A code commerce site I've created (e.g. Sell your programs) - I need public opinion
Microcontrolled
Posts: 2,461
Hello! I have taken the plunge and have started an online commerce site!
In short, the site allows you to upload your Propeller, Basic Stamp, or SX code and sell it. It features a paid OBEX and a PC-to-Propeller Program Exchange for Propeller code. This means that PC programs that interact with a micro or help with development can be uploaded.
The programs that this is built for must be unique, not so much something that everyone would use, but something that exclusive projects could be in need of. Something like a file parser for a specialized file, or a driver for an uncommon piece of hardware. Something like an SD card driver (unless it has specialized functions) would be better if it were MIT licensed.
Once a month you will be paid, manually, for all the programs that you have sold.
To afford the site, and give the seller a better percentage, the buyer is charged a dollar so that the seller can get 80% of the profit, and the site keeping 20%. The extra charge is added to the listing price and marked as "shipping and handling" on the PayPal checkout.
I have written the License myself and it may need some revising from someone better suited at this sort of thing, so feel free to comment on it.
I have hand coded the website, and have worked on it for about 2 months, so even though I have spent several hours testing every page, there could still be errors I should be informed about. The site as I know it is fully functional in that you can sign up, post an object or program, and put it on the market.
The site's name is The Common Exchange.
To visit the site, go here:
http://www.thecommonexchange.com/
Thanks,
Micro
EDIT: The Featured, Support, and News pages need improvement and are being worked on. The Support page has a sample video.
In short, the site allows you to upload your Propeller, Basic Stamp, or SX code and sell it. It features a paid OBEX and a PC-to-Propeller Program Exchange for Propeller code. This means that PC programs that interact with a micro or help with development can be uploaded.
The programs that this is built for must be unique, not so much something that everyone would use, but something that exclusive projects could be in need of. Something like a file parser for a specialized file, or a driver for an uncommon piece of hardware. Something like an SD card driver (unless it has specialized functions) would be better if it were MIT licensed.
Once a month you will be paid, manually, for all the programs that you have sold.
To afford the site, and give the seller a better percentage, the buyer is charged a dollar so that the seller can get 80% of the profit, and the site keeping 20%. The extra charge is added to the listing price and marked as "shipping and handling" on the PayPal checkout.
I have written the License myself and it may need some revising from someone better suited at this sort of thing, so feel free to comment on it.
I have hand coded the website, and have worked on it for about 2 months, so even though I have spent several hours testing every page, there could still be errors I should be informed about. The site as I know it is fully functional in that you can sign up, post an object or program, and put it on the market.
The site's name is The Common Exchange.
To visit the site, go here:
http://www.thecommonexchange.com/
Thanks,
Micro
EDIT: The Featured, Support, and News pages need improvement and are being worked on. The Support page has a sample video.
Comments
I never thought of Propeller-interpeted languages.... I should probably open up some Propeller sub-catagories for other propeller-interpeted languages, like PropBasic, Forth, Catalina (?), ZiCog, etc.
If someone did illegally distribute the code, they probably couldn't get away with it on this forum, but there are other methods, so I'll look into code protection.
There's a piece of software that many people are using. It is commercial. You pay an initial price and then you pay for plugins from the company that created the software. There was a very active forum online and the company greatly benefited from support provided for free from users.
Many people developed code that would run in this application as plugins and scripts. These were primarily offered for free and posted in the forums. Just about everything was open and a great deal of support was provided by users.
Then the company initiated a new policy where you could sell your scripts/plugins through them. It seemed like overnight the entire feel of the community changed. They did not force this to happen - you can still (I assume) post anything and give away your work and support.
But it was no longer a pleasant place to belong to.
I participated pretty actively in that forum and posted numerous scripts - all open and easy to change. I even posted at least one that provided an interface between Parallax hardware and the software.
But slowly people disappeared from the forum. Much of the free support went away. I lingered there longer than many, but eventually I stopped participating in the forum.
I haven't read that forum for years. Maybe it's changed - I don't know.
I'm not saying this kind of thing will happen because of your web site. There's nothing basically wrong with the idea. And you are not directly connected to Parallax (unlike that other product/forum). But, things can change when people who once provided things for free can get paid for their work (again, not a bad thing but not always good for the community).
As for me, I don't know very much about the Propeller, but I try to answer simple questions when I can just as a way of giving back for all the help I get from people when I get really stuck. Chances are I will never be able to help out gurus like Mike Green, Phil Pilgrim, et al, who've saved by butt on many occasions, but I try to help newbies if I think I can... so life goes on.
Personally, I grow despondent when people try to privatize the sidewalks.
If you could do that then surely it would be impossible to ever compile the code, if it's source code, or download it to a Prop, if it's binary/bytecode.
