Python Shareware?

[Jonathan Gardner]

Jian Chen wrote:
> I am considering writing some shareware in python. I got some
> questions about it:
<snip>
> 3. How can I lock/secure my python shareware?

Okay, here's my opinion on shareware: Don't do it, it's too much hassle.

If you are interested in making software, you should be interested in 
making it good. So you GPL the code, allow everyone to use it, and modify 
it, and thus the software will become good/the best/whatever.

If you are interested in making _money_, you have to have a product or a 
service to sell. Software is not a good product, but *support* for the 
software is a tangible service that you can charge really good fees for. 
After all, you are the one who wrote it, so the people who use it will 
naturally turn to you for support. If you target the software for large 
organizations, you can charge quite a bit of money to give them insurance 
and service.

Let me address why software is not a good product: 1) It is too easy to 
copy. There is no cost to reproducing it. Compare that to a book, a 
computer, or a chair. 2) You are not the smartest guy on the planet, so any 
method you think of in trying to make it difficult to reproduce is not 
going to work. (Even the smartest guy on the planet doesn't stand a chance 
to hundreds and thousands of crackers.) 3) And when someone DOES illegally 
copy the software, how are you going to force them to pay? 4) If your 
software isn't really that useful or good, someone else is going to make 
something better, and leave your product in the dust. Or you will be forced 
to constantly upgrade it rather than take a vacation.

You have better hope of collecting money by saying, "This software is free. 
If you like it, and want more of it, give me money." and let the people who 
use it work on it.

There is anexception to this rule: If you have mega-bucks behind you to 
actually form a company complete with legal department, and if you can 
recruit enough talent to make your software better than anything free out 
there, then you have a chance of making software that you can sell, becuase 
you can afford to put it on store shelves and get good advertising for it. 
And in this case, the people that pay for it will far outnumber the people 
who won't.

There is another benefit to you of free software: If you are really good at 
programming, you can show off with your GPL'ed code, and use that to get 
into a company that is willing to pay you to code stuff for them. You can't 
show off code that is closed-source, like code from, say, your previous 
job. So, with your GPL'ed code (which has been tested and developed by 
people who are actually interested in using it, so it will be much better 
than anything you can write on your own) you can claim a lot of credit for 
it, and demand $100,000 or more for salary. If they think you are crazy, 
tell them to read the code and try the software. If they want to produce 
software like that, then they have to hire you.

I think a steady income of $100,000 or more a year will benefit more than 
the meager sales of a shareware piece of software. Plus, you get the 
comfort of knowing your check shows up every month, and it's the same 
amount each time.

Again, that is just my opinion. I have no experience with trying to make 
money from shareware software, I have just observation on my side.

I hope this starts an interesting thread.