Q: Selling my program.
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Hello Code Project. I am writing to appeal to the experience of the veterans in the industry here. I am a programmer for a trucking company, while also still in school working towards my undergraduate in Computer Science. This company is very small, and I am the only software/IT person here. As part of my employment contract, I retain ownership of all software I write, source and all. This, as I am told, is not a common thing, and because of this I am now in the position to sell my software for the first time. I have worked on a few projects in the past, mostly games, but I have never sold anything and am a little nervous about the whole ordeal. There is another trucking company in our office building that wishes to buy the software from me, we have had a few meetings now and are progressing along rather smoothly in the whole process. To answer my questions, you will probably need to know a bit about my software. It is nothing amazing; it just basically automates the company. My software interfaces with a SQL database, keeping records of all employees/trucks/trailers and trips the company runs. The software generates all needed reports on the status of the company, including running all payroll and calculating the routing information for the trips. It was written in C# and the SQL server is MySQL. The software is quite stable and I am hard pressed at this point to make it generate an error. I attribute its qualities to the .NET platform, which was a pleasure to work with. My questions are as follows: What should I charge for this software? I have no real idea of its value. How much does custom software usually cost? This is factoring in that tech support is two doors away for them. What kind of licensing system should I use to protect my program? Should I use any at all? They have asked for the source, so that their IT/software person can edit the program to adapt it to run as a Linux web service (I am unsure at this point if MONO supports this yet...). Should I let them have the source code? What should I charge for it, if anything? What kind of licensing system can I use to protect my code? I chose Code Project as the place to ask because I often use this site as a reference. I find it to be the best repository of information around. Normally, I am a quite generous person and would more than likely just give my program to this other company. However, recent financial troubles have left me in a very difficult position and any income I can generate would be very beneficial. I hav
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Hello Code Project. I am writing to appeal to the experience of the veterans in the industry here. I am a programmer for a trucking company, while also still in school working towards my undergraduate in Computer Science. This company is very small, and I am the only software/IT person here. As part of my employment contract, I retain ownership of all software I write, source and all. This, as I am told, is not a common thing, and because of this I am now in the position to sell my software for the first time. I have worked on a few projects in the past, mostly games, but I have never sold anything and am a little nervous about the whole ordeal. There is another trucking company in our office building that wishes to buy the software from me, we have had a few meetings now and are progressing along rather smoothly in the whole process. To answer my questions, you will probably need to know a bit about my software. It is nothing amazing; it just basically automates the company. My software interfaces with a SQL database, keeping records of all employees/trucks/trailers and trips the company runs. The software generates all needed reports on the status of the company, including running all payroll and calculating the routing information for the trips. It was written in C# and the SQL server is MySQL. The software is quite stable and I am hard pressed at this point to make it generate an error. I attribute its qualities to the .NET platform, which was a pleasure to work with. My questions are as follows: What should I charge for this software? I have no real idea of its value. How much does custom software usually cost? This is factoring in that tech support is two doors away for them. What kind of licensing system should I use to protect my program? Should I use any at all? They have asked for the source, so that their IT/software person can edit the program to adapt it to run as a Linux web service (I am unsure at this point if MONO supports this yet...). Should I let them have the source code? What should I charge for it, if anything? What kind of licensing system can I use to protect my code? I chose Code Project as the place to ask because I often use this site as a reference. I find it to be the best repository of information around. Normally, I am a quite generous person and would more than likely just give my program to this other company. However, recent financial troubles have left me in a very difficult position and any income I can generate would be very beneficial. I hav