I can't see that working with interpreted languages helps in the prevent copying. Most lumps of code need tweaking for use in applications so making a bytecode only available is not much use. Same as binary only for compiled languages.
i don't think a paid obex is bad idea. i would compare it to
http://thingiverse.com/mctrivia
http://shapeways.com/shops/propmodule
on one my stuff is available under creative commons for free on the other it is available at a reasonable price. i publish different things to each but i still provide free stuff when i come up with cool ideas you can probably make at home.
in coding someone may be willing to share more if they can get a few bucks for there troubles. not everyone is willing to publish there hard work under the mit license
You will never ever stop piracy through DRM. Don't bother wasting time trying to stop the distribution of code, your best bet is to put in place a liscence that will hold the people responsible who illegally use it for commercial gain. Trying to go after a home user for pirating your code will never work. You can't stop them and you will waste many hours and lose much of your hair trying to.
If a companies like EA, Blizzard, Autodesk, MS, can't stop people from copying their software what makes you think you and your limited budget will be any more succesful? Your idea about stoping someone from being able to copy something from a folder will never work. I can think of multiple ways around it.
1)Boot into an OS that doesn't care about the folder permissions you set.
2)Open the code and manually type it into a new file
3)Use one of the many free OCR programs available to copy the code.
Other than that, cool idea. I personally will never use the site as I am a hobbyist and paying for code just most likely will never happen. I would rather change hardware if I can't find/make a driver for what I got, plus just about anything I personally would need to do is already being listed in the OBEX. Heck we even gota USB host driver now.
Where's all the products though? It appears you opened a store with empty shelves.
Yeah, this is NOT a good idea in any way, shape or form.
FYI: This is just my humble opinion, and I really dislike the whole idea and concept.
KK
@ElectricEye: True. But I keep restraints. I won't let something users really want be put up at high price, and I will request of the user to reconsider MIT licensing.
@KaosKidd: That's not the point of the site. See Franklin's post.
@Franklin: You hit the nail right on the head!! That is exactly what this site is for!
As for looking shoddy, keep in mind it was created in nothing but notepad, and may take some time before I get it looking just right. It took weeks to get it to look this good! Maybe this is exclusive to FireFox though, and I need to do a cross-platform check.
Anyway.....
THIS IS THE PROBLEM THE SITE SOLVES
When you want a program done for a specific purpose and you don't want to write it yourself, what do you do? You hire a consultant. This is why there is such a large market for consultants now, because they are in high demand. HOWEVER, since consulting is a pretty competitive buissness seeing as there are so many availible, most consultants don't want there code out where others can see it and copy it, so it stays with the client ONLY, never being availible to anyone who doesn't want to pay a high consulting fee. THIS IS WHERE THE COMMON EXCHANGE COMES IN. Professional or speciallized code writers or consultants can write code for a client, and then as an extra release the useful part of the code (driver or such) to others who may have an exclusive use for it.
As he stated, code for hire.
Unless you have a bandolier full of attorneys and are willing to shoot them at people (
There are other ways to make money off your website. For example, you could provide lots and lots of free information, but use something like Google Adwords to make money via ads placed on your site.
And one way to get web traffic is to make your site unique, find a unique need, be the first to bridge some kind of gap in the market and then become theee site to go to for that bridge.
For example, a lot of clueless people are now starting out microcontrollers with the Arduino just because it has a reputation for being so "open". I'm guessing that there's a great deal of potential market that could be tapped if you can help bridge the gap between the Arduino and the Propeller and lure the herds of clueless Arduino people into the fields of Ambrosia that is the Parallax environment. IMHO the Propeller and other Parallax products are superior to the Arduino but there needs to be a bridge so people can cross over. There needs to be some kind of hybrid system, combos of hardware and software. But the Arduino crowd likes the concept of "openness" so you make it open, but make your money off of ads as traffic moves to your site. You could also sell kits, etc. adapters, etc. by taking advantage of the economy of scale (It's cheaper for you to make 100 or 1000 PCBs than for each person making a PCB by themselves, so your kits end up cheaper than what they could do it themselves, etc.)
I know Martin Hodge is already doing some serious hardware in this direction.
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?t=124288&highlight=arduino
Maybe you guys can team up.
Or find some other niche to bridge.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Instead of just selling codes, why not put some advertisments as ElectricAye mentioned? Just write up some review and/or microcontroller tutorials, put some related advertisments inside.
I was in the consulting business for many years. Providing software for hire to all kinds of businesses in military and commercial sectors. So my experience of dealing with client companies brings me to have a big question mark over your statement:
Generally in such contracts when code is "written for hire" the work produced belongs entirely to the client. There is no possibility for the consultant to make any extra on the side.
