Ashireka
Minmatar Robot Pirate Ninja Corporation
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Posted - 2011.06.15 20:33:00 -
[1]
It's fairly obvious that a large part of this came out the Capsuleer collapse. Capsuleer wanted to start making money off the project, but CCP wasn't in a position to negotiate a large number of individual small-time deals with individuals, so they've built up a very simple template for dealing with people who want to make money from CCP's systems. And now people are upset because they want a token license fee for it? They probably spent more on legal fees putting the agreement together than what they'll earn back from those fees in the next two years.
Running the API for all these third-party apps is not free. There is a cost to CCP, in terms of bandwidth, processing power, even engineering support. They've done it because it helps build the community, and a bigger, committed community means more subscriptions, which means more money. It's an investment on their part.
Now you have people who want to make money off software that is heavily dependent on CCP's API. Sure, these people are investing a lot of time into building the software, but at the end of the day, the cost of running that software is on CCP. EVEMon would be near worthless without the API.
CCP is spending money to make the API work for people. If people are going to try to make money off things that are dependent on the API, that means CCP is spending money to help other people make money, and that's just not good business sense.
Take a look around at other software services, like Google Maps. Google supports "the small guys", you can use the services for free -- up to a point. And then you have to start talking licensing agreements and licensing *fees*. I can tell you, I seriously doubt Google's offering $99/year for unlimited revenue potential based on their services.
There are some valid points; if payment is entirely in-game currency, seems like that should fall under "non-commercial use", and perhaps that'll go that way. Donation-based support is tricky; how do you monitor that people aren't "requiring donations" for additional features, etc (thus making it a commercial use).
And don't forget, it has been noted that the non-commercial license is *free*. They only want their $99 if you're making money off their work. Seems more than fair.
-Ash
Robot Pirate Ninja Corp (RPNC) Based in Alenia / Verge Vendor Casual fun for casual people High sec/low sec/we all scream for ice cream |