this new license confuses me...

[jeremyBass]

The project I was working on, it's a non-profit org, and they are just paying the time it takes to set things up... that's not commercial right?

[hnuecke]

Hi Jeremy,
please read the new post about commercial use here: http://megazine.mightypirates.de/forum/index.php/topic,391.0.html

There are some changes with version 2.0 being final and available since today.
But this shouldn't be a problem for you ;-)

You have two options:
1. go with version 1.38, that is fully free
2. ask your customer to apply for a free license with us; for schools, universities and charity we "sell" (i.e. ship) licenses for free.

But they should contact us so they get a license number and key.

Hopefully this answers your question and clarifies things!
Regards
Hans

The project I was working on, it's a non-profit org, and they are just paying the time it takes to set things up... that's not commercial right?

[jeremyBass]

Hi Jeremy,
please read the new post about commercial use here: http://megazine.mightypirates.de/forum/index.php/topic,391.0.html

There are some changes with version 2.0 being final and available since today.
But this shouldn't be a problem for you ;-)

You have two options:
1. go with version 1.38, that is fully free
2. ask your customer to apply for a free license with us; for schools, universities and charity we "sell" (i.e. ship) licenses for free.

But they should contact us so they get a license number and key.

Hopefully this answers your question and clarifies things!
Regards
Hans

The project I was working on, it's a non-profit org, and they are just paying the time it takes to set things up... that's not commercial right?

Shoot well I can't go with 1.38 since its buggy to IE, um well I'm the contact for these people so where I do I ask for a license number and key?

Side note, I have a hospital that is also non-profit, and I was going to turn there pdf monthly newsletter in to flip books as well... so the question is, do non-profit entities like a hospital or this travel association fall under the "schools, universities and charity" category?  Here in the states it'd be yes but since you only labeled those, that was why I was confused...

Thanks for the help, and let me know what I need to do to get the license numbers and keys for those two.   
Cheers
Jeremy

[jeremyBass]

Hey I just wanted to say to that for $150USD (100EUR) it's still a great deal...

To let you know the 3 site I main deal with that I was thinking of using this on are 501(c)3

Cheers
Jeremy

[jeremyBass]

Ha I guess I read the wrong one...

MZ3-CL Single Book 50 €
MZ3-CL-P5 5 Books 200 €
MZ3-CL-P20 20 Books 400 €
MZ3-CL-P200 200 Books 2.000 €
MZ3-CL-CORP 12 months 20.000 €


now what I'm not sure of is the what is the diff between the Customer and Reseller ... may-be it's the lang diff here but i'm just not fallowing... since I'd be wanting to use this on a few sites, am I a reseller?  or um... so I can sell these?  So If I made a module for a CMS platform I'd sell the licenses to the user?

Sorry I'f I'm just not getting it... I was way more interested in this back when this was a 1.38 license type... now I'm just lost.

Cheers
Jeremy

[hnuecke]

Every change is a good chance for confusion ;-)

I can tell you that we had long discussions trying to find and describe a fair and attractive model!
It is very difficult to find the right compromise between easyness and completeness.

There always will be room for interpretation. And please keep in mind: this is the first shot.

We need feed back like this one to improve our model.
As we have to learn, all of you have to learn also... This is a process.
But as long as we talk we'll find a way and can improve.
I am willing to do so....

Some first anwers:
Resellers - Commercial   
this is totally up to you! Read the license agreements carefully (rights, obligations, duties) and check the price list. It really depends on your business (model) what best fits your needs!
We want to encourage people to heavily use MegaZine3 and help us implementing (and selling ;-) Books.
So if you have several potential customers that are interested in getting a complete service from you, inlcuding the licenses, then the reseller license might be an option for you.

Benefit: you can resell OEM licenses with an attractive margin, since you get a discount AND you could go for a package and then sell out of that "basket" single licenses.
This also could boost your sales of plugins, templates or whatever value add you create.
On the other hand you have to care about your customers: sales, updates, ... and invest in a package and ammortize the annual fee.

