Microsoft is one of the company that has a good experience on selling software. Starting from Windows 1.0 till Windows 8, Microsoft has a good model to sell its software. This post will cover a basic understanding how they sell they software, in order to get idea how you will be sell your software. Free software at Microsoft Beside sell a software, Microsoft provide free or shared source software. Free software can be installed for any user. the free software sometimes provide shared source licensing. Shared source licensing is a model when Microsoft share the source code. Shared source is just like open source with several constraints like intellectual property. In several events, Microsoft gives his customer NFR (Not For Resale) license. NFR is a commercial product that given by Microsoft for free. Two different target There are two different target of Microsoft Software which are consumer and an organization. Consumer focuses in end user solution with affordable price tag while organization focuses in volume users with competitive price tag. Two ownership model Both consumer and organization can buy Microsoft software through two models which are subscriptions and perpetual model. Subscription is cheaper than buy out but need commitment from the consumer/organization to pay it every year. The subscriptions provides the latest update for many Microsoft software. One of the benefit of this ownership model is software assurance (SA). SA means that consumer or organization doesn’t need to buy new license when the new software comes out in their subscriptions timeframe. Perpetual model is sell a software in retail way. Consumer or organization can pay for the software that they need and pay for one time only. There are no Software Assurance for this model but many promotion that can be accessed to get latest version of software without hassle. For example upgrading your Windows 7 to Windows 8 for just 17,99$ Two perpetual packages model for consumer There are two model for consumer which are OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and FPP (Full Package Product). OEM is a license that combined with hardware. Frankly speaking, consumer can only get this model by buying new hardware. OEM is preinstalled software like Windows on your new notebook. it cheap, but it cant be moved from one device to the others. FPP is a retail license. Consumer can buy directly this model. FPP provides full package product that can be moved for many devices according to its license. FPP focuses in flexibility. Some FPP can be used for several devices based on same serial key. This technique is called as Multiple Activation Key (MAK). Two subscription packages for consumer The consumer can subscribe a Microsoft product if he is engineer like developer or IT professional. The subscription provides full access of Microsoft product but it is only for their Research and Development purposes. Developer can subscribe MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) Subscriptions. IT Professional can subscribe TechNet. In this kind subscription, Microsoft is really flexible. It is because that this subscription model is dedicated for innovation and implementation of Microsoft product. Two perpetual package for organization. Organization can buy Microsoft product in two ways which are single license/FPP like casual consumer and volume license. Single license is just like perpetual package model for consumer. Volume license can be bought by an organization if he bought at least 5 license. It has different price scheme and definitely cheaper. The volume license itself different in term of organization type. Volume license for Academic, Government, and Commercial has different price and different model. Subscription model for organization Organization has many domain that sometimes different from one to the others. Therefore, Subscription model for organization is somewhat different. Microsoft provides three scheme which are Education organization, government, and commercial. Education and government provides the most cost effective solution. You can learn more at http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/ Two modern approach in store era Windows 8 is shipped with Windows store, Windows store provides you free application with ads or bought it with competitive prices for a lifetime. Store focuses in long tail economy, where the software is competitive in term of price and functionality. Take a look my previous post about how to sell in Windows 8. ciao, @ridife
We love to be free
One of the reason why we do pirating is to get software for free. For example, You can grab Windows 8 with 0$ versus 75$. It’s worth!. But have you ever thinking about local software economy? Here are some reason for us to eliminate our pirating culture.
Reason 1 - Pirating is killing the developers
Software is developed through a time. For example, in order to create a product like financial management, professional will take one month or so, with 8 hours a day. Do you agree if I pay them for just 2$ to create one software. You would be agree if, we sell 10.000 copies so that it will be multiplied to 20.000$, but you wont be agree if a people that get 20.000$ is not the creator but the illegal distributor. If we do that, developer resources will be limited and hard to find.
Reason 2 – Pirating is limiting the investor
We know about BYOD (bring your own devices). BYOD improved the needs of software. The software is sold through a market channel like Apps Store,Google Play, Windows Store, and others. Building a software and selling a software is not that hard nowadays. People can subscribe to the market store and sell the software right away. This condition will increase the need of investment for new startup to create a software. Investing is about trusting the ecosystem, when the ecosystem is not give sufficient revenue because pirating activity, nobody will give us a good investment to create software
Reason 3 – Pirating is exposing your privacy
A bad hacker will jailbreak the software for a two reason. The first one is for “acknowledgement” the second one is for something big “like your privacy”. Using a cracks, keygen, or anything will help you to get your software for free but will give you a security exposure. Several crack techniques will create holes in your operating system or software. It will make you more exposed. Side loader or patching might not only to give you a good life for software without a payment but also give a possibility the cracker requesting any others data like your account, documents, and others.But not too worry you still can use the pirated software in offline mode, but what you expect from an offline software since many of the software now online.
Reason 4 – Pirating is breaking your warranty
If you buy a new notebook, installing a pirating one. And than you see a high activity of your disk during malware replication, after that you see your hard disk is crashed your software, you do a force shutdown and now your hard disk broken.You claim your warranty, and the service center knows you are using illegal software. They wont be accept your warranty since pirating software is the main cause of instability.
Reason 5 – Pirating is not good for education
If you are teacher or lecturer and you tell the students that you are using pirating software and tell them that the software is to hard to buy, you are in wrong direction as an educator. You will see that many software vendor gives you good way to get your software starting from free!. For example, Office for student will takes only 15$ or Windows 8 might be free for student if your organization engage an agreement with Microsoft with small amount of commitment. Others option is to go to the open source software, and it will be good also. Choosing open source or not is really debatable but you can thinks this just like analogy.
Open source is free to get but limited support only from the community, or you should pay for support if you want it.
Open source is good for education but commercial software is also good for education when you want to show the student that software field is promising.
Is not about Open Source versus Commercial is about better together to build better local software economy. Imagine you learn open source software and someday you get better job in commercial industry that use commercial software, or you knows Windows a lot but your student work in SMB that use open source software. Academic is neutral they can choose anything for they need to educate the student for their better future.
There are several points that I will be shared in an event called “Pirating Software and Legal Aspect”. at ION Yogyakarta (10/12/12) with many government and institution works together to build better local software economy with open source and commercial software.