Thanks. Actually my binary license sales is doing very well! :-) Its just that i want to do more :-), and i thought maybe its the source code license that may bring in more customers :-) So thought i will run it through you guys to see what the general opinion / feel is :-) I am getting close to deciding on this though, like with the sort of options i have outlied in one of other replies, + price hike for the source code option, like you have mentioned :-) Thanks.

Evals - why not? Sure :-) You will love them ;-) I can send you a private email with my website link if you are sure you want to know the details ;-) I am trying to avoid mentioning it here, in public lounge! That is all! :-)

modified on Thursday, March 20, 2008 4:32 PM

Good analysis. Thanks. Although i get the general feel (from so many threads of discussions now, including yours) that without source code license option, there can be lesser sales of licenses, the risk of code absuse and theft seems to be inevitable and high, and hence providing the source code option is something that i will have to think in deep and decide. I guess i might come up with some options to ensure (as much as i can) that only good guys go for it. The options could be like: 1. Insisting on requiring the user to directly buy from me (via bank transfer) rather than allow them to buy via the e-commerce agent. This option will give me the chance to understand who the potential customer is, and can he be trusted etc. and if not, i can simply reject the order request. 2. I can ask the buyers to give me only a corporate email id or otherwise require them to buy the license in their company name, rather than individual name. This way, I can ensure that purchases cannot be made by "anybody", using anonymous email IDs like hotmail, yahoo, etc. But i guess even with all these options, there is always a chance that bad people can get away with complying with these and still abuse the system :mad: Yes, my product is something that is really cool :-)... the binary licenses are selling well :-), but to enter that $millions sales :cool: market, especially to make the large corporates buy it, i thought source code license will add value. But the risk sems to be prety high :-( Anyway, i have got another idea - for those big customers who want piece of mind on source availablilty (in future, and not necc. immediately!) i can organise a source code escrow option. Thanks for your time.

Good point :-)

Appreciate your point of view there :-) Thanks for the wishes... more the merrier!

Cheers for that info. Yes, i have written a UI suite for .NET Windows Forms and WPF. My web site is up and running, selling components well already... but i would not want to mention the details here, since others can consider it as spamming :-) So far it has only been binary licenses being sold, and i am now thinking about releasing the source as well - extra cash (more the merrier, always :-)) Thanks for your reply :-)

Yes that is true, but I do obfuscate my assemblies. Yes, i know it is not a perfect solution to safegaurd my code, but I am sure it does make it very difficult for the abusers.

Frank Kerrigan wrote:

Don't be surprised if it starts to pop up all over the place under GPL

Ohhh... that scares me :-(

:-) Yep, that is for sure :-)

Thanks guys. I researched on this for a while, and i found that almost all of the vendors offer source code option. That gave me some comfort that i thought it was probably OK and safe to release the full source. That said, i could not find out what sort of "safety" element these vendors have / think they have on the "potential" abuse side of things. There must be some sort of safety that would have planned for their intellectual property... if i can get that point understood, then i think that is all i need before i release the source :-)

Hi, I am about to release my .NET component in the market, and am thinking of releasing with full source code. This is because i have read from various discussion forums and threads on this subject that people prefer to buy components with full source code license. My question is this: If i am releasing the product with full source code license, then am i not taking the risk of "some" people abusing the source code availability. I know its just a small percetange of "bad people" out there who will abuse the source code contrary to the terms of the EULA i will have in place. But that said, i will need to take an informed decision taking into account the damage that can be caused by these small lot of bad people. So, what is the general feel - is it safe to release the components with source code, in order to give the developers the advantage to be able to debug the pruchased source code, and not worry about the "small lot" that can absuse the source code availability? I surely want to release the source code along with my components, since i feel most of the buyers want this option so they can debug the source etc. Comments invited. Thanks.