before i answer your questions, let me say that i'm very pro open source (you'll see that most of the products on my website are open source), and so i'm obviously going to answer these questions from that angle... and so without further ado... razialx wrote: What should I charge for this software? I have no real idea of its value. How much does custom software usually cost? This is factoring in that tech support is two doors away for them. well, this is an interesting point. software does not actually have a value. you cannot measure how much it's worth (why do you think Windows is so overpriced?). so i cannot really help you with this question other than to say that you should be very reasonable if you _are_ going to charge for it. razialx wrote: What kind of licensing system should I use to protect my program? Should I use any at all? licensing is very important, even for open source products. if you are going to go the commercial route i would advise a more service orientated system, rather than a product price approach. companies these days are more interested in the services surrounding a product. razialx wrote: They have asked for the source, so that their IT/software person can edit the program to adapt it to run as a Linux web service (I am unsure at this point if MONO supports this yet...). Should I let them have the source code? What should I charge for it, if anything? What kind of licensing system can I use to protect my code? Mono runs web services and ASP.NET applications very well. If a company wants the source code, then I would suggest you give it to them... As for charging for it, that depends on your licensing system. You might want to use a GNU GPL style license which requires that any changes to the source code be committed back to the code tree. razialx wrote: I have considered at times open sourcing my entire program, just to give back to the community from which I have gained so much. What would be the implications of open sourcing this program after having sold it to another company? well, the company you sold it to probably wouldn't be too happy with you if you open sourced the application after you sold it to them... let me put forward a simple case for open sourcing your application: if you decide to open source your application, you give your application a chance to be improved upon by others who are looking for a similar application. this also mea
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before i answer your questions, let me say that i'm very pro open source (you'll see that most of the products on my website are open source), and so i'm obviously going to answer these questions from that angle... and so without further ado... razialx wrote: What should I charge for this software? I have no real idea of its value. How much does custom software usually cost? This is factoring in that tech support is two doors away for them. well, this is an interesting point. software does not actually have a value. you cannot measure how much it's worth (why do you think Windows is so overpriced?). so i cannot really help you with this question other than to say that you should be very reasonable if you _are_ going to charge for it. razialx wrote: What kind of licensing system should I use to protect my program? Should I use any at all? licensing is very important, even for open source products. if you are going to go the commercial route i would advise a more service orientated system, rather than a product price approach. companies these days are more interested in the services surrounding a product. razialx wrote: They have asked for the source, so that their IT/software person can edit the program to adapt it to run as a Linux web service (I am unsure at this point if MONO supports this yet...). Should I let them have the source code? What should I charge for it, if anything? What kind of licensing system can I use to protect my code? Mono runs web services and ASP.NET applications very well. If a company wants the source code, then I would suggest you give it to them... As for charging for it, that depends on your licensing system. You might want to use a GNU GPL style license which requires that any changes to the source code be committed back to the code tree. razialx wrote: I have considered at times open sourcing my entire program, just to give back to the community from which I have gained so much. What would be the implications of open sourcing this program after having sold it to another company? well, the company you sold it to probably wouldn't be too happy with you if you open sourced the application after you sold it to them... let me put forward a simple case for open sourcing your application: if you decide to open source your application, you give your application a chance to be improved upon by others who are looking for a similar application. this also mea
Just one point: raouls wrote: software does not actually have a value. you cannot measure how much it's worth I disagree completely. Whilst it is not always easy to measure it's worth, software is a service you employ to complete a task just as any other and therefore it has value. The argument that software itself has no intrinsic value is most often used by people who would never consider paying for support, having the time to either get it working themselves or more likely ditch it and try the next one. When you actually need a piece of software to provide some service for your business it is very, very, easy to justify the cost when you offset it against the cost of your time. Software distributed for free is only free if your business is worthless. If you pay for it, you have legal rights to get what you paid for. It is worth pointing out that some companies won't touch software that is distributed for free, a lot of upper management and finance people judge software's worth by its price tag and not by its abilities. I have been asked to place a price tag on my free ASP forum software to close a sale with one company in order for it to be approved for their internal network use - simply because the PO would have been rejected if I didn't.
