Pixels 筆記型電腦，去年是智慧手機和平板電腦）。對於大軟體公司來說，關鍵在於打造一個圍繞其品牌的社區並招攬開發者為其平台發佈應用和服務。今年 Google I/O 核心任務的一部分就是升級 Google 遊戲開發控制台，開發者們將得到一套免費工具，包括面向安卓的新IDE，分析包和翻譯服務。

@dan_rowinski   Leverage of labor. You want me to develop for your platform, you have to lower the barrier of entry.      勞動杠杆原理：想讓我為你的平臺做開發，你得把進去的門檻放低。      — Joshua Goldbard (@ThePBXGuy) 2013年5月21日

“As we give them more tools to make it easier to make great aps, they can try out more stuff,” said Google’s Ellie Powers in a recent interview with ReadWrite. “The basics are covered, people are generally very happy, they are giving us tremendous feedback on our product and great tools that we give them.”
“因為我們提供了更多的工具使開發好的應用程式更容易，他們便能嘗試更多的東西。” Google 遊戲產品經理 Ellie Powers 最近接受《ReaWrite》的採訪時說，“有了全方面的必需品，開發者們通常很高興，在產品以及所提供的工具給予巨大的回報。”

The Red Tape Of Paid Tools      付費工具的繁文縟節

      If has become fairly clear that developers – from the hobbyist to the professional developer studio to the enterprise-level wonk – hate paying for tools. Sometimes that has to do with their budgets (or lack thereof). Sometimes they think they can do better themselves.
已經相當清楚，開發者們——從業餘愛好者到專業人士到企業級的書呆子——都討厭花錢買工具。有時候跟他們的預算（或缺乏預算）有關，有時候因為他們覺得自己能做得更好。

      Developer focused site Stack Overflow had a great discussion on the topic a couple years ago. One developer, Erik B. sums up the problem with buying software tools in an enterprise nicely:
開發者雲集的網站 Stack Overflow 幾年前曾就此話題有過一次很好的討論 。一位名叫 Erik B 的開發者很好地總結了在企業裡購買軟體工具的問題：
      If I find a non-free tool I might be able to download a free trial, without telling the boss, but if I want to buy the full version of the tool I'll definitely gonna have to talk to my boss and he's not just gonna give it to me. I'm gonna have to motivate why I need it. He is definitely gonna ask if there are any free alternatives and "I don't know." is not a good enough answer. So if I want the non-free tool I'm gonna have to evaluate all the free tools first.
如果發現了一個不免費的工具，我大概會背著老闆下載免費試用版，但如果我想買這個工具，就必須跟老闆通報，結果是他不會同意。我得跟他闡述需要它的動機，他絕對會問是否有什麼免費替代品。對此，“我不知道”可不是夠好的答案。因此，如果我想要不免費的工具，我得先評估所有的免費工具。

What Developers Will Pay For      開發者們會為什麼買單

      If you can’t get developers to pay for tools, what the heck can you get them to pay for? Services and subscriptions. More appropriately, the cloud.
如果你無法讓開發者們為工具買單，那麼到底什麼能讓他們買單？服務和訂閱。更準確地說，雲端。

      Amazon pulls this off perfectly. They offer a lot of free SDKs and APIs, especially around its Appstore development program for the Kindle Fire. Once Amazon has its hooks into the developer, it can then push them to pay for cloud hosting and computing through Amazon Web Services.
Amazon 在這方面開展得很好。它提供大量免費的 SDK 和 API ，特別是為 "Kindle Fire" 平板電腦服務的應用程式商店開發計畫。一旦 Amazon 與開發者們掛上了鉤，它就能推動他們通過 Amazon Web Services 為雲端主機和雲端計算機付費了。

      In many ways, it is kind of a “freemium” model targeted at developers (which is ironic considering it is usually the developers that target freemium models on consumers). Get them in with the free tools, charge them for the cloud. This was essentially the model that appMobi used when it developed its litany of free HTML5 development tools. It would design for HTML5 and then sell developers cloud services to host and run their apps.
從很多方面來講，這可謂針對開發者的“免費中毒”模式（蠻諷刺的通常是開發者針對消費者施展“這種”模式）。用免費工具把開發者們吸引進來，讓他們為雲端付費，類似 appMobi 為免費 HTML5 開發 litany 時使用的模式。設計 HTML5 之後，開發者們為運行應用程式的雲主機和雲服務買單。

When Developers Should Pay For Tools      開發者何時應該為工具付費

      In a recent conversation with a developer friend, the topic of developers being cheap bastards came up. He said his rationale for when to pay for tools was fairly simple. If a developer is making around $80,000 a year, they are worth (depending on the scale) about $300 a day (considering time off for weekends and holidays). This scale slides, of course, but take the numbers as an example. So, if a developer downloads free software tools or tries to build them on their own, they are taking time out of their day from what is their normal job to configure those tools.
最近與一位開發者朋友聊天時，提起了開發員是廉價混蛋的話題。他關於何時為工具付費的根據相當簡單：假如一個開發者一年能掙約8萬美金，這些錢相當於（取決比例）約每天（不算週末和假期）300美元。當然，這個標準是活的，只不過用數字作為例子而已。所以，如果一個開發者下載免費軟體或嘗試自己編寫，配置軟體時間算是薪資工作期的抽取花費。

      Say a developer tool from a reputable source costs $300 and will work out of the box. If a developer wants to create a workaround, they should no more than one day on it. Otherwise it is no longer cost efficient to not buy the off-the-shelf product. Essentially, a developer should spend no more than one day trying to configure or build their own tools.
假設一個來自信譽良好資源庫的工具價格是300美元。開發者想創建一個工作區，他需要的時間不應超過一天，不然買現成產品應該會更高效。基本上，一個開發者花在配置或自己開發工具上的時間不應該超過一天。

      Developers: When do you pay for tools? Which ones do you pay for? Let us know in the comments.
開發者們：你們什麼時候花錢買工具？會買哪些工具呢？請在評論中告訴我們。