Slashdot Mirror
Making Money With Open Code, APIs, And Docs?
"We've looked at the common model right now which is to sell support and give the code away on a CD for lots-o-money like a record label does. But our product doesn't work with that model very well. Our product is not many megabytes, so a CD to move bits isn't really justified. It's also fully documented in HTML, with man pages and HTML for the API, so a dead-tree manual is not needed at all. We're also doing development in a CMM-3+ environment, so there is no need for someone to buy support unless we purposely start adding "features" (i.e. bugs) or make it so complex no one can use it without calling us on the phone. That's just not an acceptable option since our product needs to operate in a five-9's environment, where if it doesn't work right it's never even allowed in the building.
We realize that if we do keep the source closed, but open the API or docs, someone will clone it because they don't want to pay for our work. Even with the typical no-quality clone, this makes the product life too short and the market too small to justify the large development costs.
Since the above model doesn't work for us, the only other way to make money (other then a sweet stock market scam) is to have a pile of patents. This is definitely not the way we want to go since we would need five lawyers for every geek in the company, and we all know software patents are all bogus since everything was done by 1975.
So did we back ourselves into a corner where we have to move to closed source or patents? Or should we just give up and go back to the day job working for someone with a pile of patents and a closed everything that can pay us? There are alot of issues here, but the bottom line is the bottom line, we have bills to pay, and if we can't pay them we'll go back to doing something else.
- frustrated."
How about giving the stuff away and charging for any future customisations a particular customer needs?
Rob.
At the end of the day, i'd guess, your company is in business to make money and I dont entirely see why you should be so keen to open source something if your livelyhoods depend on it.
Where open source fit in nicely is when a company has some internal software that they use and isn't central to their line of business. This way they can return something to the community and other people can help them sort out bugs.
Obviously open sourcing some of your products can help promote other products, but this essentially only works for large companies who aren't dependant on one core product.
If you have developed a package which is truly unique then you could potentially make a lot of money off it, and I think that's only fair. But unless opensource fits in well with your business proposal then there's no real reason to use it (apart from that warm fuzzy feeling inside)
Ok having stuck my head up and i'm going to hide before someone shoots it off :)
As a consultant that has worked in the industry for some years now, I can say that your situation is not unique and all, and that there are quite a few companies in the same boat as you.
Whilst excersing my new-found elite Linux skills using my Corel Linux box at home I have found an essay by someone called Eric S Ramond called "The Cathedral in the Bazaar" about the values of open source vs. closed source. An interesting read, if a bit naive, but it misses out one important point - people need money to live, and if their job is programming, they need to make money from doing that.
Now the technical benefits of open source may be apparent, but the philosophical baggage that it brings with it means that do develop an open source product at work, you need to either a) generate revenue through secondary services such as support or b) be part of a large company that can support the monetary loss.
This seems to me to be an unfortunate side-effect of the GNU Public License, and it means that the smaller players in the commercial sector will be unable to move to the open source model for financial reasons. Maybe a new licensing scheme is needed?
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
What benefit do you hope to get from opening it up?
Do you want it to be debugged by the (purely hypothetical) "millions of eyes" of open source coders out there? No, you've already said that if it doesn't work first time, it's fucked.
Do you want the open sourcies to be involved in developing it going forward, and extending the program? If so, then consider a restrictive licence which puts it in the public domain, but with limited rights. Anyone who really wants to be involved in extending your product will still want to be involved (if it's good); as for the rest, fuck 'em.
Or do you want the deep satisfying feeling of being "part of the free software community", and "knowing that you Get It About Open Source"? Then go ahead, open it all up. But realise that this will probably be a costly luxury.
Or indeed, have you not thought about this in any very great depth yet? In which case, now might be a good time to start.
Oh yeh, and whatever you choose, software patents are almost certainly not going to help.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
The answer is very simple. Ready?
How do you make money like this? You don't.
Microsoft has realized this for years, and, in fact, Bill Gates was one of the first to point this out with his groundbreaking letters to the software community back in the 70's and 80's.
So who says Microsoft doesn't innovate?
Build a community around your product, available to buyers only. Maybe companies have need for tailor-made version of the product, discussion forums about updates and development, next versions etc. Companies don't care so much about cost of buying, it is the cost of using they are interested in.
If there REALLY is no room for this kind of support, try the donation-way. Make the product open source and tell the users (especially if they are compaines) that you would like to continue development etc. and some money would do good. It may work, Open Source IS the Buzz-word today.
Giving the code away is a good move in many aspect, it is good for marketing, and it is going with the current bandwagon. If your product is not that hard to replicate though, then it isn't worth much anyway - there is nothing terribly unique about it. Patents can be used to resolve certain IP issues - and they should be used if the IP is new, original and non-obvious. Of course, being a software only solution, you can only get the patent in America, which limits the power of the patent. You could give a free license for all free software, to avoid being badmouthed about it, but software patents are not desirable, as you point out.
Make the product a solution. Corporate entities buy solutions - basically products that solve one particular thing very well. The support for a solution will be there, and you can make money from selling the product as a solution. Many companies will also like the fact that they get the source, not the majority of companies, as it will mean nothing to them, but some. These companies will like the power to amend small things in the codebase to meet their needs.
Otherwise, you are hitting the nail on the head. What incentive is their to write easy, good quality software when you are trying to make money from support? Luckily most computer users aren't that clued up, and will need support whatever the software or hardware(Moving the Mouse for Dummies! etc).
It just depends on the target audience for the product, which you haven't specified, so it makes it hard to assess your chances. I wish you luck.
Why not use the same license as the Qt libraries?
It gives people access to the source code, and is free for non-commercial use.
Users who use your product for profit, will have to pay a licensing fee.
How can you sell a product for $500 if it uses Unix, Perl, Apache, and mySQL?
Alakaboo
Alladin sells the latest version of their Ghostscript postscript interpreter, but open-sources the older versions. Of course the feasibility of this depends on the nature of the software, but it's still a fairly 'nice' way of making money and open-sourcing.
If a potential customer of yours sees more value in reimplementing your stuff than buying it from you then you have priced yourself out of that particular market anyway. So the debate is moot.
As usual in business life, offer something of value to the customer he is willing to pay for. I work in a five-9s environment. This is the perfect place for high-end support contracts. Of course no 'we will help you on the phone if you happen to get us on a free line' type of support, but a 'yes sir, we will be on site within 30 minutes 7 days a week 24 hours a day and make it work again' type of support. Priced, of course, accordingly.
90 percent of the support contracts of this kind are cover-my-ass contracts anyway, but in a five-9s environment you practically have to have these.
f.
Now this is important, so I'm gonna repeat it twice, with increasing emphasis:
If the legal work is not finished, the project is not finished
If the legal work is not finished, the project is not finished
If the legal work is not finished, the project is not finished
You screwed up badly by your own admission, by not getting good legal staff incorporated into the development plan. Now you're trying to rescue the whole deal. All I can reccommend is, hire a lawyer. And don't try to cut corners, because you've clearly developed the whole thin in this lop-sided fashion.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Lease application usage to your customers in a C/S system over the net (dot-net economy). Make client application open source, keep server-side closed or just-about-opened.
Keep potential patentable techniques on server side (as much as possible).
Bizar technology?
The above is a good comment. If you visit the GNU website then there is a page off there somewhere listing all (or many) of the other open source licenses. Find one that roughly fits the above model and change it to suit your needs.
I'm a programmer, I also use open source stuff for ... so f**k, you have to pay for using my stuff. You should do the same, make it cheap and everything is ok!
my work. But it's my job to write programms and I
need the money I get for this. I would like to
put all my stuff under the GPL (or any other open
licens...) but for this I won't get any money
which is the engine that powers wonko.com, similar to /. but running on NT. If nothing else it should give you pointers as to what to do, as it has an interesting license for usage.
If I bought a house, I wouldn't expect the architectural blueprints, if I buy a car, I don't expect the concept sketches or design drawings, if I buy a CD player, I don't need the circuit diagrams and so on.
I do work in this area of business and can only add this to the discussion. Most IT managers that I know have a whole mix of solutions. They will buy closed products to fix specific tasks, they'll pay the Microsoft Tax for their workstations because everyone (generalisation) knows how to use Windows, they have a Sun E10000 for their ERP system.
As long as they have the budget to fix a problem, most large corporations don't care whether it is open source or not.
If you are playing to the smaller market where cost is a huge issue, but your product is the only one that will do the job, then market and price it appropriately (no point having an enterprise license at $250K a year for a 5 man set up in Ohio).
Open source is not necessarily the answer. Precise pricing and marketing is. If that means OS, then do so, if not, make the cash on single license sales.
Good Luck.
Does anyone have any fuel for my Monkey Spunk Moped?
There are probably downsides to this model as well, and I'm sure someone will point them out here. One of the chief benefits of this model, which I have not mentioned, is that the organization that supports the software need not be the one that made it (although there would be benefit to having made it), encouraging competition for support. Case in point where this model succeeds: IBM's Global Support Branch.
Brief summary of the argument: our customers are not the people who buy toolkits and components, they're people who buy completed applications. But in order to deliver completed applications we need a toolkit to build on. If we try to keep our toolkit proprietary, it will fall behind competing toolkits (such as, e.g., Enhydra) because we don't have, inside the team, enough people to develop it and debug it fast enough.
We could adopt another toolkit (such as Enhydra) but if we do we become just another user of the toolkit, with little control over its direction and no particular reason for people who want things built with it to come to us. By being the core of an Open Source project we get potential for kudos, the ability to steer the project, and, hopefully, a wider user base for the toolkit contributing patches and extensions.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Without knowing the specifics of your case (how small the market, etc), it's a bit difficult to give a detailed answer, but probably the most important thing to realise about software is the following.
