How do I protect and market my code?

Basically I had a over the summer assignment which I used to develop a piece of software which I guess will sell around 50 - 70 bucks a copy.

To make this clear. The final code is in Java (a requirement).

Now I was think about marketing my little creation however I'm faced with two problem:

1, I need to provide full documentation to the Lecturers. How do I go about preventing them from stealing my code/methodologies used? Would simple copyright be enough?

2. How do I bundle the software? How do I sell it? Should I partner with a publisher or should I just sell the code to a software company? I will need bi-yearly maintenance at least.
How do I protect said software from getting cracked?

How /prog/ has some experience on this already!
Thanks for helping out!

GNU GPL

It will not sell for much, if at all.

1. Copyright will be enough. Don't you trust your tutors? I doubt you would have any radical ideas that they have not taught you.

2. Use a software bundling system endorsed by Sun. Failing that, use some installation thing.

You will not protect it from being 'cracked'. You are immensely egotistical to think your software is as awesome as you imply. Nobody will care enough to 'crack' it.

>>2

My contributions so far were all open-source however I've invested ~180 hours on this and I need the money to pay my tuition.

If it's as awesome as you think it is, sell it wholesale to a software design company.  You may get lucky and offered a job.
I'd start with 180 hours * X dollars, where X is what you feel an hour of your time was worth working on the project.  Call that your base investment and move the price up from there.

>>3O

Op here. Thanks for helping. It's not that I'm egotistical but rather; I paranoid. Anyway, others still are telling me that protection is a waste of time so leave that alone.

How to I sell my little creation?

Do I like create a simple website and make it available from there?

Do I partner with a publisher?

Or do I try to sell it to a software house?

I guess the a software house would be best cause I have no intentions on maintain my code, however I'm worried I'll lose a lot of it value if I do so?

If you've ever pirated software you'd know that software protection is just a waste of your time.

Just put your software out there, those who support it will purchase it.

>>6
best would be if you make your own website and sell it there, but im not sure how to do that.

if it does not work out for you, you can always become a crackwhore.

Was this a summer assignment for university?

You may find that the university will hold copyright on any work done for assignments, or possibly for work done on university machines. You'll want to check your course introduction pack etc. I know there was a something like this at my alma mater

>>9

>hold copyright on any work done for assignments

I'll have to check on that one.

>possibly for work done on university machines.

Lolwut?


Anyway thanks!

PROTECT AND MARKET MY ANUS

Now seriously, Java bytecode can be reverse-engineered quite easily. It's not the best language for trade-secret enterprise solutions. Also note that the more effort you put to copy-protect your work, more hackers will be attracted and it will be breaked earlier. So use a simple protection that won't consume you many hours and assume that some copies will be run without having paid you.

Summarizing, estimate the quota of pirated copies and rise the license fee accordingly.

so what does your code do?

>>12
fibs

PROTECT MY ANUS

The uni will have copyright, standard procedure tbh.

>>15
Copyright policy varies greatly by university. Most of them have none.

>>14
*unwinds dick*

>>11
True ENTERPRISE software rarely gets pirated, and if it is, those who did it would likely not have been able to afford it anyway.

option 1) open source it and post it to sourceforge. If it's that good you'll attract maintenance developers and get to be a mini dictator. The ass kissing will make your e-peen grow to epic proportions.

option 2) Package it as a binary free for personal use, business use requiring a full purchase of a more fully featured binary at several thousand dollars. Create a website for both free download and purchase download. Most will steal but a few honest companies (who get audited regularly) will purchase a license making you a chunk of change.

option 3) Be a total dick, accuse your professors of IP theft, package it as a for sale binary with fucked up DRM, try to sell it without a free version and sad face when not one person purchases it. Be sadder when your fellow students realize you're a dick and don't tell you who's hiring and where / how to apply.

All this assumes that your program is actually worth two farts, which in all likelihood its not.

>>18
Be sadder when your fellow students realize you're a dick and don't tell you who's hiring and where
HIBT?

When it comes to handing over a summer assignment to your lecturers, you should want to show your source code. You're in school; the goal here is not to suppress knowledge, but to share it.

As others have mentioned, your university probably holds some rights to your work. One of the benefits to this is that it's very likely that it would be illegal for your lecturers to infringe upon those rights by taking your work and selling it for profit. Even if the school does not reserve the rights to your work, if you do, your work will be protected from your lecturers for the same reason. Aside from all this, it would be highly unethical for your lecturers to do something like this; they would be risking their careers and reputations to do so. I highly doubt that they would be willing to go through with that just to use student code.

1) OP likely overvalues his code.
2) OP thinks there's actually anything to prevent software from cracking. The only thing that could do that is not releasing the software in the first place or it being so obscure that nobody will notice or care about it. Is it something that can be made into a service? That would solve your problem.

180 hours
$50

Okay

>>23
where 180 hours is how long it took him to write said magnum opus, and 50 bucks is what he sold the one single copy for.

$ echo "scale=2; 180 / 50" | bc
3.60
$3.60 / hour

Congrats OP a worker doing the most menial job you can think of made more than you did over the same period of time.

>>24
Congrats OP a worker doing the most menial job you can think of made more than you did over the same period of time.
What if the guy goes to live in India?  I'm not up on how much the average over-seas rentacoder makes, but I bet $3.60 USD is an OK wage for a programmer over there.

In any case, I'm interested in what OP's product is actually for.  Even if he can't tell us exactly what it is.

>>25
If the guy lives in India the cost of living is scales such that so that $US3.60 is actually a pretty good gig.
It's all relative yanno?
But just so you know I'm referring to places in the world where people want to live, you know places that don't have outdoor plumbing...Civilized places, in other words.

