4 ms·

$300 for a single developer, and the EULA says I can't transfer this license to another person?

by solox3 14y ago

xuexue 14y ago
We'll be reviewing the licensing option per feedback from HN. Please send a note to team@polychart.com, would love to hear more about what you think would be reasonable :)
- solox3 14y ago
  On the other hand, do I get a price break if I contribute to the GitHub project? What if I am a company?
- Demiurge 14y ago
  In a world of so many wonderful free open source graphing libraries, it's hard to see any reasonable licensing option for this. It might help if there was a page that listed features that a developer could not accomplish for $300 in flot, highcharts, or ndv3, or other popular options.
  - pessimizer 14y ago
    Highcharts isn't free either, at least for commercial use.
    - chaostheory 14y ago
      It's cheaper.
      - Ecio78 14y ago
        Highcharts is cheaper if you use it for a single webpage (90$) but if you want to use if for a real web app it's more expensive (590$ for a single developer). Having said that, in my enterprise my dev colleagues use it and they think it's a great product. EDIT: if you host it for a personal/non-profit project it is free according to Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License another product we've used in the past is Amcharts, good buy maybe not good as Highcharts
      - Demiurge 14y ago
        And I still prefer the free flot or flotr2, because they are easier to modify.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Interesting question. So if I use this to display site metrics for me and my team, is that a commercial use? I'm not selling that service but in that example I would be using it to provide a visual indication of how the site is doing which helps me do my job. Generally pricing isn't particularly challenging, people exchange money for perceived value so identify the value that you add and charge for that. So places where you might be adding value; developer training - A common source of value and one which a lot of non-community FOSS members appreciate. So folks who aren't part of the community or know much about anything find it valuable to have someone who will answer their stupid questions in a timely fashion without insulting them. That could certainly be charged on a per-developer level and annually. data-hoisting - (see what I did there? clever huh?) basically there is value in getting your data from X hosted on Y. So lets say I periodically scrape all of the stock prices for the DJIA and want to provide an interactive chart for that. A data hoisting service would provide a repository for post-processed and chart friendly data. You can price that with visualization support almost on a contract basis. custom visualizations - there will be people of course who want to visualize something in a way which is unique, consulting services for them can be quite valuable. ad-sponsored charts - something between hoisting and foisting but there are charts that people "check" very often (like the 5 day weather forecast, or the traffic delays on various freeways). You can certainly create pages which display visualizations of these and also are "sponsored" by an advertiser. The trades of bit coins for example, rent prices by zip codes, basically changing data sets of interest to both a number of people and to people who would like to advertise to people interested in that data.
bradleyjoyce 14y ago
I don't understand this per-developer licensing model. Not only is it completely non-enforceable but feels really out-dated and out of touch in the era of FOSS. I will pay for an awesome charting product, but I don't want to have to think about how many developers will touch the code, when, how or why. Something like a license per production site or an unlimited license makes a whole lot more sense to me and allows me to quantify the cost in terms of the value it provides to my business rather than how many developers I have.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  I don't understand this per-developer licensing model. Not only is it completely non-enforceable but feels really out-dated and out of touch in the era of FOSS. Hasn't commercial software been licensed effectively per-user since forever? It used to be per-machine but these days with lots of developers using a desktop and a laptop I think it makes sense to say it's for one user at a time instead and avoid creating lots of silly infringements. If you don't like anything resembling that form of licensing, perhaps you're projecting a preference for everything-should-be-free culture onto commercial development where someone has to pay the bills? Unfortunately, sometimes that just doesn't work. Having a per-user or per-machine licence where the licence is not transferrable seems crazy to me, though. We consider such licensing conditions toxic, because all it takes is someone to leave or a hard drive to crash and you've lost your investment, so usually seeing that will end our interest immediately. (For completeness: We will make a grudging exception for software that is essential to our business and can't be had any other legal way or replaced with any better alternative. However, you don't buy software like that with a quick web site download anyway, and if we get screwed on that kind of deal lawyers are involved. Obviously a charting library is nowhere near this level, though.)
  - bradleyjoyce 14y ago
    In no way am I projecting a preference for everything should be free. I specifically said I was willing to pay, but per developer makes no sense to me at all. I build a commercial product myself that I charge for. My point is that per-developer licensing doesn't make sense on any level... just because "that's how people have always done it" doesn't make it a good idea and that type of pricing doesn't allow me to compare the cost to the value. Instead of thinking, this product is awesome and I can use it on my 5 sites for $X.. I have to think, ok I have 20 developers and 5 of them work on site A, 7 on site B and the rest float around so how many people would need to be developing with the library, etc etc. Right? or am I missing something here and am crazy? which is entirely possible.