In my experience, most companies who are putting software into a mission-critical situation would prefer to pay for their software than have it for free. And what they perceive they are getting for their money is not the software itself, but rather a committment from the seller that the software will be supported. Your software doesn't have to be unreliable in order to justify a support contract; nor does it have to be heavily burdened with various flavours of intellectual property rights in order to persuade companies to part with large wads of dosh in exchange for it.
My suggestion would be to not make a big deal of the software license terms. Put it under a GPL or BSD style license, or even in the public domain, but just don't make a selling point out of it. Those who are interested enough to care will ask and be happy with the answer.
Make it available for download on a website, since it will be too small to justify the pricey-CD thing, but dress it up a bit like an evaluation copy -- probably best done by making it say "THIS IS AN UNSUPPORTED EVALUATION COPY", but it depends on the specifics of the case. Remember: the suits want to buy your committment, not your software! Do have a CD, though: make it part of your support contract, just so they have something physical and professional-looking to put on a shelf. Heck, if it's a small market, you can customise it by changing the "unsupported" message to indicate their name and the fact that you are supporting them. Such a comforting reminder! :-)
The benefits of this approach are many. One is that you can skimp on lawyers. You'll still need them for your support contract terms, for example. [Reminder to those who aren't catching on: support contract does not mean unreliable software; indeed, the ideal case is where you sell a support contract and never have a call from the customer because the software just works all the time. You think they'd be unhappy with paying for that level of service?] The customer is also happy because they don't have to count licenses or install dongles or do other obnoxious things associated with restrictive licensing. You can review their support contract service level agreement at regular intervals based on their usage, however.
Once you've got some suits paying you for your support, you should then aim to delight them with your responsiveness to their questions. You might want to hire a suitably talented monkey to handle the trivial stuff, but always be available to address the concerns of those you are being paid to support. Most proprietary houses set such dreadful standards of support that they shouldn't be hard to outdo. So long as they feel you are always poised and ready to answer your email or phone calls, they'll be happy and keep forking out the support contract fees.
Of course, there's the other class of people: the ones that don't pay. They are your friends too. Anyone with a clue who is using your software and providing you with bug reports is an ally. Be responsive to people who aren't paying you but who are doing you a great service by reporting real bugs, or simply providing ongoing testing (particularly for new releases). People without a clue who can't get it to work can be foisted off on some "users" mailing list or newsgroup: nobody should expect Linus to help them install their kernel.
I could go on, but I think by now you can see the pattern that is emerging, and decide whether it is appropriate to your situation.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
..you've answered your own questions. That is, the open source model (and it is only a model after all) is not the way to go for your company in terms of the product you are making. This is ok, software does not have to be open as a matter of course.
--
I saw that
Let me reiterate what you have:
Given these factors, I'd suggest you simply stay closed-source. You'll have a hard-enough time making money from this anyway, even then.
If your customers demand source, sell it to them, but don't give it away. If you feel you need to give back to the community, there might be other, better ways - how about sponsoring development of free software you use, for example?
To wit: the company I work for makes extensive use of MICO, Xalan, Xerces, and Apache. We're closed source, but we contribute fixes, fund MICO-MT development, and will soon sponsor standardization committee activities for XML-Apache. In the end, everyone's happy. Maybe that would work for you, too?
It depends on what this SW is and does though. Sounds like server-side SW, probably in an HA cluster environment?
1. Subscriptions to enhancements
2. Technical and how-to support
3. Consulting
4. Add-on or related products...e.g. hardware, other SW, books, etc...
5. Build a total solution around the OSS
6. Advertising revenue on the web site (assuming volume traffic of course)
7. Use the old MySQL model of keeping the newest release closed or gated and fully open sourcing the previous release
Good luck!
Army No. Va.
Aide: Grant drinks too much to command an army. Lincoln: Find out what he drinks and give it to my other generals!
I was thinking of something like "GPL for Friends", i.e. make the code publicly available for a) personal use, b) for companies that made significant ('hello world' won't count) contributions (either in code or financial) to the Open Source Community, c) for organizations that are commonly known as to be of non-profit nature (no, COS doesn't fall in that category).
All others are required to pay if they intend to use that code.
Another possibility would be to require the user to register the code (which then could be downloaded without further charge). That way you'd at least know who your 'customers' are.
Use The Source, Luke!
This is precisely why people approach VCs. If you're product's good and you believe in it, then you need capital to start the ball rolling and pay your in-house developers. This model only works if there's a market for support. Zope is a good example and is used on OpenSource.org's business person's case for open source. Paul Everitt of Digital Creations was told to go open source by their VC Verticality, and it looks like it's been a success. Everitt makes a very eloquent case for his open source business decision.
... between your client hiring in-house dev team (ie just buying you out) and outsourcing to you? This is IMHO the real deciding factor in calculating the value proposition. Answers that I can think of:
- you can amortise the development costs across many companies (ie fairly large client base)
- the software is NOT their core business
- you offer a faster growth/development/debugging rate than they can do in=house
- the collective feedback and user support base cuts down on internal costs
- the software creates productivity but requires serious training (e.g. certain financial trading packages) in which case you put on courses and charge real-line (same time/place) help (ie charge out rate)
If it is a once-off, work many times without fault then perhaps you may wish to offer it as an embedded device. Ie get a small linux kernel, compact in your software, database logs, management tools, etc and sell it as an item with remote monitoring on a long-term on-going basis. If people can recognise the service of 24 hour monitoring, then they should be able to cost it.
If it is a specialised area, requiring specific domain knowledge, then offer it as a leader to your professional services (a la lawyers doing pro bonum work).
If it is something so trivial that anyone can recreate it then why are you trying to charge above market rates? Ie buy vs build argument. People forget that the main function of a market driven firm is price discovery, finding an appropriate market value for their goods/services. If you think you are worth $100K+/person, but the market doesn't share your sentiment, then we've got a serious reality discontinuity here. This leads to a rather interesting angle on venture capitalists as what are they really investing into? A collection of intangible goods which may have fluctuating value depending on what other people don't know?
The open/close source is just a distribution mechanism. You still have to think about what business you are in, who are your clients, and how you can align your specialised resources with their objectives.
LL
A big advantage of open source is market-making: open-sourcing a product might build up a large community of users and integrators, and even if only 5% of users buy the fancier commercial version of a product, 5% of a $100M market is much more interesting than 100% of a $100K market.
In fact, a lot of companies will buy the commercial version if it's easier to integrate into their systems: skilled engineers are expensive and rare, so they have to be rationed carefully among projects. If the commercial version of your product can be installed and integrated by a junior person alone (i.e. installation GUIs, custom adapters, etc.), then it's easily worth $20K-$50K to a company; it would be stupid to try to install the Open-Source version if it meant pulling a good techie off an important project, and maybe delaying a major lauch, just for the sake of saving a few thousand dollars.
After all, $20K is the cost of sending, say, 8 engineers to a single trade show.
There is a way to make money off GPL'd code, and it's been used by at least one product already, FFTW. FFTW is a high-speed fast fourier transform library, "Fastest FFT in the West", and it is distributed under the GPL. This means that it is available to anyone that wants to use it in their own GPL products.
So, I'm working on a project that uses this fourier transform to calculate derivatives of shoreline for calculating boundaries. I need FFT code; I go looking, boss man says write your own. I do, preformance sucks, no suprise. This stuff is at least one order of magnitude faster! But, boss man doesn't want anything to do with that communist open source code business.
Hence the magic. The author of the code can put whatever liscence he wants on it - or as many liscence as he wants. In this case, if you want to use it in a closed source commercial project, you can get a liscence for $5000 smackers, which is what the company ponied up - of course, they still made (much) more than that back.
Thus, this allows the two worlds to live together - if you want to get support, etc etc, pay the big money for the commericialized version. Or get the free version, with no warranty, as outlined in big letters in the GPL.
kudos!
..don't panic
I mean, one of Troll Tech.
All you have to do is to release your software under two different license: one open, that benefit from the Open Source development model, and one closed, whose you sell license to those that want to create (or use) closed-source stuff. This way you can combine best of both worlds.
Note, however, that it's not possible if you use free software code that you don't own. You may need to workaround this by spliting your programs in different parts, to isolate those you don't own and this way always release them under their original license without putting the rest of your work under the same licensing term.
Support means also hot-line and warranties. The "commercial release" will include them in your offer, and the "free release" will just have a disclaimer. Some people wants warranties, even if you swear your program is bugfree. These people will buy your stuff. "Service" dosn't mean you have to obfuscate on-line manuals and add bugs, just that your customer can ease his mind by thinking if your program crash his data, he can sue you.
sigmentation fault
The product you sell could include the source code under a disclosed source licence (but a user would still need to pay your company to use the product). Furthermore, you could permit registered users of your product to develop modifications and send each other patch files, as long as you are permitted to put the patches in your future releases.
It depends on the project,
But basically two models immediatelly comes to mind. Sell the peace of mind aspect, garantee (Don't have a clue how to spell this and no time).
And the other possibility is the expertize, people are willing to pay because they trust the person that sell's or supports the project.
Again it all depends on the project and the market. Make a deal with another company that have a complementary project let them pay for the development or alternativelly sell bundles with your stuff included.
Eg. Development project sell a Redhat CD with your product included a nice smile and support for the whole set of product for 6 month with direct access to experts in the field. Keep a constant contact with your customers ad I promise you they will be hooked. Add to that the possibility that you can sell the installation and the training for the product (training is kewl because even if the product is very easy to use people will still pay for it.)
Suffice it to say it is possible to sell alsmost anytnhig related to the product. Just think of it as a service industry and your home free. Sell your time your services.
