[Ardour-Dev] Licensing and enforced payments

[Patrick Shirkey]

Patrick Shirkey wrote:
> Jan Stary wrote:
>>
>>> It will not make any money. It will make the person who actively 
>>> tries to stop Ardour from generating income feel awkward and maybe 
>>> if the collective will is turned against that person something 
>>> unfortunate will happen to them like getting stung hit in the face 
>>> or getting a zit on their forehead before a big date.
>>>     
>>
>> LOL actually; but I don't think it will work - "we will think bad of you
>> if you don't pay us" is not going to make anyone pay. It's only gonna
>> make people think less of Ardour.
>>
>>   
> In this case I was referring to anyone who forks the code. Not the 
> people who don't contribute.
>
>>>>> I think most rational people and busy developers will not be 
>>>>> bothered to maintain a fork of Ardour just to make sure a License 
>>>>> key for mac users and people who are unable to compile a binary 
>>>>> isn't part of the system.
>>>>>         
>>>> No. Ardour is an opensource project.  Ardour users can and will 
>>>> compile
>>>> it from source code (including Mac users, which you seem to have 
>>>> picked
>>>> for some reason).  "Maintaining" such a fork would basically mean 
>>>> posting
>>>> a diff with a few carefully placed #ifdef's each time Ardour makes
>>>> a (crippled) release.
>>>>
>>>>       
>>> I'm betting they will find it easier to just compile with the 
>>> License option disabled.
>>>     
>>
>> Whoa! You mean there should be a _compile_option_ to (not) include
>> the licensing code? What's the point then?
>>
>>   
> That has been on the table since the start of the discussion. I'm 
> sorry you missed that point.
>
> A License is not necessarily to stop a program from being crippled. It 
> could be to enable new features that were not paid for during 
> development or to allow the user to turn off a ticker etc...
>
> The application would still work and be completely usable. It might 
> not be as efficient as humanly possible but mostly it would just be 
> more obvious that we expect people to contribute to the development 
> process.
>

In addition we could make it plainly obvious that if you want compile 
the code yourself you can disable the License feature.

We could take a leaf out of Radioheads book and make the License cost as 
much as the user wants to give.

This would at least force more people to visit the donations page and in 
the process see that there is a subscription and donation system in place.

At the very least it would generate some more awareness about the 
funding issue.








-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.