OT Free software financial advice? (was RMS on Linux Show)
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I work with scientific instruments. Free/Libre software is completely
absent from my industry. The makers of this equipment make Microsoft
look like a puppy, the situation is completely medieval, you wouldn't
believe the horror stories...
There is a catastrophic, decade long, downsizing occurring within the
North American market(and presumably Western Europe) and strong growth
in areas with stereotypical weak software laws, Eastern Europe, India
and China. The high price($5K to $40K USD) of the "licensed" software
for North American labs makes for an unfair playing field and that,
along with lower labour costs is probably driving the downsizing.
Licenses are not import due to these things. Whether it is given away or
sold. it will be taken without a dongle or some lock down.
I know I could also just charge for support but if I ship good quality
software this doesn't seem like a good plan and time changes make
support complicated. Larger companies could easily fork the code and
with large staff provide better support across time zones.
I want to ship fully free software but I don't know how to make a
reasonable financial plan with the present situation.
The only viable plan I have come up with is to bind the software to a
propitiatory interface board.
Another nuttier idea is to leverage creative commons. If the following
assumption is correct and software that is not written in a C related
language(C++/C#/Java/Objective-C etc ), has little chance of someone
picking up the code base(maybe Haskell, Erlang, Ada). Then maybe I could
at least protect the N. American market by hardcoding images into the
code via svg and XPM, license these images with creative commons(code
under GPL) and sue other companies if they failed to remove them when
they fork the code. I am much more worried about a larger company
forking the code then labs "pirating it".
Sorry for going so far off topic. I have made a small donation in the
past. If someone on the list could help me work this out, there is a lot
of potential to make quite a lot of money and I could make a much bigger
one later-Patrick
You understand that you need not distribute your free software on Internet, don't you? You can just give it (and its source code) to your customers. With the catastrophic situation you are talking about, it should be easy to convince your customers about the advantages of having the four freedoms. That includes the ability to fix themselves a problem (or add a feature) or to contract other developers/companies to do so. No lock-in: the user is in control. Of course you would offer some support explaining that, as the developer, you are in the best position to provide a quality support in little time. With the freedom to share the software, the lab can redistribute it to other potential customers or even publish it on Internet. Do you think they would do so? Isn't there a competitive advantage to have your software? If you believe these labs are friends with each other, you can try to make they pay more but altogether.
On 12-04-14 12:06 PM, name at domain wrote:
> You understand that you need not distribute your free software on
> Internet, don't you? You can just give it (and its source code) to
> your customers. With the catastrophic situation you are talking about,
> it should be easy to convince your customers about the advantages of
> having the four freedoms. That includes the ability to fix themselves
> a problem (or add a feature) or to contract other developers/companies
> to do so. No lock-in: the user is in control. Of course you would
> offer some support explaining that, as the developer, you are in the
> best position to provide a quality support in little time. With the
> freedom to share the software, the lab can redistribute it to other
> potential customers or even publish it on Internet. Do you think they
> would do so? Isn't there a competitive advantage to have your
> software? If you believe these labs are friends with each other, you
> can try to make they pay more but altogether.
>
Thanks for answering my post and sorry once again to the list for going
this far off-topic.
I completely agree with you on the benefit of the 4 freedoms and that
this is in fact a feature that would raise the price.
While I am sure I would be the best person to support the software, GPL
would allow someone else to take my name off the code and people would
not even know that I was the original developer. Here the company with
the most advertising dollars will win.
I think people could easily redistribute the code on the net. The other
thing here is a company does not have complete control over it's
employees and even if the company I sold it to did not redistribute it,
an employee easily could.
"If you believe these labs are friends with each other, you can try to
make they pay more but altogether. "
If I bundled the software in large dollar value distributions this could
work, good advice.
Thanks again
Patrick,
GPL does not allow one to remove the copyright notice. Copyleft depends on copyright: https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
-- automatically doubled post --
The GPL states that even if someone forks your code, makes derivative works out of it, and then put it in the market, they have to release the changes they have done under GPL only. This makes the forking problem nonexistent because if they fail to release their changes, you can always sue them.
Now the financial question. I have a small company that provides a student management software written in php to local colleges, and it generates quite good revenue. You can use this approach by supplying the software to local companies, small and medium level enterprises, educational institutes. In order to protect your code from being picked up by larger companies, you can make a provision for hand delivery only, and not providing any downloads etc. Also make your customers sign an agreement that double-enforces the GPL, thus providing you with extra protection.
Good luck. :)
On 12-04-14 12:11 PM, name at domain wrote:
> The GPL states that even if someone forks your code, makes derivative
> works out of it, and then put it in the market, they have to release
> the changes they have done under GPL only. This makes the forking
> problem nonexistent because if they fail to release their changes, you
> can always sue them.
>
> Now the financial question. I have a small company that provides a
> student management software written in php to local colleges, and it
> generates quite good revenue. You can use this approach by supplying
> the software to local companies, small and medium level enterprises,
> educational institutes. In order to protect your code from being
> picked up by larger companies, you can make a provision for hand
> delivery only, and not providing any downloads etc. Also make your
> customers sign an agreement that double-enforces the GPL, thus
> providing you with extra protection.
>
> Good luck. :)
>
Forking is a problem because the BRIC countries are out of range for
legal enforcement.
I never thought about making a provision for hand delivery only, great
idea ! I'll have to follow your work, very insightful :)
Are you sure the GPL can not be enforced in the BRIC countries? I do not understand why.
Are you sure the GPL can not be enforced in the BRIC countries? I do not
understand why.