Cu
jacobus@firsttech.net
Imagine that it is. Then no one can use any compiler that does not give an explicit permission to copy compiled binaries in its license. Now check out any compiler license from Microsoft, Borland, or Sun. Is the permission there? Check out your Notepad and Word licenses too. Do they give you an explicit permission to copy text files that were processed with these tools? No? You're SOL.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
We could answer your questions better if we knew more about your software.
If you are aiming at a large enough market, it is quite possible to get the benefits of open source without giving up the benefits ($$$) of non-free software. Put the source on the CD, shrink wrap the box, and stick it on the shelf in all the chain stores. It'll sell same as any other commercial product. After all, source code's only useful to programers, and we're a very small slice of the pie.
Likewise, if your taget market is very narrow, what do you lose? Chances are you were only going to make a few hundred sales, and in most cases those would be from larger businesses. In this case, you go on a support model.
Will some unscrupulous bastard give it away online? Sure. That'll happen with or without you opening the source. But by opening the source you've developed a rapport with the Open Source community, with all the benefits therein.
The only place I can't see Open Source non-free software working is in the mid-sized markets, but those are rarely where you find big money anyways.
Neu
ok, to join this interesting discussion i have a very similar question that bugs me for ages already:
a company (publishing house) wants me to write a program for them. i told them i wanted to gpl it, when it is finished. and they seem to have no problem with that.
there are multiple reasons why i want to gpl it. anyway... the question is: can i get paid for writing the program, while still making it free software and open-source (gpl)? so what i want to do, is selling my time, not selling the program.
especially i would like to know if this is ok with gpl, since i really don't want to violate this important license.
even if my program is not very usable for others as a whole, there are big parts in it that could be "recycled" in similar programs.
the answer is out there -- it's looking for you -- matrix
neither do i
- Why not release it as open source, but as shareware, so that if people want to use it they can and it is up to their conscience to register and send you the $50 or whatever you feel is appropriate. Remember, though, the more you ask for, the less registrations you'll get.
- You could offer rebates for people who have registered and then send in bugfixes.
- Alternatively, release as open source, but only charge for commercial use (like MySQL - http://www.mysql.com), so again, it is up to the company's conscience to send you $100 or whatever you think a company will think it is worth. Non-commercial users don't have to pay, but will quite likely contribute bug fixes and improvements.
- You could have a stable, bug-free version, and a development version that the contributors will help iron the bugs out of.
- Combining these approaches further, you could charge for the stable version (maybe release as binary only?), but allow free use of the development version to encourage bugfixes.
Well, you may agree with some or all of the above, or even none of it. I am interested in what others think.J
Here are some rather obvious observations, though I seldom see much reference to them during the time I've been reading /.
;) -- and of course programmers who still live at home and are supported by their parents.
Seems to me that most OS code has been developed by coders who have been supported in whole or in part by universities, benevolent corporations (large enough that they can't keep track of what some of their employees are doing, perhaps
Because circumstances allow this code to be developed for "free" -- it seems right that it should be released (with source) for free.
Code developed in the marketplace -- where the software developer assumes all of the risks and costs of development should have some rewards. Developers should not have to ask for remuneration by dangling support, upgrades or plain old begging. Whether or not the source can or should be released to the end user depends on the application/cost etc.
In any case, why should programmers feel guilty about selling a good piece of code?
What about the "millions of eyes" benefit of Open Source? No question that a large number of programmers have helped turn Linux into a viable server platform (I think the jury is still out for widespread desktop use).
I submit that for some applications, software is best improved by setting up a feedback loop with millions of CUSTOMER eyes -- not PROGRAMMER eyes.
So, if your company can muster the resouces to sustain the development of its software, then setting up a feedback loop with customers to further development seems like a good strategy. Let your customers "direct" the development by providing feedback on the features and functionality they desire.
Depending on the product, opening up APIs or code (with some reasonable restrictions) may turn out to be a requested "feature" -- or not.
Is this sig nificant?
Take a look at OS'es and stuff in the embedded scene, there are tons of commercial packages that are "you pay for our source" driven, cause when people build custom hardware they have to patch/modify/change/enhance the product in order for it to run on their hardware.
1) support
2) advertising revenue
3) "gold" packs with better features
4) market capitalization (must assume your product is worth something)
5) consultancy.
*yawn*
I don't understand why developers who feel secure releasing binaries are always so anxious to accompany the binaries with source. The assumption seems to be, "If I ship the source, some nasty bootlegger will come along and copy my stuff." But obviously it is considerably easier, rather than copying the source and recompiling it, to simply copy the binaries, or even to make a perfect duplicate of the entire install CD.
Look at Microsoft; they do not copy protect their software. Technically speaking you can duplicate, for example, the Office 97 CD. Has Microsoft gone broke? Hardly! They're the richest software vendors on the planet, but the only thing that prevents them from going broke is the respect end-users have for the terms of the EULA, or their fear of liability should they get caught, or whatever.
If a simple EULA is good enough to make Microsoft as rich as they are, why isn't it good enough for you? Simply draw up a license that says "you, the end-user, are only allowed to install as many copies of [your product] as you have acquired paid licenses therefore" and put it on the sleeve of the disc with the binaries and source. Yes, it doesn't protect you from a determined bootlegger, but then neither does withholding the source code - that bootlegger will simply copy the binaries, which are all that ninety-nine percent of users want anyway. If you're still upset over the possibility of a handful of illegal copies, then the only realistic solution is to close your code and ship your product with a parallel port lock or something like that - and even that will probably be cracked by some warez d00ds somewhere.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
If you want a VC to invest in your project, you have to convince that VC that the project will turn into a profitable project so the VC can earn his money back plus extra. Otherwise, why would a VC invest in the project? Unless it's a filantrope of course. ;)
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
You are facing a very similar dilemma to the one I face. I've come to the conclusion that for the stuff I am working on Open Source is a lovely idea, but impractical.
Firstly - the GPL is designed in such a way to guarantee that if you try to sell your software as a product, and are making good profit margins, that someone will undercut you, using your own work; it removes barriers to entry.
Secondly - there are very very very few OS companies whose primary product is a software package that are making money. If you know of one, tell me so that I can offer their software at a cheaper price than they do.
It seems that if you are a software developer hoping to make money by selling a product that you are dead in the water.
The standard suggestion is that you offer services rather than the software. For you that's an option, since you are selling into a 9's situation. For small or medium sized packages software designed for ease-of-use this does not seem to offer much hope.
(However I do think that packages with very small and larger scale user base can benefit by going OS. So Zope works because it has a large enough user base to generate service needs. Of course if there is a sinificant amount of code the demand for the original author increases.
There are a bunch of other models - I don't see many of them offering much hope...
Personalisation. Performance. Sponsorship. Last version is Open. Non-Open, with access to Source.
My advice - the Closed Source model has a history of making money, be cautious and stay with it unless there very very good financial reasons (not warm fuzziness) for going Open.
Jeff veit
(-1, hilariously misinformed)
(-1, obvious MS shill)
(-1, software bigot)
(+1, unintentionally funny)
(+1, good haiku)
or, in this case,
(-1, total nonsense)
It would make the hardware better and provide an initial source of financing. Can your software be useful or expanded for slightly different applications (Arsdigita Community System is on my mind)?
Although many large companies have the talent to install and expand Open Source stuff the suits who work there are allergic to free stuff, especially if it comes from small companies.
So I would first find a BIG industrial partner to establish a strong backing and then go after customers by pretending to be a spin-off of your partner. A few months later, once you have decent credentials, make your stuff available on the web so as to promote your brand.
I'm too lazy to type Sun's license agreement, but apparently it seeks to regulate distribution of compiled binaries only if the binaries happen to use "Tools.h++". This makes perfect sense to me. Tools.h++ is a library distributed as source code (by Rogue Wave I think). Software that uses Tools.h++ is a derivative work of Tools.h++. Compilers have nothing to do with it.
Oh well. Apparently all those companies that release closed-source stuff for Linux don't have legal departments, or use some super-sikr1t non-GPLed compiler. And the whole *BSD family is screwed, too.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
Ways to make money:
Sell add-on modules to the basic package.
Sell interface programs (from your package to other software packages).
Sell pre-loaded database of industry-standard (non-copyrighted) data.
Sell pre-loaded database of specific (licensed) data.
Sell pre-loaded database/catalog of vendor-specific data with an agreement from the vendor paying you a comission on product sales due to your software. (Major opportunities here.)
Sell custom code modifications.
Sell installation and training.
Sell services (remote application/data hosting).
Sell the associated (and required) big-buck database package (i.e., be an Informix, or Oracle reseller).
Sell software upgrade contracts. (Send notice/cd-rom when software is updated.)
Sell software support contracts. (Dial-in and telephone.) Assumes basic package is limited or no support.
OK, that took less than five minutes to come up with.
Thing is, figure out which you can do for least up-front outlay. Then offer that product/service. If it costs you nearly nothing, you don't lose big if nobody wants to buy, and you still have an impressive product/services list. The fact that not everybody will buy a particular product/service does NOT mean that NOBODY will want it.
Add to your product list. Keep adding to it. Don't let people think that you are a "one-trick pony". There's a world of folk out there who only want (for example) general ledger and accounts payable but who will not buy unless your product sheet shows payroll also.
I spent over eight years learning these lessons. If the moron who owned the company had learned any of them, we'd have made big bucks. He didn't; we didn't.
Good luck.
Right on brother (or sister)!
This is exactly how I am planning on making my money (so please god tell me this is gonna work!).
Fortunately I am in College still and am planning on writing some software in my free time that I plan to sell. It will be GPLed because I refuse to write a piece of proprietary software (my ideals getting in the way of my wallet there).
