| Re: [ide-dev] Licensing framework for Eclipse plugins |
Hi Maarten,Thank you for your note. Such list of requirements is really helpful to build the scope of an eventual license management framework for Eclipse.Anyone else has the same of different requirements? Please, share them here.KaloyanOn Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 2:05 PM, Maarten Meijer <mjmeijer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Dear all,My interest would not only be for a payment provider in the Eclipse market place, but for a licensing and payment provider for plug-ins and for standalone RCP applications. The reason is that my plug in covers a niche (photometric data files) that works well in an IDE like environment but the majority of my users would not be into developer tools, so the experience of the Market Place may be to overwhelming.Desired Functionality:- easy access to online registration for EVALUATION license- online check whether license is valid or expired- online check on valid license type (FULL or EVALUATION)- easy access to online payment without leaving Eclipse or RCP application, preferably with VAT handling in EU- notifications to registered users on start-up on updates/newsI hope that this can help in the discussions and implementations scope.twitter: @eclipsophy
Committer Industrial Mylyn Connector
http://eclipselabs.org/p/industrial-mylyn/
Eclipse trainer/consultant
http://www.eclipsophy.com/On 10 apr. 2015, at 12:12, Frederic Ebelshäuser <frederic.ebelshaeuser@xxxxxxxx> wrote:Hi Kaloyan,_______________________________________________
Back from Easter holiday…
Regarding bug 409269 we did a lot of work implementing the Infrastructure for the Eclipse Marketplace. Aside from the code on GitHub (and Gerrit) there is unfortunately nothing published yet. We are still in an ongoing discussion with the Foundation about legal and organizational topics.
Nevertheless we've already started a pilot project for our sales infrastructure and currently have 16 vendors on board supporting this effort.
The license module (client/server) we implemented as part of our sales service is still in development. We are currently focusing on covering more requirements from the vendors already involved.
Our target is to have a consistent standard for the licensing and payment API. So we are thinking about open-sourcing parts of the licensing system, but there hasn't been a decision on that, yet. In any case, we will provide different public APIs to that end - e.g. for client based license modules, vendor specific license servers or commercial license frameworks.
Btw: We hope to have an update on
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=409269 soon and will describe our further steps there.
Cheers,
Frederic
Am 02.04.2015 um 20:54 schrieb Kaloyan Raev:
Hi Frederic, Thanks for describing the big picture in such details. I completely agree. Indeed providing a web shop for commercial plugin developers is an interesting business opportunity on its own. My interest for triggering this discussion comes from the fact that I am currently involved in the development of Zend Studio - a PHP IDE based on Eclipse. We have our own solution for license management. There are some aspects of our solution that I want to improve. I've already done some research on the topic and I have some pieces that can be the base of a prototype for a license management solution in Eclipse. Have you considered open sourcing your license management solution, or part of it? If yes, then we can unite efforts in having a common solution for everybody who needs license management solution for commercial Eclipse plugins and products. Of course, it is just part of the big picture you've described, but still an important one. And having a good solution for it would make it easier to complete that big picture. BTW, I've installed CtrlFlow to get a taste of you licensing framework and got a problem while requesting the trial license [1]. Looks like a server-side issue. Eventually, it succeeded in the end. I am also curious why bug 409269 had no progress. [1] https://dev.eclipse.org/recommenders/community/confess/#/incidents/hwV6VZLPRxb5xloHQGSgtPlJPgOiteTJnYKoApWUb5G9OrMLWwrQogkSN8zKTuJL Greetings, Kaloyan On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 5:36 PM, Frederic Ebelshäuser < frederic.ebelshaeuser@xxxxxxxx> wrote:Hi Kaloyan, I think that's a great idea. Of course I'm a bit biased, because as you've already discovered, we've been working on something related here at Yatta for a while now ;P Actually, you can have a look at our license system in action within Marcel's CtrlFlow app. http://www.ctrlflow.com/try/ - Have a look at step 3. Am 29.03.2015 um 22:38 schrieb Kaloyan Raev:My experience with Eclipse is that there are really tons of products and add-ons built on Eclipse, but commercial products are offered primarily by big and mid-size vendors. There are de fact no (or at least I am not aware of any) commercial products or add-ons offered by individual developers or micro vendors. Perhaps, the reason for this is that the efforts for implementing the licensing part for a small plugin is equal or even greater than implementing the plugin itself.In our experience as an Eclipse vendor, the effort starts even earlier and with something even more substantial: There is really