Phil has a good point about becoming a "middle-man" between consultants and clients. I have known many such agents who have done very well for themselves.
The idea is fine. I have nothing against it.
Don't even try to prevent code pirates. It just offends the people who paid.
Maybe make the code free, but customers can PAY for customized versions of the code from the original author. Rarely does an object do exactly what someone wants. It almost always has to be customized to some extent for any particular purpose. I think alot of newbies or folks that just "need to get it working now" would gladly pay to avoid the hours of tinkering that it often takes to customize objects.
I wish you lots of luck with it...
Bean
I was barely able to secure a domain name, and that's only $10 worth, and I have to partner with someone else's hosting service for the time being because I don't have any profits to pay a monthly fee. A PCB run on the cheap is $110! I have no continuous job, so I would drain my entire savings on the production of 1 PCB run! Not counting additional hardware!
In reality I LOVE to design things for hardware, more so then I do software, but I saw a market here. For hardware things I make I can sell it through Gadget Gangster, but now that they have started allowing custom PCB designs you have to get one just to compete, and as I stated before, I can't, so I'm stuck there.
Would I like to make a hardware-selling site? YES! I even have a good idea for one, and I could design all kinds of neat "transitional-products" for switching between microcontrollers, and I could even keep the name with that, The Common Exchange. :-)
But, now I have a software exchange site, so that is what I'm sticking with for the time being. Maybe in the near future if I am able to make any money off this I can start offering some hardware. Hey, I could always start by offering the hardware with which a driver is made. Like a flash chip driver with a flash chip. Or a Propeller optimizer object with a Propeller, or.... well.... you get the picture. That is very possible, anyway.
I'm currently adding where consultants can offer there services though the site, so that may turn out.
I would suggest adding other microcontrollers as well.
And with others, you could provide just the hex file to program the chip, but not provide the source code. But along with that you would also need to provide documentation on the program, pin connections, etc. And maybe allow for zip files which would contain the hex file, schematic, and documentation file.
Then a category by specific chip number, and then general areas under that.
So Brand X Chip manufacturer.
Then under that, Model 1, 2, 3, chips.
Then say under model 1 chip...
Blink LED's programs
Serial communications programs
USB communications programs
LCD and display programs
Etc.
And the model chips/categories would only be present on the web page if something was there.
So if there were no model 2 chip programs, then the chip model would not be listed.
That's all..
No hard feelings at all, and I do wish you luck with it, but I'm 100% sure I would NEVER use any aspect of it...
KK
if you could get all the code you need to get a project done in 10 min for $5 you wouldn't do it? i have paid people money for code when i need something specific and i just want to get to building my robot instead of spending weeks learning how to use a touch screen or some other complicated thing and bet you would 2 if the price was low enough.
The adwords idea is a good concept as is the idea of setting up an exchange to get specific custom things made on an order basis, with the website as the middle man.
Give it some thought. Since I am a pediatrician, i can't but help to ask that you don't forget to:
- Do well at school
- Go outside regularly and do physical things (bike, sports, fun, etc)
- Enjoy friends your age (your middle age engineer friends still like you a lot)
- Read books now and then
If you are doing the above things, then maybe you have time for something along these ideas. You are smart and ambitious - I have no doubt but that you will have a very bright future.
@mctrivia: I'm going to post something of my own that hopefully goes as an example to others, it's a Propeller object that enables a virtual touchscreen keyboard on Rayman's PSB. It's going to be sold about ~$2. It's a perfect example of something that you would want to pay for just because it's the easiest and best. Later I will release an entire OS frame that includes touch positioning, built in popup windows, and text outline with cut, copy, paste. That will sell for more, obviously. :-)
@Invent-O-Doc: Thanks for the encouragement! I currently comply with your "don't forget to...." list. :-)
Oh, I forgot to mention that you can post your object on the site for free, and it will replace the "Buy Now" button with a "Donate" button so that even MIT licensed code can pull in some money.
I agree with this - new ideas come along doing those as well!
This would discourage people from contributing free code to the obex.
The community would slowly fade away.
Nope. Not even a consideration. If I need code, I will write it, ask for help and or modify other free code. If needed I would go as far as to hire a programmer to write the code to my spec as I would need.
If someone posts a question and I know the answer, or feel I have a valid opinion, I'll post it. And should that user post code that is to be "purchased"; code that is the composite of the help they received here, I would be highly offended, and others too.
And this will progress throughout all the forums here, and eventually this forum will die. I've been here since 2002, suffered major health issues that caused me to drop off the forums for a while, and even back then, the only one's who created code without the help of the forums are the Parallax greats, but even back then, they posted questions for the forum members to help them with. The ones who took lessons from them are now "da bomb" people to ask when a programming issue can't be solved by one's own experience or knowledge. It is out of respect for these great "propeller head's" that I would NEVER consider using any service like this.