The way I figure it, if I price my service decently, I will be the author of the program and the one person who will know the code the best. If people are cheap and want to go to someone else, that is fine, because I only want the big money-making customers anyway!!
Hey, it might not mike Microsoft-like profits, but it oughtta make a living.
-Dave
P.S. I'd like to moderate you up but I already posted :(, so hopefully someone else will take the hint ;^)
Which is to say: a suit (dark grey, navy blue, or pinstripe), a shirt (white, windsor collar, or button-down for Yanks) and a tie (regimental, polkadot, or City silver). Black brogues and socks.
Pop quiz; where is the greatest concentration of suits and ties? Japan, that's where. The reconstruction of Japanese society after the war can be directly traced to their adoption of Christian dress codes. Meanwhile, the decline and fall of America, Britain and practically everywhere else into a moral cesspool of drugs, casual sex, guns, and liberalism can be traced to the 1960s decision to shun the tie.
I think of the open collar as a "gateway drug", leading on to harder substitutes. From the open collar, it is but a small step to being jacketless; thence to the round neck; then the (shudder) short sleeves and than (I can scarcely bring myself to say it) "Genoese cut trousers of Serge de Nimes"
You will note that your own Mr. Hitler, while often seen in competent (if ugly) German tailoring, could never get a really good four-in-hand not to stay in his tie (often resorting to vile swastika tie-pins). Indeed, at the first chance they got, the whole mouldy bunch of them trooped off to the Black Forest, collars flapping open like so many deaths' head flags! Lederhosen! And the Tyrolean hats were hardly bowlers. You were quite right to hate them on sartorial grounds alone.
Remember, (if I may be permitted to avoid the invocation of Godwin's Law as well), that history has shown us that those who begin by burning foundation garments will later burn people. And the necktie is a foundation garment. It is the foundation of honesty, morality and decency.
On a more practical note, a well-cut suit conceals a multitude of sins, from a too-much-Chinese-food-and-Mountain-Dew belly to a pair of too-much-Quake-and-not-enough-rowing sloping shoulders. Geeks and coders are precisely those who are most in need of them.
thank you.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
On the other hand, your program probably is under the gpl if you are right anyway. Ever send a binary over the internet? chanches are you will encounter some server running linux. And since the ip packets are being processed by it they are under the GPL, right?
Even your posts here are under the gpl since the slashdot servers processed it.
Does your point sound ridiculous yet???
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
If this product is in anyway a central part of your business, I would wait. Open Source is a business model, and just like any other business model, it has its risks and advantages. Importantly, Open Source is still an unproven business model. It reminds me of the whole free craze on the internet. The business model there is that you give stuff for free, and advertisers pay you for it. However, it turns out that that really doesn't work, and companies that give stuff away (like bigger.net or other free ISPs) are dissapearing. OSS still hasn't proved that it is a viable business model. Major companies like RedHat are still not making money off it, even tough they are in a strategic position in their market. Because of these reasons, I suggest you treat it like any other business model. Weigh the benifits and the risks. If it sounds like you can't stomach the risks, then OSS is probably not appropriate. Of course, as they say, nothing risked, nothing gained, eh?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It is all about service not software. A SOHO can buy NT, W2K, or Linux and to him it is just as usefull as a brick. Even the magic outta the box solutions take some work to intergrate. The person that can set those systems up and make them jump and do tricks for them is were the value is. It is really the customers choice as to what type of license his software is under and the fact they have a choice at all. To most I think, the license is just an after thought. They just want to get their work done and are happy to pay so long as it does not cut into the bottom line.
An underlying thread of the GNU folks, all denials aside, is that the tools of production should be free (thank you, Karl Marx). I agree half-heartedly with this. The logical behind this, and it is actually Capitalist logic, is that freeing the tools of production from the need for capital allows the best talent, not the best marketing or financing, to rise to the top.
For one or a few-person shops like myself, writing primarily for small businesses, spending thousands of dollars for an OS+database for each installation, and thousands of dollars for tools (the Universal Subscription is about $2000 now, per year, but I can see it rising, just as OS prices are rising), is a drag on profitability, which in turn places on emphasis on marketing hype to clients, rather than quality of product.
However, what the original poster has here is not a tool of production, but a product. Copyright it, encrypt the binary, and sell the heck out of it. If, on the way, you develop some tools, make those available with sourcecode to the community, preferably with a license that doesn't confuse the tools of production with the products of the tools.
My $.02.
Hank Fay
Perhaps you could release it, and the code, but with a restrictive license that doesn't allow redistribution... for the time being.
:)
You could put something in the license, though, that says "in 2002, this license will be null and void, replaced by the GNU General Public License (see Appendix A)"
That way, people have a warm fuzzy that the product has a life even if _you_ choose to move on to other things, they get the source right up front if they need it, and it still looks like you "get it."
What do you think?
---
As someone has pointed out, it's too late to be thinking about this.
Why did you write a product, before thinking about what you were going to do with it. The best fit for Free Software is stuff which you do not intend to sell -- for example, you may have been contracted to produce a POS system for a retailer. Once you have fulfilled that contract, and got paid, *then* you are in a position to GPL the source (unless the contract forbids it).
If you "just wrote it" with no real use for it yourselves, then selling it, closed license, is probably the only way you'll make any money. The best Free Software products were written because the author needed the software to do their job: take Apache; writing software was not the author's job description -- running a tight Web server was. Writing Apache made their job easier; giving it away (and developing an Apache community) made their job easier still.
--
There are many reasons why I think the GPL is really not going to work for commercial applications. It doesn't mean Open Source won't work, but the GPL in its current form allows too many opportunities for a competitor to take your code, mainly because that's exactly what the GPL was designed to do. The main reason is that it takes very little effort for another company to simply add on to your product. Thus, they end up with a superior product, at the cost of almost no R&D. This not only stiffles the development of the product (whose going to develop it if the other company will just steal it?) it takes sales away from the creator because the other company now has more resources (after all he spent very little "developing" a product!) to go after marketing and offering higher quality support. Maybe better for the consumer, but businesses won't like it, and in the end, they're the ones making the choices of what licenses to use. A more closed license (like the SCL) makes a lot more sense for businesses. It retains many of the advantages of Open Source, in that a consumer can fix bugs in their programs, and development speeds up, but it prevents another company from simply taking your work and adding to it. In the end, however, I think that commercial Open Source applications will be mostly second-rate. Put down those torches and hear me out. From a business point of view, Open Source is mostly a marketing gimmick. It is something that attracts users to your software. Unless the company is run by individuals that genuinely want to help users (rare, those people tend to set up projects instead) then OSS will be used as such. Usually marketing gimmicks are reserved for second-rate software. I think it is agreed that closed source allows a company to make a bigger profit of a high demand product. However, if the product is in low demand (read: low quality) then it may just be a way for a second-rate company to get some market share. Of course, there are exceptions to this, for example in system software and when facing software that is an entrenched power, even though superior solutions exist (read: Office). However, most popular software tends to be the higher quality ones, and I really don't think OSS is much of an incentive for companies making high quality software. If you doubt this, take a look at the current graphics market. NVIDIA is currently the market leader. There is nothing keeping them there (no propriotary APIs like Glide) except the sheer power of its hardware. (And good marketing to boot.) Now, second tier companies (like 3DFx and ATI) sieze this opportunity be releasing specs/open source drivers. This is the principal of using Open Source as a marketing gimmick for a product. I seriously doubt that anybody in 3DFx-land really wants to make the computing world a better place, (the original revolutionaries in management were mostly replaced, as was the original CEO), they are simply trying to regain market-share. This concept seems like it will progress to other companies in the software market as a whole, and unfortuneatly, OSS may not catch on in exactly the way you thought.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
After someone on USENET mentioned some version of gcc that was modified in a very specialized way, and sold for $5000, that got me thinking. Under the GPL (and many other open source licenses), you don't have to reveal source unless you distribute. If the price point is really, really high, the fact that you are giving the product away (after the sale) won't matter.
Think about it. Sure, people burn red-hat CDs and give them to their friends all the time. It's only a few bucks. Pizza money. What's a pizza among friends? OTOH, some business that payed $5000 for a system is not gonna just burn it and give it to a friend.
This obviously only works if the system you are selling is worth that kind of money. What you are describing sounds like a fairly specialized mission-critical business application--the niche for which I've anticipated that this business model for open source could be successful.
This model obviously fails for small, general purpose, consumer applications (drawing programs, spreadsheets, word processors and the like). Nobody will pay $5000 for that kind of stuff.
I have also toyed with the idea of anouncing that all my software will be Open Source. But it will cost you $200,000. Hey, Free Speach is what matters, not Free Beer, right? :)
As a salesman for your company, I'd approach customers and sell them a system which includes software that they will be allowed to modify and customize without legal restrictions. Sounds like a good product now, eh?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Oh wait...you probably are that AC. Must be pretty hard to troll without contradicting yourself, eh?
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
I would have to say none of those was the reason why. Either you have bad long term memory, or are a 15 year old troll. Microsoft didn't market their product [talking about DOS baby], PC's were bought in large numbers simply they were cheaper than macs and could get the same stuff done. Anyone could have done it... Move on four - six years and microsoft is now in the luckiest position in the world, now they try to market and advertise, god knows why, they hardly need to bother.
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
I was looking at this same idea for a game I might be developing. The way I see it, is you can just open part of the source, like the Quake engines do. Quake keeps the main engine closed source, since that's where the major competitive technology is. Everything else that uses the engine is open sourced. This way you can hide your "money making" parts of your source and still allow users to edit some of it. It may not be fully open source but it's a proven option that has worked immensely.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Yes, MAC address, ttl, etc
Is the output (binary) of gcc the same as the input (source code)? No. It is derived from the input.
