Python Shareware?

[Will Ware]

Jian Chen (jchen at 263.net) wrote:
> I am considering writing some shareware in python...
> Is there any good shareware in python? ...
> How can I lock/secure my python shareware?

Stephen King once experimented with a new way to distribute his writing. He
wrote four chapters and posted them on his website, saying that anybody
could download them and read them, but he wanted readers to send him a dollar.
If 75% of the downloaders sent in a dollar, then he would post the fifth
chapter. If 75% of the downloaders of the fifth chapter sent another dollar,
he would post the sixth chapter. He would continue doing this until the
whole book was published.

King's experiment failed, only a few more chapters got posted. He insistied
that 75% of his readers had to be honest, and that wasn't realistic. His
experiment would have worked if he had changed things in this way. Post the
first four chapters as before, and then announce a fixed number of dollars
that would make him publish chapter five. Update his website to let people
know how close the total gets to the fixed number. When he gets that number
of dollars, he posts chapter five on the site, and announces a fixed dollar
amount to post chapter six. Keep going til the book is all published.

This would mean that he would publish the first four chapters and not get
any money, but he could amortize the cost of writing the first four chapters
over the dollar amounts for the later chapters. He could publish excerpts of
the later chapters as teasers. In the end, he'd get all the money he wanted,
and he would have revolutionized publishing, which was really the purpose of
the original experiment. He would have published a book and gotten paid for
it without the intervention of a publishing house.

How does this relate to shareware? Publish an initial version for free and
place it in the public domain. Include with it the URL for your website and
an announcement that when you receive N hundred dollars in donations, you
will fix any reported bugs and add several new features. As you work on the
new features, periodically publish test output (not the code itself) as a
teaser for the new features. When you've received the N hundred dollars of
donations, publish the new code and place it in the public domain. Again
announce that you will fix any new bugs and add some more features for
some fixed total of donations. Repeat until you are fabulously wealthy.

What's new about publishing shareware this way?

(1) You don't need to worry about security at all. The code can spread more
easily to a larger audience, so the number of people who can send you
donations will be larger.

(2) Nobody needs to feel guilty for not paying you, and you don't have to
put any effort into enforcement.

(3) If your program does something interesting, then placing it in the
public domain is a contribution to the pool of shared human knowledge. You
might not care about this.

(4) Publishing your code publicly will help you to become well-known as a
programmer so you can have better luck hunting for jobs in the future.

(5) As your programming reputation grows, you can ask for larger amounts
of donations. People will know your code is good because they can read it
for themselves.

(6) If Bill Gates had done this, he _still_ would have gotten rich, but
he wouldn't have everybody so mad at him all the time.

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 22nd century: Esperanto, geodesic | Will Ware
 domes, hovercrafts, metric system | wware at world.std.com