Licensing Software to Individual vs. Corporation?

FortKnox asks: "After reading the story of the current Slashdot interviewee, I've been pondering software selling schemes/licensing. We've all heard the pro-piracy slogan: 'A $2,000 program pirated by a 13 year old, with a net worth of $13.50, deprives the publisher of $0.' Which makes perfect sense. But piracy opens up the ability to get the product for free if you CAN afford the product. Usually, the biggest 'piracy offenders' are people grabbing software designed to be bought by corporations (engineering CAD programs, 3D Studio Max, etc...) so the individual never has a chance to learn the product. My question is, what kind of selling schemes/licenses would work to allow the individual to learn and use the product, but still allow the publisher to make a profit from corporate sales?"

"Microsoft has a nice licensing idea for colleges. They sell 'student' licenses for $5 for any MS product (I got VC++6 for $5). The stipulation was that I could not commercially sell anything I developed with the product. This was fine by me. It gave me the experience with VC++ so that I could go to an employer and tell them that I've used the product at home and am comfortable using it.

A big benefit for the publisher is that you get customers of the product right away, who are more likely to either buy it when they belong to a company or put in a word to switch to it from a competitors product. Why isn't this type of license used more often? I could see many open source projects would highly benefit from licensing like this, and the publishers advantage is that they could even use it as free marketing (a completely fictional example - KDE3, designed with Rational Rose, icons made by 3D Studios Max, testing done with JUnit and WinRunner).

So, are their any other licensing/selling schemes that would allow the individual to use the product, and the publisher still make a profit on corporate sales?"

Malaysian Copyright law

[TheLink]

No need for such licensing schemes here in Malaysia (yet).

Excerpt from Malaysian copyright law:
http://www.kpdnhq.gov.my/ip/copyright.html

The Copyright in a work is infringed when a person who, not being the owner of the copyright,
and without licence from the owner, does or authorises any of the following acts:-
(some clauses omitted for clarity)

(vi) possesses, otherwise than for his private and domestic use, any infringing copy ;

(viii) imports into Malaysia, otherwise that for his private and domestic use any copy which if
it were made in Malaysia would be an infringing copy ;

---
So it seems if it's for private and domestic use it's ok.

Re:Malaysian Copyright law

[aaarrrgggh]

Does the domestic refer to home-use or within Malaysia?

Works well for things that aren't used specifically for the home (a la Quicken), but... not a universally "fair" way to do it. I would give more leeway to education than home use (but I think that is a part of it too).

$5??

[DamienMcKenna]

I've worked and attended several colleges in two different countries (including the USA) and have never seen any of them offering Microsoft's software for $5. While some of them obtain licenses that allow students to use the software for free on their private PCs, this tends to be restricted to a small number of their products (usually just Office), most of them just tell you to buy the educational versions, which are in the $50-200 range.

Most corporations have student versions of their software available, but that still doesn't mean they're cheap. 3d Studio is a few grand to buy normally but is over $500 on a student license - still a rediculous price given how broke most students are.

I personally think Maya's way of doing it by having a slightly trimmed-down version available for free (as in beer) is a great way of introducing people to a new technology without sacrificing the company's IP or beggering students.

Re:$5??

[KittyTheCat]

At my (former) school, prices are:

* Office XP Professional & FrontPage 2002 Bundle, 4 CD Set $35
* Office 2000 Premium Bundle, 8 CD Set $35
* PhotoDraw 2000, 3 CD Set $25
* Office v. X (Mac), CD Set $25
* Office 2001 & FrontPage Bundle (Mac), CD Set $25
* Office 98 & FrontPage Bundle (Mac) CD Set $25
* Windows XP Pro Upgrade, 2 CD Set $25
* Windows 2000 Pro Upgrade, CD Set $25
* Windows Millennium Edition Upgrade, $25
* Windows 98 2nd Edition Upgrade, CD Set $25
* Visual Studio .NET Professional Bundle, 5 CD Set $30
* Visual Studio Pro 6.0 Bundle, 5 CD Set $25

Re:$5??

[duplicate-nickname]

Hey, Damien, how's it going?

This is Doug from Liberum. ;)

A lot of universities have campus (enterprise) agreements with Microsoft. The original poster probably didn't realize that his university probably already shelled out several million dollars to MS to license the entire campus. His $5 is probably just recouping the distribution costs for the university.