Then what the hell are you talking about, first it is derived from gcc now from the source? It looks like you just killed your own argument. Make up your mind!
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Look into the Troll Tech model. Depending on what your product is you may be able to sell it for profit while making it free and open source for those who honestly prefer this.
If your product is a software library that can be used as part of other products then do exactly what Troll Tech dose with the QPL license too.
If your product is a server that dishes out content over the web ( AKA Real Player ) You make provisions that people must pay you or fully allow wholesale copying of all the content they distribute.
There are other solutions for other situations the key thing is to make your software free for those dealing in free content and free software. If it is done that way while remaining open source there will never be enough incentive for competent people to produce a free ( bear and speech ) clone.
You see people who live by copyright will find it simpler and perhaps cheaper to pay your license fees. Meanwhile those who live by Free Software and Open content will have no need to clone your stuff once the original works OK and you accept patches.
For proof of this just read of on the QT history. Ohh.. and try not to have any GPL compatibility issues even if it means saying "Thou shalt not write GPL code with our software"
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
However, they will become more and more knowledgeable with the software, especially from the user-side. This will extend codewise if they can get the source easily. There'll be situations where they want to fix stuff themselves, in order to meet deadlines and other things.
I don't quite agree. The time it takes to determine that a bug exists, locate the bug in the code, figure out what the fix should be, test the fix to make sure it works, test the fix again to make sure it didn't break anything else, then to implement the fix, is just too much for most people.
It's not that they aren't intelligent enough to read code and see the problem -- I can usually do that, and I'm not a professional programmer -- it's that it often requires a significant amount of time and mental energy to wrap your mind around a problem. I don't want to take *my* time fixing *your* code, even if it's something that I need done quickly. I have more important things (to me) to do. Instead, I would prefer to call you up, describe the problem, perhaps give a rough explanation of what I think the bug is, and then be able to say "Our service contract says you'll take care of this. When might I expect an updated version?"
I don't think that open sourcing would drive companies away, unless they had enough resources to dedicate people to understanding and maintaining the code in-house. In that case, they're not buying the product anyway, and wouldn't be interested in a service contract either. However, it may pull in some people who would like to know what's going on inside that box on their desk -- people like me who like to tinker around with the code, but don't want to have to rely on my own skills to get some jobs done.
kipli
Alot of interesting responses and suggestions, but from my scanning them,
all I could see is what is an endless loop that thru time shows a sine wave.
It doesn't have to be this way. There are other successful business models
that such problems won't "need" to exist.
Only playing the king of the hill game must end.
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
So is your claim, the data you put into the compiler is not altered to, so it is not under the GPL. And the data comming out is made out of both your source and data generated by gcc. So only the data generated by gcc is covered by the GPL, and that data is already opensource.
BTW ever thought about the interprater you use for your script, is it GPL'ed????? And the encoding/decoding program????
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Any evidence to support your claim? Name names, cite cases.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
Since we're on the subject, I can believe that most modern software is eventually derived from gcc. A lot of CPU manufacturers will generally just port gcc (For obvious reasons). As a result, most operating systems are descended from gcc. Therefore, programs were compiled either by gcc, by a compiler compiled by gcc, or by a compiler running in an OS compiled using gcc, or descendants therof.
Therefore, by this argument, all software is GPL'ed. Shame that the GPL DOESN'T apply to prgrams compiled using it.
Childish tactic. He said that IF the data generated by gcc is covered by the GPL THEN YOUR data is screwed, because data that is generated by gcc is everywhere. You say "great, now you see that the data generated by gcc is covered by the GPL". Unimpressing. I've seen trolls that are orders of magnitude more consistent than you.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
CMM is the Capability Maturity Model. It's a system for rating the processes used by a software engineering organization. Higher levels of the model indicate higher proficiency at developing software in an efficient, consistent manner. I think the levels go from 1 to 5. If you're really interested, here's a link. http://www2.umassd.edu/SW PI/processframework/cmm/cmm.html
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
d. To procrastinate at work.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
There is a couple of things I could see.
1. Release the documentation under the OPL (http://www.opencontent.org) with option B. This will allow the free distribution of the docs but only you can print them. This will not generate ALOT of revenue but there is some. Many programmers prefer dead tree docs.
2. Charge for "ANY" support. Use a call base for example, 35.00 per issue (may be a little low). Many people will use your product and be happy but there is always something you just can't quite get and need help with.
3. As another individual mentioned, offer customizations and charge by the hour. If the product is truly OpenSource any customizations that are made "out of" the actual development path can be used to enhance the product and you will get paid for it.
Joshua Drake
Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
Unfortunately, "open source" was created by the distributors and is clearly biased towards Debian, RedHat, and VALinux.
So you've got the following dilemma, either go closed source, or use an open source license and let the distributors make money from your work without paying you.
It's like the music industry. The artists make diddly and the distributors clean up.
Scott Ferguson
Scott Ferguson
Caucho Technology
I don't believe being forced to wear something uncomfortable aids productivity at all. At least with me, being forced to do something, regardless what, destroys my productivity.
I see no problem letting people dress the way they want- as long as they get work done! Would you rather have an office of slightly agitated coders or happy, relaxed coders, assuming both groups get the same amount of work done? If someone isn't working, fire them. If they won't work without a suit, they won't magically be motivated to work with one.
Before you start complaining about our style of dress having such complete control over productivity, give us some facts. Prove to us you are right.
I seriously doubt that a particular style of dress is the "real reason that so many of these Internet startups have failed." It may have a slight effect, but I'm guessing there are other, more significant things that cause the failure of a company.
You are probably right that a suit conveys the idea that you are there to work, but the lack of one does not mean that you cannot work.
Not wearing suits does not mean "insisting on comfort over results." No one ever said the two can't coincide. No one ever said that this industry was full of lazy, irresponsible geeks, either. If it was, the internet would work as well as a Microsoft application, and all the cell phones, pagers, videoconferencing equipment, office computers, and other office equipment used by who the geeks call "suits" would be about 10 years behind what it is now. I'm not saying there aren't lazy, irresponsible geeks out there, they're just not the ones running the industry. And wearing a suit has never been proven to turn a lazy, irresponsible geek into a stress-free, higly productive worker.
Having all these wonderful suggestions to deal with the problem at hand it is the next step that may be more important. My dad always says: one good lawyer is worth a whole bucketful of warm-fuzzies. Regardless of the decision get one of those hungry young suckers that will take a little stock for a fee to engineer the best way to do what ever is decided.
1. The Million Eyes. If you compile it they will come. If you open source it they will come... and fix it. At least that's the plan. Naturally "sexy" products get more attention in this model.
2. PR. Ugly, but true, a big chunk of OSS's benefits come from the PR boost it gives. Sure the stock-frenzy has calmed down a lot in the last while, but investors and customers still think that those of us in the open source camp know something they don't. Gosh, they say, they're giving their stuff away as a business model... they obviously know something we don't... buy their stock/product.
If you need a dose of 1 or 2, open source is for you. If not, open source is still an option as long as it doesn't put you out of business (or if you were never in business in the first place).
So, let's look at both: Number one (million eyes) can be an advantage. If your clients are 5-9s systems (I hear they exist, but working in a system rated as "an 8, a 5 and two 9s" I have a hard time imagining it) a million eyes may be regarded as a bonus. However, if your software is highly priced (as 5-9 stuff tends to be) you may be shooting yourself in the foot. Keep in mind, however, people will pay for the package to appease their boss. Witness my network. We run 250 Mac clients off several Solaris boxen. We use ethershare (about $12k). Netatalk is free. Fortunately for Helios (makers of ethershare) our uberboss would have an aneurism if he thought our workflow was entrusted to "something we downloaded off the net". It's not even a support issue... 80% of support is available in German only. Zum tuffel! ich ein komputererror! The question is: do the number of customers who will pay for peer-reviewed software outweight those who will download it for free. Get out the ouija board.
Does OSS PR matter? The question here is, do you believe that putting the GPL stamp of approval on your company brochure will move it closer to the top of tbe in box on the customer's desk. The PR game is tricky because you have to account for positive and negative publicity. You can have a great product, but if it's not open then all certain reviewers will discuss is your license.... not your software. Open sourcing avoids this bad PR. The good PR is trickier. For some customers it has a strong positive effect. For others, none at all... and for some it's a Bad Thing. If my Dad was shopping for serious corporate software (and god forbid he may one day...) he would definitely be adversely effected by open source. Sure he knows almost nothing about computers, but the vast majority of corporate budget-holders don't either. FUD is reality.
The bottom line IM(sometimes)HO is that you need to poll your customer base. The question is not "do you want open source" but do your customers want open source?
2 1337 4 u!
Compiler output is not a derivative work of the compiler....
:-) The unofficial translator won. It's been a while since I read about this case so I can't recall the details, but the translator was someone easily recognized today. Perhaps William F. Buckeley...)
Then why do many embedded system compilers charge per-customer royalties? Why did (does?) Microsoft include restrictions on the use of its compiler, e.g., you couldn't use MS C to develop a competing operating system or compiler?
This is one of those questions that can only be definitively answered by case law, but as I understand copyright law there is absolutely no doubt that the output of a <b>compiler</b> (but not assembler) is copyrighted. That's because compilers involve a significant amount of creative expression - do you unroll or optimize code, color registers, eliminate dead code, perform keyhole optimization, etc.?
A standard analogy is that assemblers are akin to transliteration of text, while compilers are akin to translation of text. Unless your lawyers are incompetent, they'll assure you that translators *always* have a copyright on the translated text.
