Licensing Software to Individual vs. Corporation?

FortKnox asks: "After reading the story of the current Slashdot interviewee, I've been pondering software selling schemes/licensing. We've all heard the pro-piracy slogan: 'A $2,000 program pirated by a 13 year old, with a net worth of $13.50, deprives the publisher of $0.' Which makes perfect sense. But piracy opens up the ability to get the product for free if you CAN afford the product. Usually, the biggest 'piracy offenders' are people grabbing software designed to be bought by corporations (engineering CAD programs, 3D Studio Max, etc...) so the individual never has a chance to learn the product. My question is, what kind of selling schemes/licenses would work to allow the individual to learn and use the product, but still allow the publisher to make a profit from corporate sales?"

"Microsoft has a nice licensing idea for colleges. They sell 'student' licenses for $5 for any MS product (I got VC++6 for $5). The stipulation was that I could not commercially sell anything I developed with the product. This was fine by me. It gave me the experience with VC++ so that I could go to an employer and tell them that I've used the product at home and am comfortable using it.

A big benefit for the publisher is that you get customers of the product right away, who are more likely to either buy it when they belong to a company or put in a word to switch to it from a competitors product. Why isn't this type of license used more often? I could see many open source projects would highly benefit from licensing like this, and the publishers advantage is that they could even use it as free marketing (a completely fictional example - KDE3, designed with Rational Rose, icons made by 3D Studios Max, testing done with JUnit and WinRunner).

So, are their any other licensing/selling schemes that would allow the individual to use the product, and the publisher still make a profit on corporate sales?"

Comments

It's quite common

[sql*kitten]

A big benefit for the publisher is that you get customers of the product right away, who are more likely to either buy it when they belong to a company or put in a word to switch to it from a competitors product. Why isn't this type of license used more often? I

This sort of licensing scheme is quite common, when I was a student I got MATLAB and CodeWarrior, in addition to MS Office under these terms. Unfortunately it did not result in more sales for those companies when I graduated, although if I'd gone into Engineering, it would have :-)

WS_FTP

[Apreche]

the license on software like WS_FTP or Sygate's firewalls is great. They have fully functional versions of their software available for free to home users that will continue working forever. But if a business user wants to use their software they have to shell out the cash. Keep in mind these aren't open source, but that really doesn't make a difference in this case. I really wish more software was like this.

QNX

[JohnTheFisherman]

QNX does this - free *nixy RTOS for non-commercial use.

Re:licensing

[leviramsey]

as to more moral licensing, I have always believed that the GPL can be modified to include clauses for corporate, educational, and governmental customers (all different pricing structures of course). this way the customers that can afford it must pay some small fee.

Considering that that modification would place the GPL into the category of "Non-Free Licenses", I highly doubt it.

Relevant quote from the Free Software Definition:

A free program must be available for commercial use....