Blog

• License changes for Plane9 v2.0

  published on 12/21/2013 9:42 PM

  Since the first version of Plane9 I have asked for a minimal fee for anyone that wants to support the program. The idea was that you should get the program for free and be able to use it for as long as you like. If you however want to support the software you can get a key and some small reward that isn't critical to the functionally of the software. This idea came from that I dislike the normal crippled software license schema that most others use where you get to use the software but its so crippled that it's hardly useful, stops working in 10 days or shows a registration warning every minute.

  With my choice of schema the requested money amount must be low since the user already have the fully functional software. For example I ask for 5$ while most others take 20$-30$. However asking for a small amount of money from a lot of people also means more people to support for a small return. I can't say I have had a lot of support requests, most of them relating to spam filters that are a bit too eager, but there have been a few and all of them take away from time that I could spend improving the software.

  To this end I went back and tried to rethink the license system. So I wanted the license system to contain the following

  • No limits to the software
  • No license keys
  • Commercial use of the scenes would require compensation to the author of the scene if they so choose to require it So to this end for v2.0 the license system will be changed. The software will be completely free, this way I don't have to bother with license keys and can spend more time creating new features, creating scenes and fixing bugs instead.

  The other change that will take effect is that all scenes comes with their own license. This is so the author of the scene can decide how you are allowed to use their creation. If they want it to be placed in the public domain they are free to do so and if they want it to be free for non commercial use then they can do that to. The latter license is what most scenes will use that comes with Plane9. Some scenes are based on others work that have their own license and they wont be allowed to be used in any form of commercial application, they have the 'norelicense' tag attached to indicate this.

  The idea is that if you want to use a scene where you will be paid to show the scene then the actual creator of the scene should also gain something from it. But if your a home user or even a corporate entity that just want to use the scenes on all the computers in the office then your free to do so and you wont feel that you are missing out. Using this system you are also sure the scene will work before asking for a commercial license of any scene since it wont be limited in anyway.

  This means that if you like to use a scene created by me you can get in contact for license requests. Just make sure the scene in question doesn't have the 'norelicense' tag attached to it. If it does then you need to contact the original author that will be written in the description field. If you get his/her permission to use the original work commercially then you will be allowed to use the scene from Plane9 as well.

  Lastly I want to give a warm thank you to all that became supporters so far and I wish this decision doesn't diminish your reason as to why you became a supporter in the first place.