Where I went to school, it was $20 for just about any MS product (Office, VS, Windows), and faculty/staff received every thing for free. Of course, the university had already paid for the software at a "higher" level. In the end, people got MS software cheap and the university cut it's Microsoft costs by 20% or so.

licensing

[Khopesh]

this is rather similar to a recent article [slashdot.org] on warez.

particularly this post [slashdot.org], which mentions how Adobe allowed piracy to nullify the cheaper competition.

as to more moral licensing, I have always believed that the GPL can be modified to include clauses for corporate, educational, and governmental customers (all different pricing structures of course). this way the customers that can afford it must pay some small fee.

Re:licensing

[leviramsey]

as to more moral licensing, I have always believed that the GPL can be modified to include clauses for corporate, educational, and governmental customers (all different pricing structures of course). this way the customers that can afford it must pay some small fee.

Considering that that modification would place the GPL into the category of "Non-Free Licenses", I highly doubt it.

Relevant quote from the Free Software Definition [gnu.org]:

A free program must be available for commercial use....

Maya's got it right

[i0wnzj005uck4]

I like the licensing scheme in Maya. There's a downloadable learning edition which has all the basic functionality of the purchase version and a tonne of online docs. The difference between the two versions is that they can't read each other's files and the learning edition's rendering has a watermark embedded over top.

I personally think that Blender [blender3d.com] is a better solution for people on no budget, but if you really need to learn Maya at home the Personal Learning Edition is great. Other companies should follow suit with similiar programs.

An example: Maya - Personal Learning Edition

[SoftwareTechie]

Alias|Wavefront provides a free Personal Learning edition [aliaswavefront.com] of their Maya product.

It has some limitations (e.g. source files not interchangeable with paid-for version, watermark on each image, no plug-ins, resolution limits), which would inhibit its use in a commercial environment but allows you and I to get valuable hands-on experience.

Free for Home Use

[e8johan]

I feel that all software houses selling propretary software should allow several installs of their products. If I use a product at work (for example a word processor) and I want to use the same product at home, I do not see the problem. I would never pay $5k for an office suite, but rather use a free alternative or a pirated copy. This would be good for my employer too, since I would gain experience with the software that I'm supposed to use at work. I'd even stretch it to being good for the software house, as I have experience from their product I'd want it at my next work too.
On the other side, I do not see why a company making commersial use of a free alternative should be able to do so without giving back to the community.
As a good example of good licensing I would like to point out trolltech [trolltech.com]'s licensing model [trolltech.com] (faq here [trolltech.com])for Qt. I can play around with it and make GPL'ed software without any fees, but if I want to get some $$$ from selling the software I need to give them some $$$ first.

Re:Free for Home Use

[nelsonal]

That is actually included in most Microsoft enterprise agreements. They give you the right to install on your home system, so long as you use it for at least 20% of your work. Most of the really expensive database software & Solaris has provisions allowing personal licenses for free, if you can download it. Now with Soloaris 9 Sun cut back a little, but if you are using smaller SPARC machines, I think you can still download it for free.

Re:Free for Home Use

[Sendy]

If you use the same program at home as you use at work, and this would provide an added value for your employer, why wouldn't your employer sponsor you a copy?

Re:Free for Home Use

[e8johan]

My key point is not only that my employer would gain from it (he does sponsor both copy+computer+internet access). The software house would also gain from it, so they should not only have this licensing form, they should promote it. If I knew that if I used tool X for work I would also get to use tool X at home, legaly, for free, without having to bug my employes about it. Also, I do not think that a requirement that a percentage of the home use has to be work orientated is good, I use the app and learn how to use it with my own projects. The interest is not in me working from home, but me gaining experience from home (and not having to take a $20k course every once in a while).

It's quite common

[sql*kitten]

A big benefit for the publisher is that you get customers of the product right away, who are more likely to either buy it when they belong to a company or put in a word to switch to it from a competitors product. Why isn't this type of license used more often? I

This sort of licensing scheme is quite common, when I was a student I got MATLAB [mathworks.com] and CodeWarrior [metrowerks.com], in addition to MS Office under these terms. Unfortunately it did not result in more sales for those companies when I graduated, although if I'd gone into Engineering, it would have :-)

WS_FTP

[Apreche]

the license on software like WS_FTP or Sygate's firewalls is great. They have fully functional versions of their software available for free to home users that will continue working forever. But if a business user wants to use their software they have to shell out the cash. Keep in mind these aren't open source, but that really doesn't make a difference in this case. I really wish more software was like this.

Training Licenses

[Locke!Erasmus]

I think it would be great if you could download commercial software, using it on a learning basis, and just have to provide your contact information. For example, if it's a compiler like Visual Studio, you can write code, etc, but any code you write must be released into the public domain if it leaves your computer. The understanding would be that if you were caught using the software for anything other than a learning basis, or make money off the product you are using for free, the software maker has the right to bill you for its product.

