The $5-Ware License

IMHO, $5 is enough to turn a user to a customer. Customer rightfully expects much more than a user: support, bug fixing, etc. This is not the case with donations, where it is done out of generousity rather than a legally binding agreement.

Just from the link you sent me: "With shareware, a developer bypasses the normal distribution channel eliminating the normal retail middleman markups and directly markets to the end user. The end result is a reduced end-user price compared to the retail channel. Users of shareware are encouraged to copy and distribute unregistered versions of the software to friends, coworkers and other acquaintances. The hope is that users will find the program useful or entertaining and will pay to register to be able to access all the features." Did you read past the fist paragraph?

I'd, well, rather see another approach: Commercial users of open source should provide some kind of support back to the team... be that "monetary" donations, be that time and energy making the overall product work better, be that sponsoring of resources required to get goin' (hosting, bandwidth, ...). As it might be obvious, I love open source - for many particular reasons, but the idea of "just" getting something for free without giving anything in return is a completely different cup of tea I guess...

K.

A $5 Ware licence, is only as good as the $ is itself.

In n years time $5 could will be worth 5c, so what would be the point? You would have to call it something else (?Shareware), but then you couldn't impose or control the financial restraint ontop of it.

Basically, a utopian idea that has merit in a Utopian world. As someone already mentiond, Shareware already exists (trial period or not).

I agree with you Alessandro, Jakob's idea is amusing but it has many faults because of Apache License.

Dual licensing is already a proven model. Dual licensing involves three parts:

1) An Intelectual Property holder.

2) A non-liberal license (GPL or AGPL)

3) A commercial license for closed source derivatives.

The holder of the  Intelectual Property is the only who can license the product to third parties. There are two ways of licensing:

a) For free: you can pick a non-liberal license. GPL or AGPL prohibits closed source derivatives. You can fork the product if you want, but the derivative product must be GPL or AGPL.  AGPL has one advantage over GPL it has not the "SaaS hole".

b) With a fee: you get the commercial license. The commercial license grants the right to make and distributed closed source software derivatives on top of the product but avoids public forks of the original product.

 

My Ubuntu installation contains 100's and 100's of actively used packages. I supplement the standard installation with probably around 50 other packages using the built in Synaptic installer. There are 1000's and 1000's of packages to choose from. Ubuntu probably provides the richest Linux experience this way.

Making packages $5 shareware would make this a *very* expensive endeavor.

How about making Ubuntu as a whole shareware? Then some mechanism could decide how that donation money is distributed amongs all the contributors. Complicated perhaps, but desperate times call for desperate measures...

What about a radically different approach? Rather than selling software, consider Ubuntu given away for free, and, consider people treating their computer like they eventually treat their car (getting things set right and fixed by someone who knows rather than messing around themselves with things they don't completely understand)? Moreover, consider companies offering this kind of service to end users at affordable prices (which, compared to license costs at least for mainstream software, shouldn't be all too hard) for installing and configuring custom Ubuntu workstations for end users? Consider these companies providing a small share of their income back to "the Ubuntu community" in order to keep the system running? This would be beneficial for everyone without someone being nagged about shareware, payware, ...:

- End users would end up with well-configured, well-maintained systems rather than having to mess with that dreaded recovery CD after last nights crash again and again. They will pay money in any case, but in this case they will pay money for something they directly can see a benefit from. 

- Small computer reseller shops would have a whole new market of actually adding value to what they sell rather than just "pushing PCs pre-installed with Windows" down the market.

- The community would have some kind of refunding by people who get benefit for what they pay. 

- The issue of "software piracy" will be gone, along with the most horrid plagues software has brought us (the whole broken mess of entering registration codes, dealing with product activations and all this whole load of crap users are forced through just recently). There practically would be no "stealing", because: No payment, no benefit - you either can spend a certain amount on someone making your machine ready for production for you, or you can choose to save this money and, instead, waste hours and hours trying to do so yourself.

I am not sure, but maybe this would be an approach better than the "donationware" idea...

K.

From the Open Source Initiative's definition page ...

... The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:

1. Free Redistribution

... license shall not restrict ... from selling ... as a component of an aggregate software distribution ... license shall not require a royalty ...

If you make a software and you opt for a OSS license it means you will give your work for free to the world it is that plain and simple!.

If you want to make money from your work and dont want to share with the world accept a propetary license and be done with this stupidity.

OSS for make money or business it is flawed.

 

The $5-ware license may not fly. But I got a lot of good posts / ideas from it, so I guess it was not wasted.

 

@Domenique De Vito:

The other day I upgraded my open source Tortoise SVN client. At the end of the upgrade process there was a "Donate" button (a bit like you are suggesting with Mozilla). And guess what? I donated €5 ($7)... nothing much, but that button reminded me that I could donate, and some, like me, just might do so.  So, perhaps it's a good idea.

 

Also if the list of payment methods include Paypall also along others methods it will make the donation timing very short as they need to give only pay pal id & pwd.. In case of credit card they need to enter long string of numbers... as for convenient point... this may be irritating and many potential donaters may just skip the donation step {just bcause (1) entering his personnal details - concern abt security. would we prefer to enter our credit card details in all sites that we like ..Nope, (2) even if it they decided to enter... it will take atleast 5 to 10 mins for entering credit card details alone } hence here the simplicity will improve the chances for end developer to receive the benefit..

 

 Cheers & Best Wishes.

 

I presume that the "Donate" button will nicely apply also to all the frameworks and libraries that do not display a user interface...

Such button could be on a download page, or shown during the installation process.

It could be also into the web site main page.