30 days trial immune to set clock back in time?

[reckoning54]

Does your bookstore not allow customers to open and read the book while in  
the store?  Do they have a "no refund" policy (keeping in mind that many  
software retailers do in fact have a "no refund" policy for opened  
software).  My local bookstores all allow these things.

The software equivalent, and this would be quite legitimate in my
eyes, would be to provide a server-side version that can be used via a
browser and thin client. That's the equivalent in that "the copy stays
in the store"; the copy stays on your server, but can be "perused
there" remotely via a net connection.

I can't speak for Owen, but I might be willing to equivocate on the use of  
the word "extremely".  But other than that, I find it patently obvious  
that forcing your potential customers to pay money for the product before  
they are able to judge for themselves whether the product is worth paying  
for most certainly is "poor marketing".

Whatever else may or may not be "poor marketing", announcing "we've
made something quite similar to what our competitors offer, but then
went to some extra effort to make it more annoying and less useful!"
certainly is. ("Buy from FitzGrocers! Our stuff spoils after only
three days!" Or "Lemons-R-Us: Engineered to fall apart after 30,000
miles, guaranteed.")

 

[Owen Jacobson]

Ridiculous. He's insisting that he should get paid over and over again
for doing a piece of work just once, unlike say a stonemason who has
to lay more bricks to make more money. Furthermore, he's attempting to
destroy other peoples' property, namely, their copies of the software
he authored.

The alternative is that the first customer for a piece of software be
asked to pay for its *entire* development and subsequent customers be
licensed for free, or that all software be locked away as services.
In such a market, *no* software would be licensed to most users; the
only software available without a negotiated contract or a service
agreement would be the minimum necessary to access services that can
be provisioned without exposing the implementation to the world (say,
a web browser and a minimal OS). Imagine a world in which you had to
pay a recurring service fee to use Word, or to play Solitaire; that is
the logical conclusion of your line of reasoning, and it's one some of
the more astute software companies are already pursuing under the
banner of "Software as a Service".

Can you afford to pay for the development of Excel or Photoshop by
yourself? Having done so, would you be content to see Adobe giving
Photoshop away to everyone else, including your competition? Each of
the programs I've named cost millions of dollars to develop, and even
something as trivial as Winzip or Trillian involves a fairly chunky
number of man-hours to build, market, and support. All of that costs
money. By charging each customer a smaller amount for their license,
the total development cost is amortized across all customers and comes
down to a reasonable price for each license.

Relying on open-source communities to drive for-pay software out of
business is a pipe dream, because the kind of applications people pay
money for - word processors, video games, design and editing tools,
contact managers - are either uninteresting problems (word processing)
or require skills that are not readily available for free (video
games, for example, require visual design skills of a level that is
not normally available without paying a considerable amount of money
for). The places where FOSS have traditionally excelled have been
back-end tools and servers, from Samba to BIND, not desktop
applications.

Remember, the OP is only trying to charge *once* for each license to
whatever product he spent time (and thus money) creating. That he
wants to allow potential customers to try his product out before
spending money licensing it is an additional service he is not
ethically or morally obliged to offer. It is, however, good
marketing. If he can't find a way to do that, then he'll be left with
no choice but to charge *before* allowing anyone to use it at all, or
to release it for free and give up on seeing financial return on his
time spent - and given that he's trying to charge money, "fame and
recognition" are not likely to keep him in the software industry in
the absence of money.

(Your assertion elsewhere in this thread that you are entitled to do
anything you like with information in your possession, including the
bit patterns on a disk comprising a piece of software, is not
supported by the laws of the country you post from. See act C-42, the
Canadian Copyright Act, wherein the rights holder is granted: the
exclusive right of reproduction, the right to rent the work, the right
to restrain others from renting the work and the right to assign or
license the copyright to others. It has force of law, as well as
precedent that it applies to software. See as well acts C-60 and C-61,
which were tabled during the last cabinet session and will likely be
re-tabled after the election and which update C-42 to tighten, not
loosen, copyright restrictions on software and to clarify the role of
EULAs. All Berne Convention signatories and WIPO members have similar
laws.)