If you already had 5...10 customers interested in creating a book, a 20 OEM reseller package could pay back very fast.

Another extreme: you develop your own plugins using our MIT licensed interfaces, test everything locally, and then sell your plugins or templates or configurations to your customers.
Then you had to pay nothing. We do not ask for money for a development license! You even could sell your stuff to private people and we wouldn't see any money at all.
Yes, we expect many of you will hopefully provide value for commercial use; and then we'll see a profit also. But that is all our risk!

So... please digest all that and if you have suggestions and better ideas: we're open!

Regarding charity, schools and stuff....
This is a new aproach we added in the last minute. It might not be completely thougth through.
Our thinking is:
1. we want to support those organisations
2. we want to control potential abuse
3. We want to participate if people make money with our framework

I hope that is understandable.
I am willing to extend that "category" to "non-Profit"; which is a bit fuzzy for me.
So please tell me: how would you categorize e.g. hospitals? Don't they charge for their services? Don't they have a business goal to be profitable and make money?
Perhaps there are these and those; I'm not an expert in that area. But I know that a lot of money is "exchanged" with health services.
So do you really think 50 Euro  is a big problem?
Please help me to understand...

Regarding the process my thought is that organizations who think they could claim for a free license, should contact us via the standard communication channels: email or soon the "contact us" page on our webpage at VservU
"Soon" because this is not fully tested yet. Bare with us if there are some hickups during the first couple of days/weeks ;-)
It is all brand new and we have a lot of tings t do in parall at the moment....

[jeremyBass]

I am willing to extend that "category" to "non-Profit"; which is a bit fuzzy for me.
So please tell me: how would you categorize e.g. hospitals? Don't they charge for their services? Don't they have a business goal to be profitable and make money?
Perhaps there are these and those; I'm not an expert in that area. But I know that a lot of money is "exchanged" with health services.
So do you really think 50 Euro  is a big problem?
Please help me to understand...

In the hospital realm (at least in the states here) hospitals fall into two categories, corporate and non-profit.  In this case the hospital that is my client is non-profit run by a church.  They are a “we don’t turn away” place.  For them they have 3 newsletters a month that would be great form this, so there would be more than 36 “books” so at 50 EUR or ~$81 USD per it’s $2916 USD … that may seem like a little amount, but when put in perspective to the cost of the site on a yearly basis that’s about 75% of the sites total cost for this year so far.  
Also to describe a little this hospital is in a town of 30k population.  So you can imagine the tightness.  Now move over to the next town over that hospital is a corporate owned and yes they make tons of money, we do their TV ad and they spend $2000 USD a month on their web site… (Funny thing is my client is a better performing hospital).
On the travel association they have $1500 USD a year to spend on the site.  So it’s thin to… The same is the Shriners site I do as well…
I’m hoping to use these sites to show the power here and get other potentional big corprate sites to pay… I think this code  is worth it… it’s just in these small projects there is not much room…

Our thinking is:
1. we want to support those organisations
2. we want to control potential abuse
3. We want to participate if people make money with our framework

I think that is sound thinking… By no means do I think that you don’t have a very fair model for larger markets, it just doesn’t quite fit small businesses or small markets IMHO … for example, I was going to set up all our brochures and books for our site to help sell the idea of having it on a site to our local market, but we have about 50+ of them and I’ll be turned down now on the point of the cost.  We have 5 employee’s and all have taken a pay cut do to times, so I’m sure you can see there is not much in profit…
I’m sure this company is not your main target, but one project I’m hoping to land 3-4 months from now is a newspaper… thou they would be able to pay for more than the others… they put out a paper 365. But it’s still in a small town with a super tight budget, but boy would it promote you guys…

Just some points … Thank you for taking the time to listen to me
Cheers
Jeremy

[hnuecke]

Ahh.... now I see!
Good point, I have to work out our eJournal approach much clearer! That is pretty much hidden in the license agreement under the Definitions of a Book:

The term “Book” as used in this and related papers refers to the definition and appearance of a “PageFlip presentation”, like an eJournal, eZine, eBook or catalogue, using the Framework. Books with significantly different content are defined separate Books. A new edition of an existing release of a Book usually is not a new and separate Book. Suggestion: Use more than 25% changes as rule of thumb for being significant. All periodicals published within one year, independent of the number of editions, are license wise defined and treated as one single Book.

