No Software Keys Required
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Ever since I made Simian available, I've had a strong belief that the software should be available for download in a non-crippled form. That is, whether you pay for it or not, makes no difference to the functionality; you are however left with a clean conscience :)
Unfortunately, this is something that many customers find quite difficult to come to terms with. Many of them, after parting with a relatively small sum, insist they be sent a license file, software keys, or something else tangible for their money. I'm at the point now where I'm considering simply sending out a file containing 128-bytes of randomly generated gibberish that they can place in the software directory just to give them that warm, fuzzy feeling.
Did I miss some unwritten rule that says a polite email thanking them for their purchase isn't enough?
Comments
Send them some ASCII art, or an mp3 (public domain, of course!).
Posted by: Michael | June 27, 2006 09:47 PM
I've had this problem several times - customers, or sometimes their purchasing departments, simply don't grasp the idea that the actual delivery has taken place before the purchase order :-)
Why don't you send them an email with a different URL that redirects to the first one? ;-)
Posted by: Stefan Tilkov | June 27, 2006 10:03 PM
Hilarious! Something I've never even considered. I feel enlightened.
Posted by: Marty Andrews | June 28, 2006 10:54 AM
Wait until you get a customer that insists you send them a CD :)
Posted by: Matt Quail | June 28, 2006 11:19 AM
If you are in any kind of company, it certainly makes the whole "Prove you have a legitimate copy" issue a whole lot easier if you've got some kind of license number. For a lot of companies, spending money on a software license and getting nothing physical is scary enough... take away any kind of license/serial number etc. and you've put your purchaser in a situation of having to explain to a skeptical auditor/boss that your licensing policies mean normal conventions don't apply. Not a good situation, endears you to no one.
One approach would be to charge extra for the serial number - "Personalised serial number $10 extra" or something. If they're in a corporate environment a small extra charge won't be an issue, and it will compensate you for the hassle. They'd be grateful for the value add (seriously).
Posted by: Simon Coles | June 28, 2006 04:13 PM
I didn't find an email address on your site to tell you this, so I'll just post it here. You can delete it after you've read it if you want to. What I wanted to say is that your delicious links inside your rss feed are very, very, very irritating, I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. Couldn't you remove them from your feed? Or create two feeds, one with and one without them?
Posted by: Nico Mommaerts | July 4, 2006 09:16 PM
Consider them gone :)
Posted by: Simon Harris![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.redhillconsulting.com.au/blogs/simon/nav-commenters.gif)
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July 5, 2006 10:24 AM
I'd send them something like this:
begin 664 Key
M'XL("/Q3O40``T-O9&4N8VQA$Z/6U%2]>4R]!'JM
M>/$J*%1Z\?344%.;%[%1\&?I098)WD+N\
M.A2:27]LZ(9L$2M]=FW=S=S0"]EF)R1@5>C\73JYF&:7U3]J]#BOLD(OE?9F>:F:ER9DMAD)W"2V8VWJ;:>$X6=:7/5;TNWH:^!C:B"+$NHNB_XQ$
>C1>:3PN3U(5_+9%B;?'V7VG)QT+G&\D=*8I#`0``
`
end
(I hope you appreciate the effort required to get that to within 256 bytes...)
Posted by: Tom Hawtin | July 19, 2006 08:31 AM
And with HTML symbols escaped...
begin 664 Key
M'XL("/Q3O40``T-O9&4N8VQA$Z/6U%2]>4R]!'JM
M>/$J*%1Z\?344%.;%[%1\&?I098)WD+N\
M.A2:27]LZ(9L$2M]=FW=S=S0"]EF)R1@5>C\73JYF&:7U3]J]#BOLD(OE?9F>:F:ER9DMAD)W"2V8VWJ;:>$X6=:7/5;TNWH:^!C:B"+$NHNB_XQ$
>C1>:3PN3U(5_+9%B;?'V7VG)QT+G&\D=*8I#`0``
`
end
Posted by: Tom Hawtin | July 19, 2006 08:52 AM