Of course, none of this has any relevance to you - as far as I can
tell, you have released no software, either commercially or for free.
You have, however, made numerous demands of others who *have* released
software, with no offer of compensation for the time to be spent
satisfying them. You appear to want everything and to pay for
nothing, which means you are not a customer - you are a parasite.

-o

 

[Qu0ll]

[...]

Of course, none of this has any relevance to you - as far as I can
tell, you have released no software, either commercially or for free.
You have, however, made numerous demands of others who *have* released
software, with no offer of compensation for the time to be spent
satisfying them. You appear to want everything and to pay for
nothing, which means you are not a customer - you are a parasite.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Owen, you are starting to get the picture here. You, me and everyone else
involved in this thread are basically wasting their time feeding a troll. A
tip: review this person's posting history.

--
And loving it,

-Qu0ll (Rare, not extinct)
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
[Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me]

 

[reckoning54]

The alternative is that the first customer for a piece of software be
asked to pay for its *entire* development and subsequent customers be
licensed for free, or that all software be locked away as services.
In such a market, *no* software would be licensed to most users

Nonsense. Red Hat alone is proof to the contrary.

Imagine a world in which you had to
pay a recurring service fee to use Word, or to play Solitaire

That would be worse than what we have now, yes.

that is the logical conclusion of your line of reasoning

No, it is not, as companies like Red Hat continue to demonstrate day
by day, quietly and without fuss.

By charging each customer a smaller amount for their license,
the total development cost is amortized across all customers and comes
down to a reasonable price for each license.

Except that the only "reasonable price" is zero for something whose
marginal cost is zero.

Furthermore, the software isn't freed after the development costs are
recouped; instead it's used as a cash cow.

Relying on open-source communities to drive for-pay software out of
business is a pipe dream, because the kind of applications people pay
money for - word processors, video games, design and editing tools,
contact managers - are either uninteresting problems (word processing)
or require skills that are not readily available for free (video
games

This is ludicrous, particularly since a cursory examination of the
world outside of your little hole would suffice to have alerted you to
its falsehood.

The existence of a) OO Writer and b) an assortment of free games (many
as in beer and more than a few as in speech) disprove your claims
here.

The places where FOSS have traditionally excelled have been
back-end tools and servers, from Samba to BIND, not desktop
applications.

Traditionally being the operative word. FOSS now exist in the areas
you mentioned, and in others.

Remember, the OP is only trying to charge *once* for each license

And quit with the "license" fiction! It doesn't even have any basis in
*law*, let alone in natural rights, as explained previously.

If he can't find a way to do that, then he'll be left with
no choice but to charge *before* allowing anyone to use it at all, or
to release it for free and give up on seeing financial return on his
time spent

Wrong. Releasing it for free does NOT automatically mean giving up on
seeing financial return. If you were correct here, Red Hat's budget
would not be in the black, and it would most probably no longer even
exist.

"fame and recognition" are not likely to keep him in the software
industry in the absence of money.

Who said anything about "fame and recognition"? The closest I've come
is to mention that a portfolio of work can get you hired doing
something related, which is hardly the same thing and is also hardly
revelatory. It should really have been obvious to you.

(Your assertion elsewhere in this thread that you are entitled to do
anything you like with information in your possession, including the
bit patterns on a disk comprising a piece of software, is not
supported by the laws of the country you post from.

That's because some of the laws are wrong, created and sustained by
business interests at the expense of consumers, taxpayers, and
innovation itself.

Of course, none of this has any relevance to you - as far as I can
tell, you have released no software, either commercially or for free.

Wrong again.

You have, however, made numerous demands of others

I have done nothing of the sort. I have furnished advice and
recommendations, and I have argued against certain dubious and
empirically-unvalidated systems of belief, many of which are in fact
not merely empirically unvalidated but actually empirically falsified,
or at least brought into serious question.

Innovation policy has been largely faith-based for far too long. It's
time it caught up to the scientific standards of many other areas of
policy and governance. Evidence-based policies, as recommended e.g. at
Techdirt, would rapidly reverse the decline of American
competitiveness in international markets, amongst other effects.

You appear to want everything and to pay for nothing

This is patently false. I have stated a desire not to have to pay much
more than the marginal cost for a thing, but that is only reasonable.
I have also stated a desire for others not to be short-sighted, which
is hardly ungenerous of me.