David Wulff The Royal Woofle Museum
Everybody is entitled to my opinion
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before i answer your questions, let me say that i'm very pro open source (you'll see that most of the products on my website are open source), and so i'm obviously going to answer these questions from that angle... and so without further ado... razialx wrote: What should I charge for this software? I have no real idea of its value. How much does custom software usually cost? This is factoring in that tech support is two doors away for them. well, this is an interesting point. software does not actually have a value. you cannot measure how much it's worth (why do you think Windows is so overpriced?). so i cannot really help you with this question other than to say that you should be very reasonable if you _are_ going to charge for it. razialx wrote: What kind of licensing system should I use to protect my program? Should I use any at all? licensing is very important, even for open source products. if you are going to go the commercial route i would advise a more service orientated system, rather than a product price approach. companies these days are more interested in the services surrounding a product. razialx wrote: They have asked for the source, so that their IT/software person can edit the program to adapt it to run as a Linux web service (I am unsure at this point if MONO supports this yet...). Should I let them have the source code? What should I charge for it, if anything? What kind of licensing system can I use to protect my code? Mono runs web services and ASP.NET applications very well. If a company wants the source code, then I would suggest you give it to them... As for charging for it, that depends on your licensing system. You might want to use a GNU GPL style license which requires that any changes to the source code be committed back to the code tree. razialx wrote: I have considered at times open sourcing my entire program, just to give back to the community from which I have gained so much. What would be the implications of open sourcing this program after having sold it to another company? well, the company you sold it to probably wouldn't be too happy with you if you open sourced the application after you sold it to them... let me put forward a simple case for open sourcing your application: if you decide to open source your application, you give your application a chance to be improved upon by others who are looking for a similar application. this also mea
Thank you for your reply and input. Both of you. I understand your views on opening the source and I understand the idea of paying for services and not the software. The issue here is, I would not get paid for any services by this company. I can already tell that. They have their own IT/Software guy, who appears competent enough to work with my software without needing me. One of my concerns is that he has stated his intent to develop and market his own Trucking software, and I do not want that software to be a recompiled version of my software. In my eyes I see that being different that what is possible with the GPL. It would not be a community effort to improve and expand my software. It would be one man taking my work and turning it into money for himself. I am very confused right now as to what I need to do. I must say that I am in no way trying to go the "Microsoft" way. I was just thinking of charging them a few hundred dollars for unlimited use of the program. Does that sound unreasonable? Or does that sound like too little? I do not have the time right now to organize up my own 'company' of sorts. Thank you for your replies.
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Hello Code Project. I am writing to appeal to the experience of the veterans in the industry here. I am a programmer for a trucking company, while also still in school working towards my undergraduate in Computer Science. This company is very small, and I am the only software/IT person here. As part of my employment contract, I retain ownership of all software I write, source and all. This, as I am told, is not a common thing, and because of this I am now in the position to sell my software for the first time. I have worked on a few projects in the past, mostly games, but I have never sold anything and am a little nervous about the whole ordeal. There is another trucking company in our office building that wishes to buy the software from me, we have had a few meetings now and are progressing along rather smoothly in the whole process. To answer my questions, you will probably need to know a bit about my software. It is nothing amazing; it just basically automates the company. My software interfaces with a SQL database, keeping records of all employees/trucks/trailers and trips the company runs. The software generates all needed reports on the status of the company, including running all payroll and calculating the routing information for the trips. It was written in C# and the SQL server is MySQL. The software is quite stable and I am hard pressed at this point to make it generate an error. I attribute its qualities to the .NET platform, which was a pleasure to work with. My questions are as follows: What should I charge for this software? I have no real idea of its value. How much does custom software usually cost? This is factoring in that tech support is two doors away for them. What kind of licensing system should I use to protect my program? Should I use any at all? They have asked for the source, so that their IT/software person can edit the program to adapt it to run as a Linux web service (I am unsure at this point if MONO supports this yet...). Should I let them have the source code? What should I charge for it, if anything? What kind of licensing system can I use to protect my code? I chose Code Project as the place to ask because I often use this site as a reference. I find it to be the best repository of information around. Normally, I am a quite generous person and would more than likely just give my program to this other company. However, recent financial troubles have left me in a very difficult position and any income I can generate would be very beneficial. I hav