(Historical sidenote: sometimes the translator's rights can exceed the original authors! In the 30's someone published an honest translation of _Mein Kampf_ and Hitler sued to cease publication. For some odd reason he wanted English speakers to see only a gutted version of his ravings.
Even if we posit that all of this work is unworthy of protection, there's the pesky fact that compilers rarely stand alone. Even if *your* code is unencumbered, you're gonna link it to startup code, standard libraries, etc.
Finally, your argument seems to come down to the compiler company's lawyers writing licenses that benefit the consumer. This is an... interesting idea. In the real world I doubt any of these lawyers would lose sleep over the fact that, *oops*, they forgot to include that clause and the customer needs to send in a check to get a license to distribute their own product. The major customers will always negotiate their own license terms (instead of being forced to accept the offered one or get lost) and I'm sure *those* licenses included the right to redistributed derived work.
(P.S., any usable text editor or word processor should give you back exactly what you put into it, so copyright law is not an issue. However, if you print to a file look at it carefully - you'll probably find a copyright notice in generated PS, PDF, or any other format that allows comments.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Considering the mix of open and closed source direction of Amiga Corps....
...
On 03-Jul-00 08:18:14 Pyloo wrote:
> Timothy Rue wrote:
>>
>> On 01-Jul-00 16:05:45 Steve Duff
>> wrote:
>> SD> Jason Compton wrote in message
>> SD> news:8jl1ja$1km$4@flood.xnet.com...
>> >> Steve Duff wrote:
>> >> : Oh, Bill made a bit of a slip when he bragged about the
>> >> : 'installed base of 7 million' Amigas.
>> >>
>> >> An ORDER OF MAGNITUDE isn't a slip, that's a bald-faced lie.
>>
>> SD> Well, I was putting a positive spin on it
>>
>> SD> Then again, lies are like oxygen in the computer world --
>> SD> companies seem to need them to live. Like Apple and its
>> SD> 'installed base of 25 million' Macs. Or like Bill Gates saying
>> SD> that Microsoft 'innovates' and makes 'great software.' One
>> SD> could quibble about which of these lies is closer to the
>> SD> truth, but they all stretch the long arm of credibility right
>> out of its socket.
>>
>> SD> It would be nice if the Amiga world could set a better
>> SD> example, but I understand Bill's desire not to seem like such
>> SD> a small-fry.
>>
>> SD> --
>>
>> SD> Best;
>> SD> Steve Duff Team *AMIGA*
>>
>> SD> A3000T, A4000T -- very nicely equipped
>>
>> I thought your post was worth repeating!
>>
>> Cept one small things or two. Something about tired legacy and
>> *not* being a small-fry only by getting on the band wagon everyone
>> else is on, called dishonesty. The term oxymoron comes to mind.
>>
>> Desert of the Real, is because of why?
> It is said that it is the ability to lie which allowed us evolve
> beyond our cousins, the apes...
> What do you expect from the human species, this being the case?
> Pyloo.
It was also said and published that traveling faster than 35 miles per
hour you would sufficate.
and I believe someone even published something with loads of errors in
what people said.
I recall something about computers being said by one well known in the
computer industry.... Something that in hindsight is obviously in great
error....now if I can only remember what it was...
Perhaps you or somone else here can help? Do you know of anything such as
this?
Hmmm, then there was someone at the patent office who said everything that
can be invented has already been invented. I believe their position was
that of director of the Patent office. This was before the advent of the
computer I believe.
Hmmmm, and about the missing link between ape and man..... Do you know
what this is?
Perhaps the ability to lie and chosing to is only a symptom of not
advancing enough.
Thomas Edison (General Electric) said AC power would kill. So the
governing system wanted to execute a prisoner and tried to with AC power.
The reason Thomas Edison said this is because He believed DC power was
better but that Westinghouse was competing with his more limited DC power
plants, by using AC power plants that could be wired for much further
distance.
It's true that AC power can be more dangerious than DC but the execution
attempt backfired on Thomas Edison intent to show AC was deadly and to
risky for public use.
They had to electrocute (AC) the guy twice.
Most remember Thomas Edison for the light Bulb, not the phonograph or
motion picture. And even fewer know about this execution history.
But as DC is oneway current, much like the oneway feeding of the computer
industry. AC is beginning to challenge it enough that DC has become
defensive and even attempts to make illegal the AC of open source and free
software.
Some are even trying to mix the DC with AC......using diodes to block what
they don't like while accepting what they can take for free themselves.
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
Not the original developers? Yeah, I'm gonna trust my 5 nines environment to someone who says they can do the support a little cheaper?
1000 SlashDot sigs
Let anyone download the program & source for free, but if they want a CD or printed manual, they buy it from you.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
I know many companies that will not allow open source softwares to be installed on machines. I work at one of them. Their reason for not allowing open source softwares like ssh, apache, linux, etc... is they can't trust to have the source code for their softwares in the hands of their enemys. (ie. hackers) I agree that open source software has MANY eyes looking at it and making it more secure than many many close source software, but I can see also that having the source code of a machine you are trying to hack could help VERY much! Not to 'bag' on open source, but even though MANY eyes look at open source softwares, there are still holes found every day not because of someone looking at it and found it, but because a box got hacked from an exploit or whatever. So it's a tough decision to make. Many big companies that deal with Government projects, credit card companies, etc.. they probably would rather have it close sourced .....
Check this out:
http://www.opensource.org/secrets.html--
Pierre Phaneuf
There always seems to be the assumption that if you make something free-software or open-source, you're required to throw it on your web site, announce it on freshmeat, and whatever else. There seems to be a suggestion that if anyone comes knocking at your door asking for your software, you've got to hand it out to them.
I've looked at the GPL in particular, and I don't think this is the case. It seems to me that the GPL prevents you from restricting *further* distribution of your code, once you actually distribute it. Meaning you have to give the source code to your clients and they, at their option, may distribute it further without paying you as long as they respect the same restrictions.
But so what? If you're selling something into an obviously vertical market, who says you can't charge $2,000 or $10,000 or $500,000 for the GPL'ed code? Do you really think Client A is going to turn around and give what they paid for to Potential Client B, who happens to also be Client A's competition? Do you think they're going to put it up on their website with a big notice saying "Here's what we blew our IT budget on this year, knock yourselves out?"
It seems like the GPL is better suited to this sort of thing than other licenses because it prevents your clients from turning the product into a proprietary package which it then uses to compete against you. You could write a non-compete clause into the support contract easily enough, though, which would probably be a good idea even if you do GPL the code.
There are the other XPL's too (Netscape et al), which seem to provide some of the benefits of open source to the squeamish, and you could always roll your own since everyone else seems to anyway.
Frankly, if your product isn't selling, its unlikely that changing some aspect of its licensing is going to make much of a difference. Perhaps if you told us more about the product, you would get some more useful advice. Open sourcing will not fix a unwanted or poorly marketed product.
The basic idea of mass-market busking is that you give stuff away and just ask for donations (and make it convenient for people to do so).
The theory behind it is that groups which pay more will have more buskers trying to please them and get their money, so there is a direct benefit for paying.
It makes the whole process open and honest. You can tell people "I want your money" because the only way you're going to get it is by making something they like well enough to pay for after having tried it. "I want your money" becomes equivalent to "I want to do something which benefits you", because you can't get their money by tricking them into paying for a bad product sight-unseen or slipping in bugs and making them pay for the fixes later.
Paying is effectively saying "I appreciate your work, and I want you to continue with it, but I'm also willing to make similar payments to others who do useful work for me". Instead of hearing about a great company going out of business and thinking "too bad, I wish they could have found some way to force us to pay them the money they needed, I guess they just had a bad revenue model" you can think "hmm, I value their services, how much am I willing to spend to keep them going?".
I think a lot more people will pay if it's okay for them to pay $20 or $5 or $0.50, instead of paying $50 or nothing. I think this article from the mushroom makes my point fairly well. And, of course, it makes sense to pay more than once, depending on how long you use the product.
It is efficient, because there are no middle-men involved. Product goes directly to customers, payment goes directly to producers. Forget advertising costs, the customers seek out worthwhile free stuff and tell their friends about it. No distributors, no salesmen, just programmers, artists, writers, and other creative people. It will probably only cost about a third, and in many cases less, to make and release products of the same quality.
And, of course, it allows you to open-source your product. The users will make it their business to pay only those people who are really responsible for the development, so anyone who puts a stupid little wrapper around your product might get a small amount of payment appropriate to his own effort, but generally won't manage to usurp the rewards for the bulk of the work.
Right now, there are two good services for buskware payments: e-gold and paypal. Paypal is extremely easy to use but only available to Americans; e-gold is less efficient, but internationally available (and, being a gold exchange rather than a dollar exchange, is more suitable for international trade). Both allow all accounts to both give and receive. They are compatible, because you can buy e-gold with paypal, and then send it out of the country, very simply.
Yes, it will probably take some time for everyone to come around, and get used to paying for some future benefit, rather than to access things they would otherwise be cut off from, but somebody's got to start it.
Give it away for free and charge for support. Sell support contracts, charge a set amount for an "incident", just charge for support of any kind. Decent documentation for it should still be available for free though, or no one will use it.
70% of Oracle's profits come from support contracts.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
There are many ways to make money off of something that you make available as free software. Few of them are very profitable, and usually when they are profitable they involve proprietizing some or all of the source.
;-)
It all really depends on who your target market is.
id Software released Quake 1 under the GPL and will license it proprietary to companies who want to make games with it since these companies do not want people to be able to freely redistribute their games.
Namesys released ReiserFS under the GPL and requires sponsership from companies to continue development.