As for wanting everything, I can think of a lot of things I don't
want, starting with any more nonsense from you and followed by the A-Z
list of diseases in any given medical textbook.

Do not put words in my mouth that I never actually said. That is
incorrect. Stop being dishonest.

which means [insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me
are at all true.

 

[reckoning54]

"Owen Jacobson" <[email protected]> wrote:

[snip]

NO FEEDBACK LOOPS!

Wrong.

Wrong. I have supplied suggestions and advice, and argued against
certain short-sighted behaviors, and in favor of a restoration of some
property rights and free speech rights.

Wrong. There are numerous things that I don't want, and I merely want
to not pay much more than marginal cost for things.

which means [insult deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that Owen has said or implied about me
are at all true.

[multiple insults deleted]

No, you're the troll.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

Nonsense. Red Hat alone is proof to the contrary.

And the results of this are... ?

Let's compare Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice.org's Calc. Given a choice
between Excel and Calc, I would pick Excel for its UI fluidity and its
feature set (although Office 2007 managed to completely mangle the UI,
but I digress). In fact, Calc has yet to match the same feature set that
Excel 95 had. Despite being open source and financially supported by a
major company (Sun).

As I said before, most open source software tends to be crap.

This is ludicrous, particularly since a cursory examination of the
world outside of your little hole would suffice to have alerted you to
its falsehood.

The existence of a) OO Writer and b) an assortment of free games (many
as in beer and more than a few as in speech) disprove your claims
here.

a) OO Writer is barely manageable as a replacement for Word. The rest of
the suite becomes almost downright unusable. Have you actually USED them
as a replacement for MS Office for long periods of time?

b) Yes, there are a few free games. Most of them are crap. If you play
games of the ilk of Klondike, you can probably find good free clones.
But a game like, say, Half-Life 2?

And generally, most of the apps I have stumbled across tend to have
random glitches or numerous other bugs; at one time, I had a text
browser crashing without access to an X display.

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

What is it with people showing up on cljp asking how they can make the
software they're developing less useful for people?

Why are you trying to stop the OP from doing what he wants to do?
Would you give him a stone if he asked for a piece of bread?

 

[Dave Miller]

I recommend finding a business model that does not depend on
artificial scarcity.

You're either confused or advocating theft of services.

Artificial scarcity is OPEC deciding how much oil to allow onto the
market or a luxury goods manufacturer only selling through a limited
number of retailers that they know will not discount their products.
That is not what is happening here.

Using a free trial after its expiration is stealing. You entered into a
compact with the author which you are breaking. You can justify in your
own mind that "software should be free" or "I'm not hurting the author -
he call still sell this product to others", but you'd be deceiving only
yourself.

What the OP is asking is "how do I stop my product from getting stolen"
- a legitimate goal no matter what your political views or his business
model.

 

[reckoning54]

Let's compare Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice.org's Calc. Given a choice
between Excel and Calc, I would pick Excel for its UI fluidity and its
feature set (although Office 2007 managed to completely mangle the UI

Well, there you go, then.

Meanwhile, Calc is still on an upward trajectory.

As I said before, most open source software tends to be crap.

Yes, you have said that before.

The flames of ignorance burn without pain. Beware the power or it will
consume you before you know.

a) OO Writer is barely manageable as a replacement for Word.
IYHO.

The rest of
the suite becomes almost downright unusable. Have you actually USED them
as a replacement for MS Office for long periods of time?

Yes. Differences in UI mean that there is a transition period as you
get used to the differences, but once that is over ...

b) Yes, there are a few free games. Most of them are crap.

As I said, you need to poke your head out of your hole once in a
while.

But a game like, say, Half-Life 2?

Many games of significant quality exist that are free. There are free
"Civilization" clones, first-person shooters (single and multiplayer),
and plenty of other genres. You have no excuse for not performing some
cursory Google searches here.

And generally, most of the apps I have stumbled across tend to have
random glitches or numerous other bugs; at one time, I had a text
browser crashing without access to an X display.