Not an option. Not a consideration.
KK
Most all authors will pay attention to these things. It needs to be really solid and clear, or it's a risk for them, and generally speaking, less activity for you. Poor license terms can impact everybody in a negative way, including liability, terms of distribution lowering the value of the product, ownership disputes, and license implications on other code. Most everybody actually doing professional work can and will give your terms very serious consideration.
In general, it should be much shorter. Eliminate every single word and clause that does not contribute directly to the stated terms. Consider that a golden rule with business terms and conditions of ANY kind, for ANY reason.
"reasons, and also any that make a good case for rebuttal."
That kind of language isn't really all that sound, and in general value judgments should be avoided. What is "good", for example?
"...the owner of the common exchange, who may approve or deny the upload for any reason."
Much better.
"These conditions are always in effect and ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE, however not to the point to effect any previously uploaded objects."
This is complicated. Consider just "The terms of the license are subject to change." mostly because what you have written puts a burden on you to more fully detail what happens to objects and their license terms, over time. That will be a considerable project, and at a minimum, you probably need to put a version number on your contract, and a date, which is what this is. Nobody enters a contract that isn't very well defined, or they do it once!
"The Common Exchange holds FULL RIGHTS TO REMOVE OR DENY YOUR OBJECT"
Eliminate the value judgment that follows, and clarify this. You can use far fewer words, and arrive at a much more precise meaning. "uploaded objects may be removed for any reason", for example.
Clause 2, Rights needs significant work. Consider the bare minimum. You are not documenting in the license, just stating terms. You are not selling either. Those things should go elsewhere in the site presentation.
By uploading your object, you agree to grant the common exchange a [non-exclusive?] right to distribute your object. All other rights and ownership remain with the owner, would be typical of terms seen here.
You've also not stated what the end users rights are. Are they use rights? Distribution rights? (that impacts projects, as they require distribution to be sold) Can they mix the code with theirs, and if so, what is the product of that, etc...???
And so on...
In general, you want to express things in very concrete terms, each standing alone, with the whole conveying your desired intent. As it stands right now, the terms and conditions are not really viable.
***I'm not expressing any opinion of your effort here, only contributing some feedback you may find helpful in this kind of thing. If it were me, I would read a number of licenses, consider the terms, and assemble yours from the language and structure you find there.
I think this is a great exercise honestly, where business writing and such is concerned. Take all your feedback to heart, and consider options! You don't hit the ball, without swinging the bat!
Edit: Another golden rule here is don't take any of it personally. Business is business, and everybody just wants the value proposition to be real and viable. That is what the feedback is for.
Another Edit: Really, the word I think of is "equitable". Everything should balance. The parties involved all have investments, returns and burdens, and those should make sense for all parties involved.
IANAL, but I do deal with this stuff regularly. This post is not, nor intended to be legal advice of any kind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drJWxMLrpE0
HACK THE PLANET.
What happens when someone invents a device that replicates physical objects perfectly. (ST:TNG)
Then an obex for "objects" that are code for your replicators gets created.
Eventually atomic configuration will be understood and it will be found that certain methods of structure are required for certain objects, and if we allow big money to patent atomic structure, its all over.
Thats what we do today, its insane, and eventually big business will dominate it(already has) and change laws that give them patents for "eternity"
The whole idea behind patents and copyrights was supposed to be used in the cases of companies using other companies ideas to directly compete. Its supposed to be used in the cases of profit due to replication. Making a profit from the sale of another persons idea. Companies steal their employees ideas all the time and make a profit on it. And many don't give the employees any kind of profit sharing.
The way into the future is free, because the other option is big money, big business, big government, and big control.
The few that own the companies profit and live PHAT lives, while the engineers, scientists, inventors, secretaries drive their Smile mobiles to their Smile hovels, only to eat Smile food, full of Smile that is GMO'd into retardation, then combined with a healthy dose of fouride, add some mercury in yo teeth, sprinkle a bit of bisphenol-a into there, 'knock em up' with some tainted swine flu knockoff of a "flu shot" and then tell them if they aren't happy with their life, they need "a psycotropic" drug called ritalin, or zoloft, or paxil, or any other nuiance of "cutsey names" that really just consist of brain mush inducing psychochemistry..
BAHHHHH BAHHHH
.. we the sheeple...
RANT complete, sorry.
HACK THE PLANET!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drJWxMLrpE0
HACK THE PLANET!!!
What I outline above is a standard consulting practice.
Yesterday I met with an engineer who would gladly pay for a gold-standard assortment of OBEX objects, however.