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You can fix this with licensing, as many products do inversely: they have a free educational / nonprofit / noncommercial version (e.g. many CAD programs in the

You can fix this with licensing, as many products do inversely: they have a free educational / nonprofit / noncommercial version (e.g. many CAD programs in the past) and if you don't fall in the carveouts, you must pay $$$$$. Also some forms of libraries and game engines ask that you pay $X per year if you earn more than $Y per year, including the reviled changes to the Unity license, as does Apple given the app store have a lower tier theoretically for smaller businesses. I've done this in the past for people - same product, but "Certified HIPAA Compliant" or what have you, even when the base level is already HIPAA compliant. But we won't sign a BAA for you unless you cough up or demonstrate need. You can do this with this kind of tool by offering a tier for private citizens, and a tier for governmental agencies. Or even rebrand with a separate tool: GovCloud, for example.

seanwilson 3y ago
> they have a free educational / nonprofit / noncommercial version (e.g. many CAD programs in the past) and if you don't fall in the carveouts, you must pay $$$$$. > Also some forms of libraries and game engines ask that you pay $X per year if you earn more than $Y per year, including the reviled changes to the Unity license, as does Apple given the app store have a lower tier theoretically for smaller businesses Is it common for companies to try to find workarounds to stay on lower tiers (e.g. signing up on a personal email but using it for company work), especially when you can't verify which tier they should be on? I've rarely seen pricing tiers like this in smaller SaaS products for example and I'm curious how well they'd work. I've had product ideas where I'd be happy to give it away for free to people that can't afford it but then I can't see a simple way to check this. You see "email us to use for free if you can't afford it" sometimes.
- lukas099 3y ago
  The bigger the org, the more risk averse wrt legal issues like this generally

seanwilson 3y ago

> they have a free educational / nonprofit / noncommercial version (e.g. many CAD programs in the past) and if you don't fall in the carveouts, you must pay $$$$$. > Also some forms of libraries and game engines ask that you pay $X per year if you earn more than $Y per year, including the reviled changes to the Unity license, as does Apple given the app store have a lower tier theoretically for smaller businesses Is it common for companies to try to find workarounds to stay on lower tiers (e.g. signing up on a personal email but using it for company work), especially when you can't verify which tier they should be on? I've rarely seen pricing tiers like this in smaller SaaS products for example and I'm curious how well they'd work. I've had product ideas where I'd be happy to give it away for free to people that can't afford it but then I can't see a simple way to check this. You see "email us to use for free if you can't afford it" sometimes.

lukas099 3y ago
The bigger the org, the more risk averse wrt legal issues like this generally