If you merge these 2 aspects: DRM first, free(er) one later, you could get most of the money, and the PR bonus of being DRM free, which, as more people get anno

If you merge these 2 aspects: DRM first, free(er) one later, you could get most of the money, and the PR bonus of being DRM free, which, as more people get annoyed by cumbersome DRM, could even give you a 2nd sales bump. The problem would be to avoid the situation where it's released, and nobody buys it for the first week/month/whatever, and then it's immediately distributable. The answer might lie in the 'ransom model', which is a bit like kickstarter, except "Once we've made $n million or sold 5M copies, we'll open it up" You then get that money almost guaranteed (avoiding the simple delayed purchase option), and if done carefully, you might even hit your targets before it's cracked, which if you can do that with any regularity, crackers may just stop bothering (Or they'll take it as even more of a challenge - hard to say)