Re: [libreplanet-discuss] libreplanet-discuss Digest, Vol 34, Issue 11

[luke.leighton]

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Patrick <patrick@spellingbeewinnars.org> wrote:
> Hi Luke, Hi Robert
>
> Thanks for your posts today.

 no problem.

 ha.  right.  someone very kindly pointed out something important,
which was that far from seeking commercial exploitation of the
software you are writing, you are seeking the complete opposite:
ensuring that nobody *ever* pays for the software, and seeking a free
software license to achieve that effect.

 seeking to achieve this via a free software license is asking for
trouble, not least because you are wandering off of the beaten track
of "OSI-approved licenses", and are adding a considerably onerous task
(writing a license) on top of what is already a considerable task
(writing some software).

 there is another approach that you might like to consider.

 i assume that there is some level of interaction between parents with
autistic children or perhaps between the children themselves, which
you might wish to encourage or facilitate as part of the software.  if
such had not occurred to you before, i encourage you to consider it,
even if it is at some level "banale".  think "chat room" within
multi-player online games (which is a strategically very very
important part of the attraction of same).

 the reason why i encourage you to consider providing real-time global
communications as part of the design of the software - within the
software itself rather than saying "for advice on how to interact with
people and discuss this lovely program please go to google groups or
IRC or whatever" is this:

 by having real-time communications as part of the program, you can
provide a web service which presents a login "welcome" message, or
appends to the communications - every single one if you so wish - any
message of your choice, be it subtle or unsubtle.

 thus you could choose to in-yer-face advertise your name, services,
and/or, specifically, from time to time, a message stating that "this
software is AGPLv3 Licensed: it is Free Software; i (mr author)
specifically wish you to know that it may be obtained for free i.e. at
zero monetary cost and that if you ever hear of anyone charging you
for it beyond a reasonable amount for the distribution cost of the
software (e.g. a CD) please inform me immediately".

 now, the thing is about this is that if anyone were to add in
"filters" into the software, trying the trick of removing that
message, it would be practically impossible because the communications
are both real-time and random.

 the scammers *might* try to remove the entire real-time
communications function, but if real-time communication is an integral
and strategically important part of the software that everyone within
the community surrounding the software uses daily, then why the bloody
hell would anyone want to *buy* a version of that software which
specifically didn't have that critical communications function?

 i therefore strongly advise you to consider the AGPLv3 (Affero GPLv3)
and to also consider deploying the above strategy.  apart from
anything, i believe that you will find that an integrated real-time
communications feature will have considerable appeal amongst the
parents and children using the software.

l.