ALL periodicals of one kind, independent of the number of editions, are combined and treated as one Book per year!
So in your case (3 newsletters per month = 36 newsletters per year) this is not 36*50=1.800 Euro but only 50 Euro per year.
By a factor of 36 cheaper than you thought ;-)

I hope this also solves the tight budget of the other hospital?!?
On top: if a hospital is run by a church and a non profit one, I would treat this to fall under charity; so they could apply for free licenses (just send an email).

Another approach could be that you act as reseller:
If you have several books in your pipeline, it might be worht to consider a MZ3-RL-P20 plus MZ3-OEM-P200 bundle. 220 licenses for 2050 Euro, including the Reseller fee. That is < 9,50 Euro per book.
And you could resell individually: 50 Euro for the profit makers and close to nothing for the others. And with a little bit of luck even making money with that.
That's indeed our hope: to find people like you prmoting our solution. And we will support that best we can!!

On the travel association: what needs do they have? If it's also eJouornal stuff, than I expect we solved that problem also!

Your other example: 50+
You know that we offer packages, so those 54+ would, based on list prices, sum up to 3*20*400=1.200 Euro; or 22 Euro per book plus 6 spare ones. Or 1200/5 users= 240 Euro per user.
Unlimited pages, unlimited time, no development licenses needed, no restrictions in number of users/developers or sites!
And if some of those customers fall under the charity category (we together can identigfy those "generously"), I'm convinced there are ways to get that problem solved also!

The newspaper opportunity I think is a non issue: 365 editions per year of one tapy of megazine: 50 Euro/year!

Jeremy,
This is exactly the kind of discussion I am looking forward to seeing happen!
It gives us the chance to either explain and sort things out; but also to adjust our model if needed. Nothing is fixed, we're all flexible, right?

And yes, we definetly want to cover the whole bandwidth of opportunities:

• starting at schools and universities and private individuals who are willing to spend a lot of time (but have no money) to get into new technologies. And our hope is that with our free offering many engaged and talented people will have a better future ;-)
  
• over to those little one-body shops with no money but great enthusiams and talent identifying customers that at the end will pay something, but without any needs to invest upfront
  
• over to those small and mid size opportunities (many of those in the eJournal business) struggling hard to get into and stay in the market
  
• up to the big corporations that can afford to spend (sometimes waste) a lot of money for lower quality solutions or individually developed sites and solutions.
  
• And not to forget the charity side of our model....
  

And I believe we can get there; together ;-)

Good discussion; continue to challenge me!

Regards
Hans

I am willing to extend that "category" to "non-Profit"; which is a bit fuzzy for me.
So please tell me: how would you categorize e.g. hospitals? Don't they charge for their services? Don't they have a business goal to be profitable and make money?
Perhaps there are these and those; I'm not an expert in that area. But I know that a lot of money is "exchanged" with health services.
So do you really think 50 Euro  is a big problem?
Please help me to understand...

In the hospital realm (at least in the states here) hospitals fall into two categories, corporate and non-profit.  In this case the hospital that is my client is non-profit run by a church.  They are a “we don’t turn away” place.  For them they have 3 newsletters a month that would be great form this, so there would be more than 36 “books” so at 50 EUR or ~$81 USD per it’s $2916 USD … that may seem like a little amount, but when put in perspective to the cost of the site on a yearly basis that’s about 75% of the sites total cost for this year so far.  
Also to describe a little this hospital is in a town of 30k population.  So you can imagine the tightness.  Now move over to the next town over that hospital is a corporate owned and yes they make tons of money, we do their TV ad and they spend $2000 USD a month on their web site… (Funny thing is my client is a better performing hospital).
On the travel association they have $1500 USD a year to spend on the site.  So it’s thin to… The same is the Shriners site I do as well…
I’m hoping to use these sites to show the power here and get other potentional big corprate sites to pay… I think this code  is worth it… it’s just in these small projects there is not much room…

