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What licence should I use and should I call it "Shareware"?
Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 4:21 pm
by DaveTheAve
So heres the deal, I'm developing a application that I know will be a success because the three programs I'm basing it off of are a success but they're pricey. I'd love to make this application open-source but I'm poor and can bearly afford rent and if I just ask for donations... no one will donate. So i've decided to make 98% of it free and open-source but restrict the API to people who pay a one-time fee of maybe $50.
What should I call this? Open-Source? Shareware? Freeware? Open-Share-ware? (lol)
Also I need to know what licence to use... I'd love to use the GNU licence but if I program in some of the communities code - for instance a Zend Framework Plugin Manager, I won't be able to sell the API function would I?
Re: What licence should I use and should I call it "Sharewar
Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:54 pm
by josh
If you want to make sales call it a free trial. Makes it sound like the purchase is of more importance. Have them click a checkbox agreeing to use it for 30 days non profit use. Its not legally enforceable in many places, but they dont know that and its a strong nudge to buy. I tried this and I found my sales went UP. People will advertise my product for me now with word of mouth because they think I'm not evil.
.. little do they know I am very evil !

jk
Specifically the part they pay for me with is the import/export. So if they have a lot of stuff to "bring in", or are going to invest time setting up data by hand, theyre going to need the import/export, either to bring the data in in the first place, or export it out for backups and such. Of course they can try to hit phpmyadmin but theyll get a non-human editable normalized mess.
They pay some amount of cost for an N month license, they can use the software they bought forever but have to pay again every N months for more updates. Id lean towards "versions" rather than "months of updates" because that way you can bugfix legacy products while witholding new stuff from old customers who refuse to finance your new stuff.
They say Bill Gates pirated his own software when he started out, and it helped a ton.
Re: What licence should I use and should I call it "Sharewar
Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 2:13 pm
by DaveTheAve
Well I hate to make it a trial, as all I'll be asking money for is access to the API. The ENTIRE system will be unlocked and downloadable for their own servers with the exception of the API access.... which they can always program themselfs, but I'd obviously won't agree with that.