Helixcode requires that anyone contributing code to their project release under the GPL and hand any copyright over to Helixcode so Helixcode has rights to the entire work. This means that Helixcode can license the code as they wish to anyone they wish. Eazel is working with Helixcode so I am assuming that their joint relationship is based on this.
Sun Microsystems is releasing Solaris 8 under a non-redistributable "open source" license.
The fact is that there are always going to be trade secrets, something you don't want your competitor to get the upper hand on you with. If your need to release the source is a stronger edge for you than your need for trade secrets, then this is what you should do.
But, I think there are two sides to this coin.
1) Releasing source code.
and
2) Freely redistributable.
If you release source, and disallow free redistribution then the source really is little use to anyone. At the least it is an educational resource for programmers.
If you release the source, and require that any modifications not be redistributed but may be given back to the original author/company then this may prove useful to you.
However, it will not prove useful to hackers, since they are not receiving anything in return. Free software works so well because these hackers can get free software and then feel obligated to help free software in return. This causes a massive build up of reward for free software developers. It is essentially exponential.
If you release your work as freely redistributable but not as free source then you aren't helping software developers.
If you release your work as both freely redistributable and free source then hackers love you and end users "pirate" more than usual.
But, as we have seen with software distributions, this is still profitable. But then, they are providing an ongoing service. So it really depends on what line of business you're running and what your product is.
I don't know what the right solution is for you. But, good luck.
Happy fourth of July everyone.
Sincerely,
Nelson Rush
"God prevent we should ever be twenty years without a revolution." -- Thomas Jefferson
Now this is important, so I'm gonna repeat it twice with increasing emphasis:
You don't need to license software you sell.
You don't need to license software you sell.
You don't need to license software you sell.
If you own the copyright, and don't give out any licenses, only you can make copies. Copyright law allows certain uses by anyone who buys a copy of software: installing it, running it, and making a backup. Very simple. No need to involve vicious packs of lawyers who piss off your customers and chew your profit margin to bits.
The standard practice of shrink-wrap licences is both unnecessary and legally questionable. Go ask a lawyer and he'll tell you that you should pay him more, every time, as long as he thinks you can make the payments (here's a hint: they ain't in it for the satisfaction of helping their fellow man). That's why everyone ends up with license who asks a lawyer, not because it's in their interest to have one, but because it's in the lawyer's interest to tell you to pay him for one.
Study the damned law yourself! Trust lawyers to tell you how much you should spend on lawyers, and you'll end up watching them suck you dry. (definitely don't trust me to tell you what to do. go check it out yourself. I could be lying, but I'm only telling you things you can easily check yourself)
In this system those who use open source software would freely (if they choose to) donate money to those OSS software projects which they wanted to contribute too.
The problem is not that there is a fundmental problem, but rather that the community at large fails to understand their role in the community. Educating the community on their role is therefore of exteam importance.
No one should be forced to donate to open source projects. It should be an act of free will (just like its an act of free will to release open source code). Rather it should be an exchange, of life energy. The user gives a programmer (or a group of programmers) money not because the programmers are 'owed' money, but because it's in the users own self interest to do so.
Imagine a community where programmers worked on what they wanted and then gave it away for free. Users who found value in that 'gift' would choose/or not to donate funds to that software project.
I believe this would have a number of benefits.
a) The programmer(s) would have an added modivation to write software that fits the users needs.
b) Useful/Popular projects would be well funded while unpopular projects would not be.(modivating people to work on what was useful).
c) Projects that are well funded would have a greater supply of programming talent, as there would be increased resources to distribute.
d) New projects would be inspired as people with new ideas would be able to start a project with the knowelge that if it is useful they will be rewarded.
d)The process would be self increasing. As a project became more popular, it would get more funding, and thus more programmers, and thus have more features, resulting in it becoming more popular, resulting in more funding ect.. ect..
I think our community is ready for such a shift as what I have suggested. I think the ideal situation for this would for a company like VA Linux to build a Donations section into their sourceforge site allowing users to distrubute funds to the projects they wish to help fund. For example John Doe, decides to donate $20 a month to opensource as a whole. (most people spend alot more on commerical software every month).
John sets up a donation profile which allocates $5 to the Linux Kernel team, $5 to KDE and $5 to GLIBC and $5 to be distributed amoung 'base' os compoents like gcc, binutils ect..
He could of course modify his profile at any time. It would be up to the copyright holders of the OS project to determine how to distribute the funds. Most likely they would create a non profit organization to handle fund distribution.
If there are 20,000,000 open source users in the world, and the average donation per month was $10.
That would come to: $200,000,000 per month in development funding. Not including any donations being made by Busineses that are users of open source software (like IBM?).
And of course, as our community grew.. our development fund would increase and thus attract more users :).
Just my 2 cents.
-- You can be a geeklord too
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
...to each according to his needs. I believe Karl Marx sumemd it up best. If people need your software, and you have the ability to provide, just do it. Things will balance out in the end. If you insist on playing in the Capatalist scheme of things, then you can make money off of support consulting services (as in the redhat model) or by selling hardware. If you sell hardware, of course your best bet is to make your free software use lots of CPU cycles so that you can sell more hardware. If you make money from support services, you will need to become clever at making your free software difficult to use. That way they will have to keep coming back to you for services. -David
Sorry to take issue, but this mythology that Apache as it is today was somehow a community free source victory is silly. IBM and Sun get 99% of their revenue from hardware and services. Almost none of it comes from software. Both have donated code to Apache to prop up its viability. Apache most certainly would not be a viable tool without the assistance of paid programmers from Sun or IBM. It is also common knowledge that the interest hardware vendors have put into propping up free software is simply a strategic move to bleed Microsoft's revenues.
No one has seemed to mention releasing this as a "source-availible" product. Especially in a 5-9s environment I would expect consumers to demand source-code so that they can verify what they're getting, but that doesn't mean that you need to give them the right to freely redistribute it if your livelyhood is on the line. There is no reason a traditional copyright can't cover source-code. You can even adopt a licence or policy that encorages people to submit patches to you, and maybe even defaults to GPL after a particular version of the product hits a certain age. I think this would provide a happy medium between people who want source-code, and your desires to make your product profitable.
Loren Osborn
In this system those who use Free Software would freely (if they choose to) donate money to the Free Software projects which they used.
The problem is not that there is a fundmental problem, but rather that the community at large fails to understand their role in that community. Educating the community in what they receive by giving freely back to the community is then of great importance.
No one would be forced to donate to Free Software. It would be an act of free will (just like its an act of free will to release free software). Instead it would be an exchange, of life energy (money exchanged for the programmers time). The user gives the programmer (or a group of programmers) money not because the programmers are 'owed' money, rather it's in the users own self interest to do so.
I believe this model would have a number of immediate benefits:
a) The programmer(s) would have an added modivation to write software that fits the users needs.
b) Useful/Popular projects would be well funded while unpopular projects would not be.(modivating people to work on what was useful).
c) Projects that are well funded would have a greater supply of programming talent, as there would be increased resources to distribute.
d) New projects would be inspired as people with new ideas would be able to start a project with the knowelge that if it is useful they will be rewarded.
d)The process would be self increasing. As a project became more popular, it would receive more funding, and thus more programmers, and thus have more features, resulting in it increasing in popularity, resulting in more funding ect..
I think our community is ready for such a shift as what I have suggested. I think the ideal situation for this would for a orginization like VA Linux (or even the FSF) to build a donations section into sourceforge site allowing users to distrubute funds to the projects they wish to help fund. For example John Doe, decides to donate $20 a month to opensource as a whole. (most people spend alot more on commerical software every month).
John sets up a donation profile which allocates $5 to the Linux Kernel team, $5 to GNOME and $5 to GLIBC and $5 to be distributed amoung 'base' os compoents like gcc, binutils ect..
He could of course modify his profile at any time. It would be up to the copyright holders of the OS project to determine how to distribute the funds. Most likely they would create a non profit organization to handle fund distribution.
If there are 20,000,000 open source users in the world, and the average donation per month was $10.
That would come to: $200,000,000 per month in development funding. Not including any donations being made by Busineses that are users of open source software (like IBM?).
And of course, as our community grew, our development fund would increase and thus our user base would grow even more.
Just my two cents.
-- You can be a geeklord too
I love this idea. Imagine it as the base of economics in years to come.
If a Gift economy existed there would be no big companies like microsoft(example - could of used IBM) because all companies would be owned by the labour that works there.
We gift our labour becuase it is advantageous to us to produce for our consumption.
All essentials could be provided to people. Already there is no reason for people starving etc EXCEPT GREED
Poor people could donate less, gift less. But often their less in comparision to what they have is more that what non poor people would give.
I believe an economy like this could work.
It just doesn't because there are a few powerful people who are too fscking greedy.
I know this is off topic, but before moderating it so THINK it may be offtopic but how important is it?
First, check Eric Raymond's the Magic Cauldron, pointers given by others.
Second, you state:
We're also doing development in a CMM-3+ environment, so there is no need for someone to buy support unless we purposely start adding "features" (i.e. bugs) or make it so complex no one can use it without calling us on the phone. That's just not an acceptable option since our product needs to operate in a five-9's environment, where if it doesn't work right it's never even allowed in the building.
Having worked in these environments, they want a support contract. I don't care what CMM level you work at, if something goes wrong, they want to call someone, NOW (especially if you literally mean 99.999% uptime, which is 5 minutes of downtime a year). More importantly, they want the assurance that they CAN call someone NOW.
Also, how much customizing is needed to get your product working in an environment? Unless it is a drop-in widget, they're going to want your expertise in configuring it to work in their environment.
Sure, they could do it themselves, but why pay their employees to learn the system, when they can hire your expertise whe needed?