Our thinking is:
1. we want to support those organisations
2. we want to control potential abuse
3. We want to participate if people make money with our framework

I think that is sound thinking… By no means do I think that you don’t have a very fair model for larger markets, it just doesn’t quite fit small businesses or small markets IMHO … for example, I was going to set up all our brochures and books for our site to help sell the idea of having it on a site to our local market, but we have about 50+ of them and I’ll be turned down now on the point of the cost.  We have 5 employee’s and all have taken a pay cut do to times, so I’m sure you can see there is not much in profit…
I’m sure this company is not your main target, but one project I’m hoping to land 3-4 months from now is a newspaper… thou they would be able to pay for more than the others… they put out a paper 365. But it’s still in a small town with a super tight budget, but boy would it promote you guys…

Just some points … Thank you for taking the time to listen to me
Cheers
Jeremy

[jeremyBass]

And I believe we can get there; together ;-)

Good discussion; continue to challenge me!

With an attitude like this I don't want to challenge you    I think all this is more than fair.  Thank you for taking the time to clear it up for me...

The only other thing is about the module I was planning on making.... It's for the CMSMS community.  I mod is for the automation of the deep linking alts, so there is an alt for each "page", and that mod would handle the creation of the book too.  I have that allmost all maped out and ready to start.  The only question there is, how to hand it out... I can charge for it, so I quess then I'd need a resellers but I don't know if that is in my personal buget just yet... hmmm.. I'll have to think on this but any ideas would be grand...


I'm excited to participate is this community.  Have a wonder fully day...
Cheers
Jeremy

[hnuecke]

Hey, our posts become shorter again; good sign ;-)!

I had a look at that CMSMS link, but I have to admit that I do not fully understand what you plan to provide; sorry!
Please explain briefly "alt" and "mod" and your concept... And what you developed and/or changed.

CMSMS is open source under GPL; so combining it with v1.38 of MegaZine3 would be perfect.
If that is possible, it at least could be the fully consistent/compliant and free approach!
And if you changed the MegaZine3 v1.38 sources and are willing to comply with the GPL rules, i.e. publish your sources and make them together with all change notes and documentation available for everybody, you also could do so and nothing had to be paid to us; not now and not in future.
And since we do not plan to do many changes to v1.38 any more, the risk of keeping track with us now is minimal ;-)

Additionally I see chances to also get MegaZine3 v2.0 in there. And without problem in respect to their GPL license model.
Since MegaZine3 v2.0 is not a (key) module of CMSMS but only would interface via standard APIs (that's what I understood), MegaZine3 could be sold separately as separate and additional option.
In the case of a commercial use. For private use it is free. And as you know it is open source.
This would offer private users a great tool and environment!

Even though one could argue that, despite offering open source software, the company behind CMSMS is a commercial organization, I do not see a problem here.
I would offer free licenses for that organization to use MegaZine3 for their own purposes (test, presentation, show case, ad).
And I do not request them or you to sell MZ3 v2.0 commercial licenses (which on the other hand would be my preference); customers could be forwarded to us. At least at the beginning, so everybody can watch and see what makes sense.

Hopefully I got it right and you understand what I am thinking ;-)
We'll get there and find a solution!
Let's stay in touch...

Cheers
Hans

And I believe we can get there; together ;-)

Good discussion; continue to challenge me!

With an attitude like this I don't want to challenge you    I think all this is more than fair.  Thank you for taking the time to clear it up for me...

The only other thing is about the module I was planning on making.... It's for the CMSMS community.  I mod is for the automation of the deep linking alts, so there is an alt for each "page", and that mod would handle the creation of the book too.  I have that allmost all maped out and ready to start.  The only question there is, how to hand it out... I can charge for it, so I quess then I'd need a resellers but I don't know if that is in my personal buget just yet... hmmm.. I'll have to think on this but any ideas would be grand...


I'm excited to participate is this community.  Have a wonder fully day...
Cheers
Jeremy