Prohibitive cost to value ratio

[haplo21112]

For the most part the most functional software products have an extremely high cost to vlaue ratio...
The solutions that publishers have come up with for these issues are not true acceptable. The cripiled versions...missing features, and functions(what the hell is the point of playing with it if you can't save your work, that one really irks me)...or the differnt leveled versions, professional, enterprise, architect...big deal I can but the pro edition for $200, but then i get a book on the product and find out the functions, features, and components I want or only in architect for $1500.00...that doesn't help...

MAKE one version, charge a reasonable price for it...$49.95...then if I do anything truely useful with it charge a royality for having written and compiled my code, or drawn my picture, etc with it...say 2% of the net profit I got from using your product to make my product...as reprehensible as forced registration is this might be a reasonable place for it...the registration code for the product would be burned into the anything that comes out of the product allowing things to be traced back to the end user/corporation.

Re:Prohibitive cost to value ratio

[ec_hack]

MAKE one version, charge a reasonable price for it...$49.95...then if I do anything truely useful with it charge a royality for having written and compiled my code, or drawn my picture, etc with it...say 2% of the net profit I got from using your product to make my product...

This was tried, back in the Good Old Days(tm). Many early compilers and (especially) special purpose libraries had such licence terms. Didn't work out. It is also an accounting nightmare. Suppose I use VC++ to write a program, Star Office to write the manual, Emacs to build the online support info web pages, Mozilla mail to correspond with users, and Perl to write scripts to process user bug reports. Who gets how much of the 2% of net? More importantly, what is the definition of net? With MPAA/RIAA Accounting(tm) I can make sure I never show a profit.....

as reprehensible as forced registration is this might be a reasonable place for it...the registration code for the product would be burned into the anything that comes out of the product allowing things to be traced back to the end user/corporation.

And this is easily hacked.

Re:Prohibitive cost to value ratio

[haplo21112]

Hey just suggestions...I really see no way out of the morass we are all in at this point...

The basic premise though is software costs to much...the truth is if GCC was supported and was a functional on windows as it is on Unix at least the compiler race would probably have some competition to control price....
The graphics race is a little harder, but gain if there were versions of gimp, imagemagick, and Blender that worked as well in windows as in Unix there might be more of a horse race there too...
Its an interesting thought to bring up...
We all want to see more main stream apps on linux, bsd, etc...however perhaps the other way to go is if the non main stream apps we all use as a replacement went the other way...? Its an interesting thought anyway...

GCC, Blender, GIMP, and ImageMagick for win32

[yerricde]

the truth is if GCC was supported and was a functional on windows as it is on Unix

MinGW [mingw.org], a port of GCC to Windows, can compile just about any non-MFC app that MS Visual C++ can.

The graphics race is a little harder, but gain if there were versions of gimp, imagemagick, and Blender that worked as well in windows as in Unix there might be more of a horse race there too...

Blender works on Windows. So does GIMP [gimp.org], at least at the level of Paint Shop Pro. So does ImageMagick. (However, last time I tried IM, it claimed to read XCF but could not read its alpha channels.) So does a free (LGPL) office suite [openoffice.org].

QNX

[JohnTheFisherman]

QNX [qnx.com] does this - free *nixy RTOS for non-commercial use.

Alias|Wavefront knows the answer

[Sentry21]

Check out the free download> of Maya. You get Maya Complete, a $2,000 USD program (if you buy at their online store) for free, for certain (educational) uses, minus a few features (plugins, I think), and plus watermarks on your stuff - certainly enough to learn on though.

A very sane, very educated philosophy, if you ask me.

--Dan

Umm, they're already doing it...

[anthony_dipierro]

My question is, what kind of selling schemes/licenses would work to allow the individual to learn and use the product, but still allow the publisher to make a profit from corporate sales?

Simple. Make everything illegal, and then selectively enforce against corporations, but not individuals. That's pretty much what companies do already, and it's why you're a sucker if you follow every license agreement to a T.

This is what Netscape did with Navigator for instance. They made it illegal to use the software after a 30-day trial period, knowing that individuals would ignore that restriction en masse, while corporations would be forced to pay up or face the BSA.

Oracle

[Darkstorm]

Well, I'm not sure if other companies have thought of this, but Oracle pretty much gives their software to developers. You have to register with them, but you get a development style license that pretty much lets you learn it. The download are the full product, not a limited version (I have the full 9i setup at home). If you want to use it for real then you have to pay for it. Basicly the developers who want to learn it can, without paying the mega $$$ to do so.

Too bad other companies don't feel the same way about developers.