You also state:
We realize that if we do keep the source closed, but open the API or docs, someone will clone it because they don't want to pay for our work. Even with the typical no-quality clone, this makes the product life too short and the market too small to justify the large development costs.
So, you will be facing open source at some point - better start now thinking about how you will make money when this does happen - it's not an if, it's a when. If you can make money then, why not now?
BTW: for a look at a company that has open-sourced a HA solution, visit Mission Critical Linux who are giving away (GPL) their Kimberlite clustering solution, but also selling services and support around high-availability linux environments (as well as other mission-crtical linux environments).
I believe that's only a valid model if the product is a library. Qt does fit the open source definition and can therefore be used for just about anything. But it can't be used for commercial software because its license prevents linking to it (which is NOT prohibited in the OSD).
If your product is a program and is open source, then you cannot prevent its free use in for profit applications.
I only wish I was a professional Quake player. ;) I'm actually just a high school student, so I'm not the most qualified person to comment on this issue. But I do think I have a few valid points to raise.
You seem to think I'm advocating letting employees slack off and do whatever they want. I'm not. Let them find out what works for them, not what you say works for them. Geeks are in favor of what works. They also acknowledge (correct spelling?) that the same thing may not work for everyone (if you can find a Harvard Business Review article saying all people are exactly the same, that geeks are the same as average people, go ahead and prove me wrong). Geeks are also in favor of freedom. If they find a job where they don't work in fear, they'll probably go there (unless they're paid tons or have a job that really interests them). I'd think it would be better to keep employees, but I may be wrong.
BTW, what common sense are you referring to? I didn't know common sense meant to make everyone fear you. But, my idea of common sense is probably different than yours.
> > Yes, MAC address, ttl, etc.
>Yes, but that is not my data.
Ahh. Now we're getting somewhere..
The optimizations and other _transparent_
processes that gcc performs on your source
do not modify your data. The output is a direct
consequence of exactly what you put into the
compiler... If you put it into another
compiler, you'll get the same application.
This is ridiculous.. Your lawyers suck.
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
In the words of my old IP law lecturer: "your lawyers are stupids!"
Output of a compiler is not a derivative work of that compiler. Not not not. You must understand how that word is used within the context of the Copyright Act. But first, some definitions...
Copyright is a bundle of rights. The right to reproduce (copy). The right to translate. The right to hire. The right to produce a derivative work. Remember that copyright for literary works was intended to cover literature -- not source code. Coverage for computer code as literary works is legal hacking of the copyright act.
An example of a derivative work is a screenplay derived from a novel. Or a second edition derived from a first. You must start with the original work and derive from there. Note that compiler output does not fit this model at all. The lawyers who said otherwise were either poorly informed about the law, compilers, or both.
It's also important to remember that the Borland licence agreement was drafted at a time when some of these issues were being seriously debated. For some there is still uncertainty and, in any event, you can often over-ride provisions of an act with contract terms (unless that legislation explicity prevents this). So, as awlays, RTFL (read the friendly licence).
But your knowledge is based on error!
While I agree that the goal of Free Software and much Open Source software is the common good of the users, I disagree that this one aspect makes all Open Source compliant licenses impractical for business. In fact, the GPL defends the original producer quite well in this case. If a competitor steals my GPL'd product, adds a few features to it, and tries to resell it as an improved version, the GPL forces him to distribute his changes under the GPL too. Thus, if his additions really make a better product, I can easily incorporate them into my product, too. If I used the BSD license, for example, then my competitor could distribute modified binaries without source, and I'd be dead.
The fact that he can start with a large code base does reduce his barrier to entry, but unless his changes diverge from the direction I'm taking my GPL'd product or include other changes that I'm not willing to incorporate because of my target market, then I can just incorporate his work into my product. If so, then perhaps he's chasing a different market segment, which won't hurt my sales unless I'm completely wrong about who buys my product. In any case, I'm always free to grab his changes and put them in my product later. Finally, I can claim superior knowledge and understanding of the product since my company wrote it.
A good example of changes that were not merged and premitted a competing product would be the Mandrake Linux distro, which was originally Red Hat + KDE, recompiled from source with Pentium optimization. Red Hat was originally unwilling to incorporate KDE into its distro because of the Qt license. It also didn't compile with Pentium optimization, presumably to reach a broader audience. Thus, Mandrake could more easily create a distribution, and Red Hat did not incorporate Mandrake's improvements because Red Hat didn't need/want to make those changes in its distribution.
There is some fear that a competitor would resell your product for half the price since it doesn't have to pay the developers. (For example, cheapbytes.com) Of course, you have to educate your resellers and other users that putting you out of business this way will leave them with a dead product line. A former co-worker paid for his Qt license as soon as we determined that we were going to use it for a product. We could have continued to use the free versions during development, but his words at the time were something like, "It wouldn't help us if Troll Tech went out of business."
If your product is for businesses, or is very applicable towards them, simply sell support, and use redhat's idea. Do something like make the program open source and API's open source, but sell support. Business support could be like if they can't figure out why it doesn't work, let them call in for help. You could also have support for programmers for help with the API's, and sell a nice manual for the api's. Maybe try having business input, they tell you what's wrong you adapt it in the next version, so the businesses felt like they bout the programmers effort......OR something.?
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
I like the Open Source philosophy because it gives all freedom to all society to use the software so it helps EVERYONE and not ONLY ME.
Like this paragraph taken from gnu.org:
It states socially useful, so until a society uses a communist, democratic system Open Source will only be a hobby practiced by us geeks with another full time job to pay other persons so they amass their fortunes and to amass our fortune, and fighting between ourselves.So, answering this question, I recommend you DON'T go with open source now, maybe some day... hopefully one day!
--
EHC
Well, if you're working in a high end environment, people are going to want modifications. Not everyone in your market is going to either have the manpower or the knowledge to get this done.
Sell MODS. In all environments that I've worked in or consulted for, people are always wanting 'this little feature' and 'that little extension that the competitor has'. No firm wants to pay for both, especially in a higher end environment where 5 digit (or higher) price tags are found.
Use your programmers as the moneymakers, not the code that they produce. Nothing requires you to release these changes as well, so a code base that 'does the job', and addons that are customized for various business use would be an ideal solution.
Alongside this suggestion, would be to take programmers who aren't working on a current project to provide API and development support for the sourced program, at a fee. Obviously, despire the documentation, the programmers are going to be able to provide even better support for their own code that they write.
I got this idea from a company that sells business software (their software blows, but that's another story). I had to support this, written in COBOL (yech), for a business that used the softare.
Original price tag for distribution - roughly $7k for it and a 10 user license.
Technical Support - $4k per year
Modifications to translate custom price files used by their distributors - $3k
They handle multiple companies and seem to make a decent living while doing it. The fact that they have the programmers who develop the actual software write the modifications makes it a big plus to hire them to do the work in spite of the fact that hiring a 'y2k is over' out of work COBOL programmer is significantly cheaper.
-Erik-
Build a brand. Give away the source, but sell the binaries for a lot of money by branding them. When you brand the binaries, it means you compiled them (no viruses or trojans), you tested them, and you will support them. Essentially you are asking money for your reputation - as you were the original coders, you are the best experts, thus stand the best chance to build a brand around it.
Your confused - high quality, documentation, small footprint and innovation (you did mention patents, right?) are not shortcomings.
These sound like good reasons you should conquer your market.
Depending on the end users and market size, various levels of training will be viable. Other people mentioned other routes to money.
Just remember that if you're selling support(/training/favorite service here), you will be doing support. The "How do I make money writing code I give away" is not trivially solved this way. Think custom coding and constant improvement.
So why not go and make money doing something else?
Open Source it, and go and do something more interesting!
If you've gotten this far in your project without actually figuring out who your customers are, and what they would be willing to pay for, I'd say you're in more trouble than fiddling with the licensing will solve. Maybe it's time for you to actually go out and talk to some potential customers.
Shareware sets a price, often a ridiculously high one chosen on the premise that only a tiny percentage of users will pay ($50 for a simple utility with a nice interface is pretty typical; I don't know about you, but I rarely have $50 just kicking around to give away). If people are willing to pay a little, but not that much, you get nothing. If people are willing to pay more, you lose out on the extra they would offer. Also, most shareware in the past (and present) doesn't have a convenient way to pay.
I suspect that pretty much everyone who uses the software wouldn't care about parting with a quarter or fifty cents, and most would give several dollars for a product they use often. Wealthy individuals or companies would likely be willing to pay a lot to get special attention paid to their bug/wish lists (look, here's a wad of cash, there's more where that came from if you make these changes).
There's pretty much nothing to make people pay for any software. The risk of being caught and punished is virtually nonexistant. Copying is easy and cheap.
Those who pay do so because they believe that it would be wrong not to, ultimately because if everybody did it, the products wouldn't exist. I believe that if you give people more freedom and control in this process, they will respond appropriately, and protect their own interests.
The penalty for not paying (or paying too little) is: being ignored by the mass-market buskers when they choose what to make. Broad appeal isn't always necessary, appeal to a profitable market is.
Mass-market busking is not appropriate for non-reproducable products and services, for obvious reasons. Things like HTML text, computer programs, and recorded music are special products that have unlimited supply once created. The only influence the user needs is over what is produced, and they could gain this influence by rewarding (with donations) the behavior which benefits them, effectivly training the system to serve them.
HEY! I LIKE AL GORE!
I'm just kidding. WTF, to hell with him too...
(please don't mod me down for this - It was just too tempting! I doubt many people will come across the post anyway. Would it help if I said I've recently decided to learn to use linux because I'm just sick and tired of this M$ Windoze BS?!? You know you LOVE Linux users, right? whimper whimper...)
Everything and everyone is an aspect of Gd. So remember to show proper respect!