Shareware considerations

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marksmithhfx
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Shareware considerations

Post by marksmithhfx » Sat Jul 09, 2022 7:10 pm

Hi, I'm thinking of marketing a LC product as shareware (well, the subcategory known as donation-ware). I'm wondering if anyone has experience doing this and in particular:

1. how did you license the software?
2. and how did you handle the donations end of it?

Or, if you've never done this but have suggestions or recommendations to share that would be great as well.

Thank you
Mark
macOS 12.6.5 (Monterey), Xcode 14.2, LC 10.0.0, iOS 15.6.1
Targets: Mac, iOS

FourthWorld
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Re: Shareware considerations

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Jul 23, 2022 9:08 pm

1. Whatever license terms fit your goals. If you want to encourage pay-per-user open source may be a poor fit; it's good for encouraging proliferation of source and can be good for projects that benefit from source contribution, but FOSS is not generally useful for direct usage monetization.

2. Just put a button to a PayPal purchase page (or any other payment processor). Anything relying on donations will get little uptake, so probably not worth the investment to make fancy integrated payment. Just set up a donation page at a payment processor, and have a link in a button within your app that launches that page in the user's browser.

I use that simple method with my devolution toolkit, and it's brought in almost enough revenue to cover my domain registrations. :)
Richard Gaskin
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marksmithhfx
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Re: Shareware considerations

Post by marksmithhfx » Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:12 pm

FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 9:08 pm
Just set up a donation page at a payment processor, and have a link in a button within your app that launches that page in the user's browser.

I use that simple method with my devolution toolkit, and it's brought in almost enough revenue to cover my domain registrations. :)
Thanks Richard,

Exactly the kind of information I was looking for. I had come to the same conclusion concerning the licensing (using a std EULA and just modifying it to allow unlimited distribution of the app) and was leaning in the direction of your payment suggestion but was not quite there yet. So thanks, it confirms I should continue beavering down that path. I will be sure to let everyone know when it's available :D

Mark
macOS 12.6.5 (Monterey), Xcode 14.2, LC 10.0.0, iOS 15.6.1
Targets: Mac, iOS

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