But there are multiple degrees of sketchy: * you can write your own license management solution, and pay for your mistakes, * you can outsource it to people who think about these problems all day long, and hope that they make fewer mistakes (of course this requires up-front payment). * you can trust your users, and accept that not all will meet your expectations (and explain that to the bean-counters).
Of the three options, I think the last is the most cost-effective. However, I've never gotten the suits to agree with me. The trick is to accurately gage what percentage of users will violate the terms and figure out if you can still make a decent living. Good behavior can be encouraged with a simple (and non-intrusive) book-keeping system. It doesn't need to be obviously circumventable to be a simple system (say hash the license file so that modification isn't trivial). Remember that pricing, support, value-adds, and services are all tools that can encourage customers to pay fairly. There is a fine line between encouragement and a useless attempt at forcing compliance. Try to see what is fair from your customer's viewpoint. Treat your customers as rational actors and think about how to make their goals align with your goals. Of course that line of thinking will probably lead you to change your model. Richard On Thursday 25 June 2009 17:43:32 Dustin McQuay <[email protected]> wrote: <snip> > So, my overall takeaway is that we're going to have to deal with a sketchy > situation or change the business model. It's not my call to say which is > better. But at least now I have more information to influence a wise > decision. > > Thanks for all your help! > > Dustin McQuay <snip> -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info (unsubscribe here): http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