That is because you are looking at Unix apps, not free software
developed for Windows. Unix apps tend to have quirks, especially in
the compatibility area. Perhaps that is also why you are overlooking
many of the quality free games and other applications, too, if you are
only looking at those for one OS, and it's not the one with the
current lead in market share.

 

[reckoning54]

Why are you trying to stop the OP from doing what he wants to do?

I'm not. I'm trying to advise the OP. If I were trying to stop him,
I'd be waving a gun around or something, you moron.

Would you give him a stone if he asked for a piece of bread?

He is not asking for a piece of bread. He is asking for a chunk of
everyone's property rights to go away. Including, unwittingly, his own.

 

[Dave Miller]

Can anyone guide me how can i create a 30 days trial to a software
that is immune to having set the clock back in time?

Icon Lover has a scheme that I wish more would implement.

[gory details deleted]

I wish *nobody* would implement *any* of these schemes. "Schemes" is
just the right word; think of a bunch of shady characters with
toolkits and semiautomatics scheming to knock over a bank. Only this
bank contains not your money but your property rights and hard-won
freedoms; if they succeed, it turns out we didn't win the Cold War
after all.

How exactly do you get property rights in something that you steal? if
RedHat wants to give away the software to get service / support business
that's their business model. If the OP wants to sell his software and
give away the support, that's his. In both cases your property rights
are limited to that which they give or sell to you.

 

[reckoning54]

You're either confused or advocating theft of services.

Nope; neither.

I'm advocating that people pick smarter business models of their own
volition.

Also, theft of services is not even relevant here. Theft of services
is if you use a service the providing of which causes ongoing costs of
some sort to the service's provider, without permission.

If I tapped a trunk electrical line to power my stuff without it
showing on my meter, that would be theft of services.

If I obtain an item, bring it into my home, and use it in there
without not paying any associated bills, such as electric, that might
arise from ancillary use of services, my use of that item can not
conceivably constitute theft of services. The item itself may even be
stolen and that remains the case. If it is not, no theft of any kind
can possibly have occurred, as my use of the item does not cause an
ongoing cost of some sort to anyone else.

For instance, if I sit in my chair, my doing so causes no cost to
anyone else, including the chair's manufacturer, compared to if I just
sit elsewhere and the chair lies about my house unused.

If I used, say, a solar panel to power my computer, and ran any given
software on it that did not exercise the network connection
(particularly, if this were disconnected physically at the time), my
use of that software would be 100% private and would have no effect on
anyone outside my four walls. In particular, my use versus non-use of
it under these hypothetical conditions would cause no difference in
costs to others, unlike if I tapped that electrical line, or just
refused to pay my electric bill, say, where my use would impact the
power company detectably.

Indeed, somebody would have to go to the effort to actually spy on me
to discover my so-called "theft of services".

You can't have stolen something if nothing of anybody else's goes
missing, or in the case of expenses, goes up, due to your actions.

Artificial scarcity is OPEC deciding how much oil to allow onto the
market or a luxury goods manufacturer only selling through a limited
number of retailers that they know will not discount their products.
That is not what is happening here.

Sure it is. Artificial scarcity includes ANY actions that effectively
reduce the supply of something. This includes planned obsolescence in
all of its forms, in particular, or any other case in which a
manufacturer exerts additional effort to degrade rather than enhance a
product. In a fully competitive market, of course, none will do so,
since a competitor can just expend less effort, not degrade their
version, and thereby produce a superior product at a lower cost! So
the occurrence of such "value engineering" is also an indicator of
restraint of trade or monopoly of some sort existing in the affected
market. Again, a good analogy is the American car manufacturers at the
time the Japanese started exporting superior models.

Using a free trial after its expiration is stealing.

See above. You are insane.

You entered into a compact with the author which you are breaking.

If I did so, then I am committing breach of contract, not theft. If I
did not do so, and I cannot recall ever having done so in my life,
then I am committing neither.

[insult deleted]

No, you're the crazy one.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

What the OP is asking is "how do I stop my product from getting stolen"

No. He is asking "how do I stop my product from being as useful, so
that people will be forced to pay above marginal cost for more". He is
the same as someone who seeks to outlaw cow ownership by anyone else
so that he can corner the market for milk. Indeed, he doesn't want to
even sell milk, but rather, to sell cows, then sneak into peoples'
homes and kill those cows after a while so that they have to go buy
another one.