no good channel to sell an Eclipse plug-in easily and effectively right now. Getting even a simple webshop with payment up and running can become a pretty big and daunting task, when you take into account things like correct international taxation, invoicing, consumer rights and so on. When you want to address corporate customers (which is the majority) it gets even more interesting, because suddenly many of your users don't have their own budgets and/or can't pay with credit card - even small amounts for simple plug-ins. It's clearly not effective for everybody to solve this on their own just to publish a small commercial plug-in. That's why we've been working for a while now on building a service to allow everybody to easily sell their plug-ins directly from within the Eclipse Marketplace Client - effectively turning the Marketplace Client into a real app store for Eclipse. A shared licensing system is one part of it. Of course, the current status quo has pros and cons.Pros: - All of these small Eclipse plugins we have today are all open source, so we get them for free - Code is available, so we can learn from it, fork it, change it and contribute back.What you also need to take into account here are all the plugins that never see the light of day because their authors don't want to open-source them but lack any alternative. Cons:- A large number of these open source plugins are abandoned soon (or in best case a couple of years) after their start. Projects at Eclipse Foundation are indeed more sustainable, but those "in the wild" are not really. Of course, commercial plugins are not immune to this problem too, but in some cases it may make the difference. - We have still a lot of functional gaps in the different usage scenarios of Eclipse as an IDE compared to competitive platforms. Perhaps, these gaps might be filled with small plugins by individual developer who have the financial incentive to do it. So, I believe that having an easy-to-use licensing framework at Eclipse Foundation may attract the creation of more commercial Eclipse plugins and RPC products. This will attract more developers in our community. It will improve existing usage scenarios and cover new ones.I completely agree. One of our main motivations for a shared sales solution around the Marketplace was to attract more people and more investments to push the Eclipse ecosystem. This was also a big topic at EclipseCon NA last month. Such licensing framework might be also helpful for mid-size and big vendorwho has already implemented their own licensing for their products. Based on my own experience, it's not trivial to do the licensing "right" and it is very helpful to have a place where you can look for best practices.We already have a simple and very light-weight licensing framework that is fully integrated with the sales process, so users can directly use their plug-ins without messing around with license activation emails or similar. Our main goal here is simplicity and tight integration into the process. We already have a simple and very light-weight licensing framework that can be used for free. Licensing needs to be integrated seamlessly into the whole process, so our licensing framework is fully integrated with our sales process, so users can directly use their plug-ins without messing around with license activation emails or similar. Our main goal here is simplicity and tight integration into the process. We will also provide an API to enable vendors to connect their own licensing systems to offer a consistent UX across commercial plug-ins. By the way, the technical license system is just one part of the licensing issue. We are currently working on creating standardized license terms and conditions which will cover most vendors' needs. This helps both vendors and users to simplify Eclipse sales. If you would like to use our license system or even more, please drop us a mail at marketplace@xxxxxxxx. And if you support our ideas and contributions, we would appreciate your support on https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=409269 Cheers Frederic _______________________________________________ ide-dev mailing list ide-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx To change your delivery options, retrieve your password, or unsubscribe from this list, visit https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/ide-dev
_______________________________________________ ide-dev mailing list ide-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx To change your delivery options, retrieve your password, or unsubscribe from this list, visit https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/ide-dev-- Yatta Solutions GmbH - Product Manager - Software Engineer - t +49 (0)69 2475666-34 f +49 (0)69 2475666-88 e frederic.ebelshaeuser@xxxxxxxx tw www.twitter.com/fEbelshaeuser xi www.xing.com/profile/Frederic_Ebelshaeuser in www.linkedin.com/pub/frederic-ebelshaeuser/97/a2b/619 Office Frankfurt a.M. Mainzer Landstraße 50 60325 Frankfurt a.M. Office Kassel Universitätsplatz 12 34127 Kassel Seat, Trade Register: Registered seat: Kassel Amtsgericht Kassel, HRB 14720 VAT-ID DE263191529 Management: Johannes Jacop Dr. Christian Schneider Contact: t +49 (0)69 2475666-0 f +49 (0)69 2475668-0 e info@xxxxxxxx
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