>>25
I bet in india you can pay the expences for a whole day with 3.60 USD.

Why are we assuming he sells one copy?  Seems like if one person would buy it, someone else would too, eh?  But probably not even that.

>>28
why are we assuming anyone would buy it?

>>24-29
Hourly rates do not work that way. IHBT

>>24
You... needed a calculator to work out 180 / 50?

$3.60 an hour means $648 for 180 hours of work. Therefore, I think you made an error in your calculcations.

christopher@chrislaptop$ irb -f
irb(main):001:0> 3.60 x 180
SyntaxError: compile error
(irb):1: syntax error, unexpected tIDENTIFIER, expecting $end
3.60 x 180
      ^
    from (irb):1
irb(main):002:0> 3.60.methods
=> ["%", "inspect", "prec_i", "tap", "div", "clone", "public_methods", "object_id", "__send__", "nan?", "instance_variable_defined?", "equal?", "freeze", "*", "+", "extend", "send", "round", "methods", "prec_f", "-", "singleton_method_added", "divmod", "hash", "/", "integer?", "dup", "to_enum", "instance_variables", "infinite?", "eql?", "instance_eval", "truncate", "id", "to_i", "singleton_methods", "modulo", "zero?", "taint", "frozen?", "instance_variable_get", "enum_for", "finite?", "instance_of?", "display", "+@", "to_a", "method", "-@", "quo", "instance_exec", "type", "**", "to_f", "<", "step", "protected_methods", "<=>", "between?", "==", "remainder", ">", "===", "to_int", "nonzero?", "instance_variable_set", "coerce", "respond_to?", "kind_of?", "floor", ">=", "prec", "to_s", "<=", "fdiv", "class", "private_methods", "=~", "tainted?", "__id__", "abs", "untaint", "nil?", "is_a?", "ceil"]
irb(main):003:0> 3.60.methods.sort
=> ["%", "*", "**", "+", "+@", "-", "-@", "/", "<", "<=", "<=>", "==", "===", "=~", ">", ">=", "__id__", "__send__", "abs", "between?", "ceil", "class", "clone", "coerce", "display", "div", "divmod", "dup", "enum_for", "eql?", "equal?", "extend", "fdiv", "finite?", "floor", "freeze", "frozen?", "hash", "id", "infinite?", "inspect", "instance_eval", "instance_exec", "instance_of?", "instance_variable_defined?", "instance_variable_get", "instance_variable_set", "instance_variables", "integer?", "is_a?", "kind_of?", "method", "methods", "modulo", "nan?", "nil?", "nonzero?", "object_id", "prec", "prec_f", "prec_i", "private_methods", "protected_methods", "public_methods", "quo", "remainder", "respond_to?", "round", "send", "singleton_method_added", "singleton_methods", "step", "taint", "tainted?", "tap", "to_a", "to_enum", "to_f", "to_i", "to_int", "to_s", "truncate", "type", "untaint", "zero?"]
irb(main):004:0> 3.60 * 180
=> 648.0
irb(main):005:0> quit
christopher@chrislaptop$

What does your code do? It's probably not worth $50 a pop. Just make it open source to attract potential employers.

>>33

OP here,

I decided I'll keep it secret for know.

All I can say in regards to its nature is that it implements an AI methodology that I sort of worked out. The project was a programming project; however I got a bit deviated.

Anyway. I'll think I'd better advance my research. Who knows in two years I may have enough to publish my second paper :)

>>1
You are an enemy of freedom.

>>35

I no enemy of no one. I work hard. I shall be compensated for my work accordingly. Why should I put my work available to some code monkey with not a hint of creativity?

is it about music? can i be a tester?

>>36
AI methodology
available to code monkey
I don't think code monkeys will get anything out of your source.
If they want to use your program they will pirate it.

>>35
The greatest enemy is disbelief. When I explain freedom to my colleagues, they just can't bring themselves to think this is a viable approach. Freedom goes against a deeply ingrained instinct of customers that says they are not in the business of developing software. They prefer to purchase already made packages whenever they can. The reason is they want to conserve their time and resources for running the main business.

The task of developing and maintaining software is viewed as a distraction. And they think it is easier and less demanding to manage a contractual relationship, sometimes even if purchasing software is more expensive than developing in-house. Given this bias, they view the GPL freedoms, especially freedom zero, as an utopia. Freedom comes with responsibilities and the customers see this as a burden. You can't count on vendors to go tell the customers otherwise. You can't count on vendors to tell the customers how to do things the community way. They are too afraid customers will exercise their freedom.

>>36
>I no enemy of no one

Um, if your syntax in your native tongue so bad as to express the exact opposite of what you intend I suspect you may be overestimating your programming prowess.

>>36
In the free software movement, we stand for freedom for the users of software. We formulated our views by looking at what freedoms are necessary for a good way of life, and permit useful programs to foster a community of goodwill, cooperation, and collaboration. Our criteria for free software specify the freedoms that a program's users need so that they can cooperate in a community.

Your software is likely to forbid the user of their freedom. It is likely that your software would include usage terms that would control how the user will be permitted to use the software. It is likely that you will not share the source code, thus rendering the user helpless to help them-self and become solely dependent upon you, the master over your software. It is likely that you would forbid users from sharing your software, and thus your software would divide society and forbid society from cooperating.

As a result, you are an enemy of freedom.

>>41
Cool story, bro. 7/10

>>42
Cool story, bro.
Back to /b/, please.

No, I do not get tired of saying this.

>>43
Well, you should