Re: (kudra: Distribution a problem too?) Re(2): Licensing your software

[Jouke]

Indeed I'm worried about the distribution. In fact I don't really care if anyone tries to make a profit out of my product. I do care if the eventual customer does not understand things like the GPL, buys the product for maybe $400 from a supplier, and never hears about the free availability of the product.

It's a new thing, and it will take time before the (small) market for this hears about it, and about its costs. Before that a lot of possible suppliers may have had the opportunity to sell it for a lot of money, which is -under the terms of the GPL- legal business.

We -as perlmonks- know about free software, and that free is not the same as bad (in fact, more often the opposite), but the large crowd out there still doesn't know about it.

Jouke Visser, Perl 'Adept'

[da]

In a real sense, your market is not the kids who'll be using the software, it's the non-profit organizations (and possibly also government organizations) that can promote the software and give it the infrastructure to get it to the end-users.

I think if you find a few international assistive-technology email mailing lists to post to, and get the attention of a few local or regional non-profits who are willing to look into software for handicapped kids, they will do a lot ot get your software to its intended end-users. If you can find good nonprofits they will do much better marketting than commercial vendors, since they will be talking to people who probably trust them and may have even provided free services to them before. The software's merits will mean more to the end-users than any perceived problem from its free cost.

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-DA