Method for providing a trail period on a program

[Steve Holden]

Larry Bates wrote:

> My post has gotten some really varied responses.
> I've been writing software for over 30 years
> so I know that there is no "fool-proof" way
> of doing what I want.  But I thought someone
> may have come up with an "acceptable" solution.
> I contribute to this newsgroup on a regular
> basis and thought I would at least ask.
> 
> I find the idea that you can give the software
> away and charge for support an interesting one.
> If you write REALLY good software with REALLY
> good documentation that provides REALLY good
> tracing and debugging support (so users can
> track down their own problems), what are you
> going to charge for?
> 
> The reason I wanted to put a trial period on
> my software was that I may have the opportunity
> to place it on the CDROM with a hardware device
> that is being sold.  I would like every end
> user to have the opportunity of trying out my
> add-on package.  I am however, not prepared to
> let them run it forever for free.  If it provides
> value to them, I believe they should purchase a
> license.  This may put me in the minority on
> a Python site, but that's the way I feel.
> 
Larry:

I personally, and many others who read this newsgroup, have no problem 
with you wanting to profit by and from your labors. But unless I'm much 
mistaken, the majority of end-users will be pretty much completely 
bamboozled by even very simple techniques like creating a file or a 
registry entry on installation and then timing out unless some 
authenticator that only you cna provide is present on the disk.

Even if you regard the majority of users as dishonest, I feel you are 
vastly overrating their typical technical abilities.

Bear in mind the python.org webmasters see at least five queries a week 
along the lines of "I just found Python on my computer, what's it there 
for and can I remove it?"

Good luck with the CD sampler.

regards
  SteVe