Patrick,
[Brazilian law nº 9.609/68][1] recognizes the legitimacy of the software licenses (cap. IV, art. 9º). As [copyleft is copyright used in certain ways][2], and [Brazilian law nº 9610/68][3] recognizes software as copyrightable (cap. I, art. 7º, XII), GPL is guaranteed.
You were afraid of they removing your name from the software: this second law gives to the author the irrevocable (art. 27) moral right to be cited as so (art. 24, II).
[1] http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Leis/L9609.htm
[2] https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
[3] http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Leis/L9610.htm
On 12-04-15 05:18 PM, name at domain wrote:
> Patrick,
>
> [Brazilian law nº 9.609/68][1] recognizes the legitimacy of the
> software licenses (cap. IV, art. 9º). As [copyleft is copyright used
> in certain ways][2], and [Brazilian law nº 9610/68][3] recognizes
> software as copyrightable (cap. I, art. 7º, XII), GPL is guaranteed.
>
> You were afraid of they removing your name from the software: this
> second law gives to the author the irrevocable (art. 27º) moral right
> to be cited as so (art.24, II).
>
> [1] http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Leis/L9609.htm
> [2] https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
> [3] http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Leis/L9610.htm
>
Hi Gustavo
Thanks very much for your feedback.
I think mentioning BRIC countries was misguided. Brazil is way out in
front in terms to free software, much further then my country Canada.
Thanks to everyone's feedback I think I have (or nearly have) a good
plan in place. I think I am going to sell GPL software with a
restriction that it is only redistributed the same "form factor" as the
original media and I am going to sell it as a site license like package.
Fewer customers but larger dollar values.
Taking this path will help me get a product to market much faster then
developing a proprietary interface board to work with the software.
I think it makes good business sense and I feel good about it too.
Thanks again to all-Patrick
I am a member!
I'm pretty confident that this is not going to work. You have to stop trying to get around the license if you are going to use it. Others who haven't understood the license and have similarly tried to add stipulations on top. You can't do that. The license can't be modified and where there is a separate license it revolves around some component. There are rules to this though. You would have to read up on it.
Read the top of each license.
GNU GPL v2 says the following:
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
And again GNU GPL v3
Copyright © 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
From the frequently asked questions about GNU licenses web page:
Can I modify the GPL and make a modified license? (#ModifyGPL)
You can use the GPL terms (possibly modified) in another license provided that you call your license by another name and do not include the GPL preamble, and provided you modify the instructions-for-use at the end enough to make it clearly different in wording and not mention GNU (though the actual procedure you describe may be similar).
If you want to use our preamble in a modified license, please write to <name at domain> for permission. For this purpose we would want to check the actual license requirements to see if we approve of them.
Although we will not raise legal objections to your making a modified license in this way, we hope you will think twice and not do it. Such a modified license is almost certainly incompatible with the GNU GPL, and that incompatibility blocks useful combinations of modules. The mere proliferation of different free software licenses is a burden in and of itself.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL
If you do decide to release under the GNU GPL you don't have to distribute the source code as long as you make an offer to do so. You also don't have to distribute the source code to those who you haven't distributed a binary to. You can limit the distribution of the binary/source to your customers. Your customers however are allowed to distribute the source code and could post it for anyone to download. They could even start making modifications and sell a version them self.
No matter what you do you have to give up the idea you control who gets to use the software. Sell support. But don't try and add restrictions on top.
If you can't do this ship under a different license.
-- automatically doubled post --
You understand that you need not distribute your free software on Internet,
don't you? You can just give it (and its source code) to your customers. With
the catastrophic situation you are talking about, it should be easy to
convince your customers about the advantages of having the four freedoms.
That includes the ability to fix themselves a problem (or add a feature) or
to contract other developers/companies to do so. No lock-in: the user is in
control. Of course you would offer some support explaining that, as the
developer, you are in the best position to provide a quality support in
little time. With the freedom to share the software, the lab can redistribute
it to other potential customers or even publish it on Internet. Do you think
they would do so? Isn't there a competitive advantage to have your software?
If you believe these labs are friends with each other, you can try to make
they pay more but altogether.
The GPL states that even if someone forks your code, makes derivative works
out of it, and then put it in the market, they have to release the changes
they have done under GPL only. This makes the forking problem nonexistent
because if they fail to release their changes, you can always sue them.
Now the financial question. I have a small company that provides a student
management software written in php to local colleges, and it generates quite
good revenue. You can use this approach by supplying the software to local
companies, small and medium level enterprises, educational institutes. In
order to protect your code from being picked up by larger companies, you can
make a provision for hand delivery only, and not providing any downloads etc.
Also make your customers sign an agreement that double-enforces the GPL, thus
providing you with extra protection.
Good luck. :)
I am a member!
You have to stop thinking of it as your software. Let the competition improve it, advertise it, and so on. If they do that it increases your potential market. It might get forked although that is probably a bad business move on their part. I've seen it done enough times to realise it is not an advisable business move.
Maintaining a separate code base adds unnecessary expense. If the code is freely available and developed in a community oriented manor it will ensure your software dominates in the market.
Ultimately you will end up with the contracts for coding new features, providing low level support, etc. Even if those features are being paid for by your competition (since they are bigger and advertising support).
I am a member!
You have to stop thinking of it as your software. Let the competition improve
it, advertise it, and so on. If they do that it increases your potential
market. It might get forked although that is probably a bad business move on
their part. I've seen it done enough time to realise it is not an advisable
move.
Maintaining a separate code base adds unnecessary expense. If the code is
freely available and developed in a community oriented manor it will ensure
your software dominates in the market.
Ultimately you will end up with the contracts for coding new features,
providing low level support, etc. Even if those features are being paid for
by your competition (since they are bigger and advertising support).
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