On Getting My Money Five Bucks at a Time

[David Bovill]

On 21 Oct 2005, at 20:59, Dan Shafer wrote:

> Subscription models -- which didn't exist then, of course -- that  
> offer, for a relatively low-priced product like Constellation or  
> even a moderately low priced product like Revolution, enhancements,  
> updates and add-ons at small incremental charges (encompassed in  
> the subscription but available for extra fees for non-subscribers)  
> seems to me to have the best promise for a solid business model for  
> software, especially for developers and hard-core users. And I  
> think the MaxThink model proves that point.

I agree totally Dan, most of these hybird business models (based on  
open - release early / release often projects) will migrate to a  
subscription model. For me this model will not be credit card based  
as we know it presently. Yes many people will pay fo rtheir  
subscriptions by using their credit card, but in fact they will be  
buying a secure digital currency with which they can pay for small  
services (lowering their transaction costs). Other developers without  
the spare cash may opt to pay for the services they require by  
contributing to someone else's project / product. If you have enough  
of this currency you may wish to cash it in (redeem) in return for  
hard currency, or simply invest it in new product development.

There are a number of succesful businesses built on issueing digital  
currencies within a business-to-business environment -  
www.bartercard.com to take one example (here have also been a large  
number of failures).

Their are actually two currencies that we will be offering to the Rev  
community - "pixls" and "shards".  Pixls are a true community  
currency which will not initially have a hard cash value, but we hope  
a number of developers and companies will accept for payment of their  
services. Shards are effectively digital shares in a speculative  
software development. We are using them internally with our own  
development.

We are effectively creating a community currency for complex project  
collaboration. The aim is to marry these techniques with open source  
development to create and new form of business model that sits  
between true open source collaboration, and proprietary software  
application development. The business model aims to create a  
sustainable flow of open source tools and services based on ideas  
that have been floating around for a number of years (ransomware and  
the task market to take two examples). Once the development costs  
have been paid or a specified period of time has elapsed the code is  
released as open source. The legal ownership of the market place  
would be held in common by the community of developers - in the style  
of Visa International - see "The Birth of the Chaordic Age by Dee  
hock - founder of Visa and Visa International.

Those of you that may be interested in collaborating in this area, or  
want to know more about how we are structuring this from a technical  
or legal perspective, please feel free to contact me off list.