In order to determine a price for the software, you need to know how much it is worth to your customer. If it's cost can be justified by savings for the company then it is worth every penny and you should be rewarded at that level. Since you have been dealing with the business while writing your product, you probably have an idea of how much it is worth to the company. As far as a license, you might want to sell an enterprise license to the company to use the software and source code within their company, and explicitly exclude any reselling, external access or use of the source code outside the company. If the other developer wants to resell the application, then work out a seperate deal with him. If you think this is worth worrying about you should contact a laywer and create a formal contract for the transaction. Your other option is to take what you can get buy a few toys, have some fun, focus on school and think about what you are going to do next. People that get involved with starting a business, but aren't serious about putting in the time and effort it takes usually end up worse off.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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In order to determine a price for the software, you need to know how much it is worth to your customer. If it's cost can be justified by savings for the company then it is worth every penny and you should be rewarded at that level. Since you have been dealing with the business while writing your product, you probably have an idea of how much it is worth to the company. As far as a license, you might want to sell an enterprise license to the company to use the software and source code within their company, and explicitly exclude any reselling, external access or use of the source code outside the company. If the other developer wants to resell the application, then work out a seperate deal with him. If you think this is worth worrying about you should contact a laywer and create a formal contract for the transaction. Your other option is to take what you can get buy a few toys, have some fun, focus on school and think about what you are going to do next. People that get involved with starting a business, but aren't serious about putting in the time and effort it takes usually end up worse off.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
Ok, thank you Andy. The other IT Person mentioned that we could use a form of the GPL as our license if I were to give him the source. I know that would require him to commit changes back to the source tree, but would that prevent him from using that source in a retail application? Thank you all again. I should be having a meeting with the other company any day here to discuss everything. Tim
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Ok, thank you Andy. The other IT Person mentioned that we could use a form of the GPL as our license if I were to give him the source. I know that would require him to commit changes back to the source tree, but would that prevent him from using that source in a retail application? Thank you all again. I should be having a meeting with the other company any day here to discuss everything. Tim
I think the important thing to make clear in the contract is that you maintain ownership of the source and can dictate how they are allowed to modify and use it. A GPL license would prevent them from using it in a non-GPL commercial application, but GPL isn't the only license out there. If you think there is a bigger market for the product and want to spend the time on it, you might want to consider selling it as a traditional application. These sites have a lot of good information on starting your own software company. http://www.ericsink.com/[^] http://microisv.com[^] http://www.joelonsoftware.com[^]
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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Hello Code Project. I am writing to appeal to the experience of the veterans in the industry here. I am a programmer for a trucking company, while also still in school working towards my undergraduate in Computer Science. This company is very small, and I am the only software/IT person here. As part of my employment contract, I retain ownership of all software I write, source and all. This, as I am told, is not a common thing, and because of this I am now in the position to sell my software for the first time. I have worked on a few projects in the past, mostly games, but I have never sold anything and am a little nervous about the whole ordeal. There is another trucking company in our office building that wishes to buy the software from me, we have had a few meetings now and are progressing along rather smoothly in the whole process. To answer my questions, you will probably need to know a bit about my software. It is nothing amazing; it just basically automates the company. My software interfaces with a SQL database, keeping records of all employees/trucks/trailers and trips the company runs. The software generates all needed reports on the status of the company, including running all payroll and calculating the routing information for the trips. It was written in C# and the SQL server is MySQL. The software is quite stable and I am hard pressed at this point to make it generate an error. I attribute its qualities to the .NET platform, which was a pleasure to work with. My questions are as follows: What should I charge for this software? I have no real idea of its value. How much does custom software usually cost? This is factoring in that tech support is two doors away for them. What kind of licensing system should I use to protect my program? Should I use any at all? They have asked for the source, so that their IT/software person can edit the program to adapt it to run as a Linux web service (I am unsure at this point if MONO supports this yet...). Should I let them have the source code? What should I charge for it, if anything? What kind of licensing system can I use to protect my code? I chose Code Project as the place to ask because I often use this site as a reference. I find it to be the best repository of information around. Normally, I am a quite generous person and would more than likely just give my program to this other company. However, recent financial troubles have left me in a very difficult position and any income I can generate would be very beneficial. I hav
