3 ms·

as a licensee, i would suggest that you not bother. too many people are dishonest about it, and too many things blur the lines between personal and commercial

by noodle 18y ago

as a licensee, i would suggest that you not bother. too many people are dishonest about it, and too many things blur the lines between personal and commercial usage. looking back at it, i've installed something intended for personal use, but later on used it for commercial use, totally forgetting about the license agreement. one product in particular, i can think of, i would've paid for if i would've remembered. but they went under. probably from the license that few paid for. instead, i would suggest you offer two version, a "lite" version for free and a fully-featured version for $$$.

huhtenberg 18y ago
> but later on used it for commercial use This is remedied by periodic re-verification of the usage purpose when in personal license mode. I am wary of lite/pro model, because it complicates the offering. Looking through the feature comparison matrix may be quite confusing, especially if pro version is packed with not so frequently used features. Also, if too many features are withheld from the lite version, it will drive users to use 'patched' pro versions. On other hand, if the lite version is liberal, the pro version will suffer as its usefulness will decline. Finding a balance depends on knowing your userbase and the userbase won't stabilize until the lite/pro matrix is stable. So it's a catch 22.
- noodle 18y ago
  > This is remedied by periodic re-verification of the usage purpose when in personal license mode. this "might" be remedied by periodic re-verification. again, you're fully relying on the individuals being honest and reporting their own usage. i'm just pointing out that your revenue stream is going to be inconsistent. with respect to lite/pro model, look at the 37signals products. they've definitely made headway with the pro/lite model. they don't strip away many features, but they also limit the product in other ways.
  - huhtenberg 18y ago
    > you're fully relying on the individuals being honest and reporting their own usage Both models rely on this. Just keep in mind it's not a service, but an application. There's no way to enforce certain usage, so it comes down to whether you want dishonest users running a hacked version or the original app (and thus allow them an option of going straight at some point).
    - noodle 18y ago
      there's a big difference between someone clicking "personal" on your popup to be dishonest on the personal/commercial license model, and someone spending the time to crack and reverse engineer your product to be dishonest with the lite/pro license model. i disagree with your assertion that there's no way to enforce certain usage.
      - huhtenberg 18y ago
        The difference is not as big as you might think. The end-user won't be cracking the protection himself. He'll just create an (implicit) demand for the crack and other people will create it. Absolutely all protected applications are broken within few months (or weeks) of the release. Even the most boring and virtually useless ones. That's a first-hand info from various shareware devs that I personally know; and it's also quite obvious from a trivial Google search for any given app. > i disagree with your assertion that there's no way to enforce certain usage. There is, of course, a way to enforce the usage, but effective protection very quickly becomes very ugly. Proper protection requires rootkit-like functionality, some untrivial code encryption and self-consistency checks, etc. And in the end it's all about fighting users that have their mind set on stealing. That's just pointless.
        noodle 18y ago
        as you say, its about fighting users that have their mind set on stealing. the vast majority of people who actively steal your application have the mindset to steal it, and almost definitely wouldn't have paid you anyway. the point i'm trying to make is that the subset of people who are actively looking to steal your application is smaller than the subset of people who will passively steal it by not registering it as commercial. you're providing the "do you want to steal this application?" button straight away yourself, making anyone, whether their mind was set on stealing or not, have to actually make that choice. if you're looking to make money off of this, why would you even give your users that option?

by noodle 18y ago

huhtenberg 18y ago

> but later on used it for commercial use This is remedied by periodic re-verification of the usage purpose when in personal license mode. I am wary of lite/pro model, because it complicates the offering. Looking through the feature comparison matrix may be quite confusing, especially if pro version is packed with not so frequently used features. Also, if too many features are withheld from the lite version, it will drive users to use 'patched' pro versions. On other hand, if the lite version is liberal, the pro version will suffer as its usefulness will decline. Finding a balance depends on knowing your userbase and the userbase won't stabilize until the lite/pro matrix is stable. So it's a catch 22.

noodle 18y ago
> This is remedied by periodic re-verification of the usage purpose when in personal license mode. this "might" be remedied by periodic re-verification. again, you're fully relying on the individuals being honest and reporting their own usage. i'm just pointing out that your revenue stream is going to be inconsistent. with respect to lite/pro model, look at the 37signals products. they've definitely made headway with the pro/lite model. they don't strip away many features, but they also limit the product in other ways.
- huhtenberg 18y ago
  > you're fully relying on the individuals being honest and reporting their own usage Both models rely on this. Just keep in mind it's not a service, but an application. There's no way to enforce certain usage, so it comes down to whether you want dishonest users running a hacked version or the original app (and thus allow them an option of going straight at some point).
  - noodle 18y ago
    there's a big difference between someone clicking "personal" on your popup to be dishonest on the personal/commercial license model, and someone spending the time to crack and reverse engineer your product to be dishonest with the lite/pro license model. i disagree with your assertion that there's no way to enforce certain usage.
    - huhtenberg 18y ago
      The difference is not as big as you might think. The end-user won't be cracking the protection himself. He'll just create an (implicit) demand for the crack and other people will create it. Absolutely all protected applications are broken within few months (or weeks) of the release. Even the most boring and virtually useless ones. That's a first-hand info from various shareware devs that I personally know; and it's also quite obvious from a trivial Google search for any given app. > i disagree with your assertion that there's no way to enforce certain usage. There is, of course, a way to enforce the usage, but effective protection very quickly becomes very ugly. Proper protection requires rootkit-like functionality, some untrivial code encryption and self-consistency checks, etc. And in the end it's all about fighting users that have their mind set on stealing. That's just pointless.
      - noodle 18y ago
        as you say, its about fighting users that have their mind set on stealing. the vast majority of people who actively steal your application have the mindset to steal it, and almost definitely wouldn't have paid you anyway. the point i'm trying to make is that the subset of people who are actively looking to steal your application is smaller than the subset of people who will passively steal it by not registering it as commercial. you're providing the "do you want to steal this application?" button straight away yourself, making anyone, whether their mind was set on stealing or not, have to actually make that choice. if you're looking to make money off of this, why would you even give your users that option?