Expanding FilePro Market

[Fairlight]

Is it just me, or did Richard Tartaglias say:
> was called ProFile. Now I about to venture into unknown waters. I may
> offer for sale a program that I use in house that there seems to be a
> market for.

Luck to you.

> When I buy a FilePro license do I keep it in my name and lease the rights
> to the end user along with the program or do they own the rights.

If you're not a reseller with fP-Tech, the customer licenses it from them
direct.  If you're a reseller, you sell them a copy and they end up owning
the license for use.  Which model you choose depends on how much on the
cuff you wish to carry them, and how involved you wish to be in reselling
someone else's software.

> Should I put some type of security in the code to shut down the software
> if maintenance fees are not paid when do.

No.  Let me restate that more vehemently:  NO.  That way lies one of the
most expedient paths towards litigation on the defending end, at least if
they're not -entirely- aware of the fact up-front, in writing.  If you just
put in silent protection that locks them out, you're liable--especially if
it's done so there's no other way to access the data.  The latter is a
felony, if memory serves.

Let me be more clear.  To my knowledge, interfering with the business
operations of a company is illegal to begin with.  You'd be doing that.
This -may- be permissible in a situation where you have a document, in
writing, signed by them, which states conspicuously that this is the
consequence of non-payment.  

However, preventing their access to their own data is flat-out illegal.
Yes, there are loopholes--I've heard of people getting into it with clients
and telling them (after further refusal to pay) that they'll dump the
data--to a hardcopy printout, which they -know- will cost the company
thousands of dollars to have office temps or employees re-key manually.
This is unethical at best, even if it meets the letter of the law.  You can
point them to the key and data files and tell them how to obtain their
data, but that's cutting it -awfully- thin.  You're still interfering with
their normal business operations, and they're going to want to nail someone
for that.

Shutting down services (for instance, Sony shutting down an EverQuest
account for non-payment of monthly subscription) is part of a Terms of Use
agreement, and is another creature--especially when you hold the data and
claim the rights to the data structures (as Sony does, as does EA,
Blizzard, and a few other companies that do such server-side services
involving client software).

However, selling licenses to software that resides entirely on their end,
and building in back-doors and dead-man's-switches is not on.  It's not
even legal, depending what's done and how it's done.

> I hope these questions are appropriate for this list. It is about
> expanding the use of FilePro.

It's fine.  Don't be paranoid.  :)

mark->
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