Either make it open source, or see a lawyer and an accountant. Seriously, you will need a lawyer to make sure the customer doesn't get any more rights than they pay for. Seems like you have rejected the former (nothing wrong with that), so you will want to make sure you are protected, particularly if they want to sell your software. Cost is always what the market will bare, and not what it costs you to make! Just because you have this paid for from the first contract doesn't mean that you should sell for $1, even though that would be profit. What did it cost you to write this software? If the first firm payed you $10,000.00, than you know it is worth $10,000 to someone, why won't all customers pay this. Further, the first firm didn't get rights, so they don't consider rights to the software worth $10,000 (or whatever they paid you. In short, you should charge this guy more because he wants the source code, and if he wants to sell it, you should charge more yet. Ethically the first customer paid for development, you should not give that away to their compitition for nothing without verbal permission from them. (Open source gives them the advantage that the next company that needs a new feature might give it back to them) Make sure the lawyer draws up a contract. Microsoft gives away Internet explorer because they bought the source code from Spyglass, and part of the agreement was spyglass would get some money from each sale, but because ie is free they get nothing! You want a lawyer better than yours so you can be protected from this. The fees should cover something like: Use of software in the company Use of software in company, plus source code that they can modify, but for internal use only. Use of software in company, plus source code that they can modify and sell to others. Often these are on a per user basis, not per company. It is fairly common in the first case for source code to be held by a third party escrow agency who will give your customers the source code should you go out of buisness, plus more rights to it. Make sure you charge enough to deal with overhead! You need to pay taxes on your buisness. You need to pay the lawyer and accountant. At least double the amount of money you want to take home as a start. You may need to hire and pay tech support, which mean you charge even more. Don't try to do this without a lawyer, there are too many things that we do not know. Some of it is specific from state to state. A lawyer can advise you about
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Either make it open source, or see a lawyer and an accountant. Seriously, you will need a lawyer to make sure the customer doesn't get any more rights than they pay for. Seems like you have rejected the former (nothing wrong with that), so you will want to make sure you are protected, particularly if they want to sell your software. Cost is always what the market will bare, and not what it costs you to make! Just because you have this paid for from the first contract doesn't mean that you should sell for $1, even though that would be profit. What did it cost you to write this software? If the first firm payed you $10,000.00, than you know it is worth $10,000 to someone, why won't all customers pay this. Further, the first firm didn't get rights, so they don't consider rights to the software worth $10,000 (or whatever they paid you. In short, you should charge this guy more because he wants the source code, and if he wants to sell it, you should charge more yet. Ethically the first customer paid for development, you should not give that away to their compitition for nothing without verbal permission from them. (Open source gives them the advantage that the next company that needs a new feature might give it back to them) Make sure the lawyer draws up a contract. Microsoft gives away Internet explorer because they bought the source code from Spyglass, and part of the agreement was spyglass would get some money from each sale, but because ie is free they get nothing! You want a lawyer better than yours so you can be protected from this. The fees should cover something like: Use of software in the company Use of software in company, plus source code that they can modify, but for internal use only. Use of software in company, plus source code that they can modify and sell to others. Often these are on a per user basis, not per company. It is fairly common in the first case for source code to be held by a third party escrow agency who will give your customers the source code should you go out of buisness, plus more rights to it. Make sure you charge enough to deal with overhead! You need to pay taxes on your buisness. You need to pay the lawyer and accountant. At least double the amount of money you want to take home as a start. You may need to hire and pay tech support, which mean you charge even more. Don't try to do this without a lawyer, there are too many things that we do not know. Some of it is specific from state to state. A lawyer can advise you about