- a legitimate goal no matter what your political views or his business
model.

Taking away my freedoms and property rights, and those of others,
ultimately including his own(!), is hardly "a legitimate goal" in a
free and just society.

 

[reckoning54]

How exactly do you get property rights in something that you steal?

Nobody here is discussing theft except your side! Namely, theft of my
computer, in effect, by attempting to dictate what I can and cannot do
with it in the privacy of my own home. You're trying to claim that I
need your permission to perform a certain sequence of calculations or
run a certain sequence of instructions through it, even though it is
my own computer, bought and paid for with my hard-earned money, and
certainly NOT yours. That is a travesty.

if RedHat wants to give away the software to get service / support
business that's their business model.

And I recommended that the OP choose a similarly user-friendly
business model. That is ALL that I did. Recommend something to the OP.
Since when is it "advocating stealing" or some such rot to simply
recommend that someone consider a particular criterion when selecting
a business model?!

In both cases your property rights
are limited to that which they give or sell to you.

It's my property rights in the computer that I already own, and in
something AFTER I have legitimately received it through gift or
purchase, that concern me.

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

Yes. Differences in UI mean that there is a transition period as you
get used to the differences, but once that is over ...

This "transition period" has been going on for four years now with
OpenOffice.org as my sole editor utility. I'm used to the differences,
but I still think it's crap.

That is because you are looking at Unix apps, not free software
developed for Windows. Unix apps tend to have quirks, especially in
the compatibility area. Perhaps that is also why you are overlooking
many of the quality free games and other applications, too, if you are
only looking at those for one OS, and it's not the one with the
current lead in market share.

And my experience with the Windows freeware market has been nothing
short of abysmal, open source or not.

 

[Dave Miller]

Also, theft of services is not even relevant here. Theft of services
is if you use a service the providing of which causes ongoing costs of
some sort to the service's provider, without permission.

Totally wrong. Theft of services occurs anytime you use a service
without permission. The provider's cost structure has nothing to do with it.

You can't have stolen something if nothing of anybody else's goes
missing, or in the case of expenses, goes up, due to your actions.

LOL - theft is theft whether or not you get caught or wther there is an
incremental cost to the victim.

See above. You are insane.

My sanity notwithstanding, you are a thief.

No. He is asking "how do I stop my product from being as useful, so
that people will be forced to pay above marginal cost for more". He is
the same as someone who seeks to outlaw cow ownership by anyone else
so that he can corner the market for milk. Indeed, he doesn't want to
even sell milk, but rather, to sell cows, then sneak into peoples'
homes and kill those cows after a while so that they have to go buy
another one.

Taking away my freedoms and property rights, and those of others,
ultimately including his own(!), is hardly "a legitimate goal" in a
free and just society.

You have no understanding of economics, the law, free or just. That
said, you have the freedom and the right to be ignorant as you continue
to prove here.

 

[Chronic Philharmonic]

I'm not. I'm trying to advise the OP. If I were trying to stop him,
I'd be waving a gun around or something, you moron.


He is not asking for a piece of bread. He is asking for a chunk of
everyone's property rights to go away. Including, unwittingly, his own.

What a load of crap. I write my software to work the way I want it to work.
If I decide to design it so that it has a free trial period, after which you
must pay for it to continue working -- including strategies that thwart
attempts to disable that behavior -- that is simply how the software works.
If you don't like that software design, then don't download it, and don't
use it. Nobody has a gun to your head.

My current home project happens to be free for whomever wants it (because I
wrote it as a hobby). If I were trying to support my family, I would want to
be paid for it. One might say, by giving it away free, I am depriving some
other developer of income he needs to feed his family.

The company I work for (to feed my family) requires payment for its
software, and that software contains code to prevent unpaid use. If users
don't like that arrangement, they are at liberty to buy elsewhere. I have to
assume that those who pay for our software believe the benefit exceeds the
cost of the license.

 

[Dave Miller]

Nobody here is discussing theft except your side! Namely, theft of my
computer, in effect, by attempting to dictate what I can and cannot do
with it in the privacy of my own home. You're trying to claim that I
need your permission to perform a certain sequence of calculations or
run a certain sequence of instructions through it, even though it is
my own computer, bought and paid for with my hard-earned money, and
certainly NOT yours. That is a travesty.