$300 for a single developer, and the EULA says I can't transfer this license to another person?

by solox3 14y ago

$300 for a single developer, and the EULA says I can't transfer this license to another person?

We'll be reviewing the licensing option per feedback from HN. Please send a note to team@polychart.com, would love to hear more about what you think would be reasonable :)

solox3 14y ago
On the other hand, do I get a price break if I contribute to the GitHub project? What if I am a company?
Demiurge 14y ago
In a world of so many wonderful free open source graphing libraries, it's hard to see any reasonable licensing option for this. It might help if there was a page that listed features that a developer could not accomplish for $300 in flot, highcharts, or ndv3, or other popular options.
- pessimizer 14y ago
  Highcharts isn't free either, at least for commercial use.
  - chaostheory 14y ago
    It's cheaper.
    - Ecio78 14y ago
      Highcharts is cheaper if you use it for a single webpage (90$) but if you want to use if for a real web app it's more expensive (590$ for a single developer). Having said that, in my enterprise my dev colleagues use it and they think it's a great product. EDIT: if you host it for a personal/non-profit project it is free according to Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License another product we've used in the past is Amcharts, good buy maybe not good as Highcharts
    - Demiurge 14y ago
      And I still prefer the free flot or flotr2, because they are easier to modify.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Interesting question. So if I use this to display site metrics for me and my team, is that a commercial use? I'm not selling that service but in that example I would be using it to provide a visual indication of how the site is doing which helps me do my job. Generally pricing isn't particularly challenging, people exchange money for perceived value so identify the value that you add and charge for that. So places where you might be adding value; developer training - A common source of value and one which a lot of non-community FOSS members appreciate. So folks who aren't part of the community or know much about anything find it valuable to have someone who will answer their stupid questions in a timely fashion without insulting them. That could certainly be charged on a per-developer level and annually. data-hoisting - (see what I did there? clever huh?) basically there is value in getting your data from X hosted on Y. So lets say I periodically scrape all of the stock prices for the DJIA and want to provide an interactive chart for that. A data hoisting service would provide a repository for post-processed and chart friendly data. You can price that with visualization support almost on a contract basis. custom visualizations - there will be people of course who want to visualize something in a way which is unique, consulting services for them can be quite valuable. ad-sponsored charts - something between hoisting and foisting but there are charts that people "check" very often (like the 5 day weather forecast, or the traffic delays on various freeways). You can certainly create pages which display visualizations of these and also are "sponsored" by an advertiser. The trades of bit coins for example, rent prices by zip codes, basically changing data sets of interest to both a number of people and to people who would like to advertise to people interested in that data.

bradleyjoyce 14y ago

I don't understand this per-developer licensing model. Not only is it completely non-enforceable but feels really out-dated and out of touch in the era of FOSS. I will pay for an awesome charting product, but I don't want to have to think about how many developers will touch the code, when, how or why. Something like a license per production site or an unlimited license makes a whole lot more sense to me and allows me to quantify the cost in terms of the value it provides to my business rather than how many developers I have.

Silhouette 14y ago
I don't understand this per-developer licensing model. Not only is it completely non-enforceable but feels really out-dated and out of touch in the era of FOSS. Hasn't commercial software been licensed effectively per-user since forever? It used to be per-machine but these days with lots of developers using a desktop and a laptop I think it makes sense to say it's for one user at a time instead and avoid creating lots of silly infringements. If you don't like anything resembling that form of licensing, perhaps you're projecting a preference for everything-should-be-free culture onto commercial development where someone has to pay the bills? Unfortunately, sometimes that just doesn't work. Having a per-user or per-machine licence where the licence is not transferrable seems crazy to me, though. We consider such licensing conditions toxic, because all it takes is someone to leave or a hard drive to crash and you've lost your investment, so usually seeing that will end our interest immediately. (For completeness: We will make a grudging exception for software that is essential to our business and can't be had any other legal way or replaced with any better alternative. However, you don't buy software like that with a quick web site download anyway, and if we get screwed on that kind of deal lawyers are involved. Obviously a charting library is nowhere near this level, though.)
- bradleyjoyce 14y ago
  In no way am I projecting a preference for everything should be free. I specifically said I was willing to pay, but per developer makes no sense to me at all. I build a commercial product myself that I charge for. My point is that per-developer licensing doesn't make sense on any level... just because "that's how people have always done it" doesn't make it a good idea and that type of pricing doesn't allow me to compare the cost to the value. Instead of thinking, this product is awesome and I can use it on my 5 sites for $X.. I have to think, ok I have 20 developers and 5 of them work on site A, 7 on site B and the rest float around so how many people would need to be developing with the library, etc etc. Right? or am I missing something here and am crazy? which is entirely possible.