Software > Olive Studio

Will Olive be Free or Pay for Use?

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PVPlaceLights:
Hi all,

I want to clear up a big question about the future for Olive. Many people have been asking if Olive will be made available for free or require purchase. The short answer is that when Olive is commercially viable, users will need to purchase a license to use it. There will be a scaling licensing model so some limited functionality/limited channel count versions can be available for free and low cost while larger feature set versions will require a nominal, scaling fee.

The projected pricing for Olive will be comparable to the pricing model of existing popular sequencing software. When you consider the amount of money spent on hardware, lighting, and accessories, the license fee for software is very, very small. You invest about an equal amount of time, if not more, using the currently available free or paid for software to program your animations.

I have asked for help from DLA members to guide the development of Olive. I feel this is the absolute best approach to building the right tool for the community. The idea for creating a new tool isn't to get rich (because that's not going to happen) but to provide a different approach to light animation that I believe is faster and more productive than current workflows allow. Revenues generated from license fees will allows us to continue development, maintain high quality user documentation, travel to symposiums to train users, and promote the holiday lighting experience. In the end, the free market will bare out the products users want.

Between now and then, many free and continually evolving iterations of Olive will be available and free for use and stable enough to rely on. This is my contribution. I thank everyone in advance for contributing ideas and testing the software.

--Matt

P.S. - If you are unable to post a reply to this topic, please PM me so I can let RJ know. Or, could someone PM me and let me know if you're able to reply to this topic. 56 reads and no questions is a little unusual around here. Thank you!

caretaker:
Matt,  my own personal opinion you are doing members of this board and the christmas lighting community as a whole a great service by designing a new sequencing software with input from the community and offering alpha versions for anyone to try out and then offer there input. As far as charging for the software when it is commercially viable is the right thing to do with your statement that support will come with the purchase price.  Unfortunately many people have gotten used to the idea of free or low cost software and what you get with that is less than impressive. I know my wife uses programs for creating machine embroidery designs that cost over 2 thousand dollars due to the complexity of the program and the limited market. So anytime someone adds something to the blinky community I say we should support them.

dmaccole:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or LoginP.S. - If you are unable to post a reply to this topic, please PM me so I can let RJ know. Or, could someone PM me and let me know if you're able to reply to this topic. 56 reads and no questions is a little unusual around here. Thank you!

--- End quote ---

To paraphrase RJ from a post the other day, the sound you're hearing is of crickets ...

I suspect that while most people accept the notion that a "better" piece of software is going to cost money, they always hold out hope that it won't.

There are many reasons developers charge for products that might otherwise be free and a lack of altruism may not necessarily be high on the list. I have certainly gotten more than one idea I wanted to work on greenlighted by my board of directors (wife, friends, family) because I said it was a for-profit enterprise when in fact it was more that I just wanted to learn something or prove to myself I could do something.

A little bit of income can sometimes mean that a certain amount of what might otherwise be unrecoverable expense can be written off as a business expense.

So, while I understand your desire to charge for the software, I suspect there are many here who do not.

Nonetheless, best luck.

\dmc

chrisl1976:
If you are running a small display...less than a few hundred channels. Freeware will probably handle it fine.  With the complexity required to run and efficiently sequence some of the coming multi-thousand channel display with RGB, you are going to need to pry open your  wallet.   

I think the statement is absolutely true.  People have no issues spending thousands on hardware, but than complain when they have to pay for the most important part of the equation.

chrisatpsu:
I can post...

can't wait to start using it with hardware

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