Gian-Carlo Pascutto
>Unfortunately I don't know how to sell support for my Go program, but I
am open to ideas.
Well, since you ask, there is one neat way you can sell your program
on Linux in an open source manner: Offer a so-called assurance
contract, such as the ones on fundable.org. The basic idea is that you
tell the world what you want for your program - not from each user,
but in total - and each of your potential customers tells how much
they're willing to pay. If the sum of offers is over what you want,
you take the money and release the program. If not, nobody pays
anything.
The advantage of this approach is that you can actually sell the
source (if you want), the objectively most valuable piece of your
program. In the windows world you almost have to keep that for
yourself to sell the binary. Linux users would also probably want this
- after all, if it's just a game that can defeat them they're after,
they can just use GnuGo or the Mogo binaries. It's the source which is
really valuable.
The disadvantage is that those users who aren't into comparison
shopping, and just randomly walk into your side one day and thinks
"hey, cool!" - you probably won't get much from them. With a
fundable-style contract, you have to sell to all interested parties
simultaneously, and this requires a little marketing. Still, assurance
contracts are new enough that it should be possible to catch a little
attention.
I'd love to see a source code release of Leela, if even just a
snapshot, and I would pay for it. Thanks for Sjeng, by the way.
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