> It's my property rights in the computer that I already own, and in
something AFTER I have legitimately received it through gift or
purchase, that concern me.

You're welcome to perform any calculations that you want. Grab a text
editor and compiler or IDE and off you go. You're not welcome to take
the OP's work product as your own. If you can't see the difference in
the two, you might want to take some of your hard earned money and
enroll in an ethics, economics or consumer law class. Come to think of
it, in your world the school shouldn't charge you tuition - their costs
don't increase for one more student. In that case, go ahead and skip the
registrar and just show up for class.

 

[Chronic Philharmonic]

Ridiculous. He's insisting that he should get paid over and over again
for doing a piece of work just once, unlike say a stonemason who has
to lay more bricks to make more money. Furthermore, he's attempting to
destroy other peoples' property, namely, their copies of the software
he authored.

The expiration behavior should be clearly stated in the license or download
agreement. If you don't like the fact that my software "decays" or "rots" or
"expires", you're free to opt out and find another vendor.

If some people are willing to pay me over and over again for the same
software, that is their decision. Many licensing agreements in and out of
the software industry work that way. Anyone who finds that morally offensive
is free to offer an alternative -- if you prefer that model, then by all
means support them with your business!

Sure it is. At a banquet, if you eat one of the food items, that item
is unavailable for anyone else to eat, and the operator's costs rise
rapidly in proportion to the amount of food provided. This is
emphatically not the case with software or any other form of data,
particularly not when the distribution is viral rather than from a
central repository.

So what? I can still design my software in a way that limits it's lifetime.
It is a "feature", no different than any other feature, except that you
happen to strenuously dislike this feature. Here's a suggestion: You should
avoid software that contains features you strongly dislike. If my profit and
market share diminishes as a result, I will be forced to change it (it's the
free market at work here).

Software copies are inherently free; software development is not. It
is best not to confuse the two.

Spam is free. That's why we have spam. If there were a cost associated with
it, spam would die out overnight. Anyone is at liberty to attach the cost to
whatever is convenient. If you don't like that implementation, then choose
one you prefer.

The way to achieve that is to create an escrow account that people can
pay money into; if a target amount is reached, the money is used to
develop the software, which then becomes available to everyone. Those
who paid get it sooner than if they hadn't, and may be given extras
(such as signed gold-plated CDs or whatever). If the target looks like
it will never be reached, the money is returned to the investors with
whatever interest it had earned and the software doesn't get made.

That is *your* preferred embodiment. Choose the vendors that embrace it. If
enough people do that, the other models will die a natural death in the free
market. You are at liberty to vote with your dollars every day of your life.

This is precisely how a lot of R&D is done -- investors chip in and a
product is developed. Only the scheme described above is much less
risky for the investors, assuming the escrow account is managed by a
trusted party such as a respected and accredited bank.

If that is true, then people will gravitate to it naturally, and you will
eventually get what you want. If not, then you will have to put up with a
model you don't like, but one that the majority of vendors and customers
prefer. What is the problem with that?

 

[John B. Matthews]

[...]

The expiration behavior should be clearly stated in the license or download
agreement. If you don't like the fact that my software "decays" or "rots" or
"expires", you're free to opt out and find another vendor.

I believe you have exposed the heart of the matter. This is perfectly
reasonable, given a sufficiently clear statement of the expiration
behavior. If a vendor offers a 30-day free trial, I would expect to be
notified well in advance if the software was designed to use my network
or storage to enforce that behavior. I would consider software that did
so without a clear warning as malicious. I would view the failure to
disclose as fraud.

I do not suggest that this would entitle me to violate the trial period,
but it would tend to vitiate a vendor's claim for infringement.

IANAL. YMMV.

 

[reckoning54]

This "transition period" has been going on for four years now with
OpenOffice.org as my sole editor utility. I'm used to the differences,
but I still think it's crap.

Well, then, that's your opinion. Other peoples' may differ.

And my experience with the Windows freeware market has been nothing
short of abysmal, open source or not.

Other peoples' experience may also differ.