Python Shareware?

[Will Ware]

Greg Ewing (see at my.signature) wrote:
> But then there's a chance that other people will fix the bugs and
> add the new features that you would have done, so you won't get any
> money. It might be safer to release it with a "use-but-don't-modify"
> kind of license instead.

That's a valid concern, but the shareware world already has plenty of
competition. As far as I'm aware, no case of shareware "piracy" has
ever come before a real court, so shareware authors are already
entirely reliant on the honor system anyway. Once or twice in my less
enlightened days I tried releasing a few bits of shareware myself, and
if I'm typical, then shareware authors have neither the means nor the
serious intention to prosecute cases of "piracy".

So the notion that there is already a water-tight business model in
shareware is a delusion. I suspect anybody who has written shareware
for any length of time is dispelled of it. Where somebody is
sufficiently new at it to believe the delusion, they will invest lots
of energy looking for ways to "secure" their code. As was pointed out
in earlier responses, this is really futile if "pirates" are
sufficiently motivated.

As long as people keep buying the delusion, they will continue to
waste energy on ineffectual protection schemes, and waste their
emotional energy on both the adolescent thrill of breaking those
schemes and the anger and frustration of having one's scheme broken.
Stop catering to the psychology of the 31337 haxor, and you're left
with the people who are honestly appreciative of useful work and
likely to observe the honor system.

With open source code, there is always a risk that somebody else can
fork your code and make faster progress with it than you will. You can
try to build a brand name for yourself ala Red Hat so that marketing
momentum is in your favor. If you can't make the investment necessary
to do that, and you can't keep up with features and bug fixes offered
by others, then it seems to me you should just acknowledge that trying
to make money this way is inherently risky.

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 22nd century: Esperanto, geodesic | Will Ware
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