Shareware and Unix? 62
McDoobie asks: "Is there a market for low cost shareware in the Linux/BSD and Unix market in general? Would it be worthwhile to have a small home based business next to ones regular day job producing well made, but small, shareware for an environment that is dominated either by large corporations or Open Source developers? If so, what should a potential developer/publisher focus on to make their products/price range attractive to customers? What type of customers are most likely to look into such software? SOHO? Small Enterprise? Home users?
In a nutshell, where should one begin when investigating the potential of the Un*x (and perhaps Apple) environment for the small time developer who's interested in earning a few dollars on the side?"
I think it is going to be hard. (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, people are really used to not paying for software. If you want them to register you'll have to be very annoying about it (risk losing users/customers due to percieved harassment), implement some technological countermeasure (also very irritating, and potentially useless against technologically sophisticated people) or just be nice and hope for the best (with the risk of people not really noticing/caring caring that your application is not BSD/GPL licensed.)
You best bet is probably giving registered users small benefits and services that others do not. How you would implement this exactly depends on your line of business.
Just remember not to piss off your userbase with too many nags/copy protections/long serials/spyware etc.
Depends on the niche (Score:3, Informative)
Example: Vuescan [hamrick.com]