Would you pay for Roms/Themes?

[furbearingmammal]

Nobody's stopping anyone from charging.

In fact, the Ultimate Droid team was doing just that -- charging for access to the nightlies.

 

[epsilonbass]

So, say it isn't illegal, how much thought have you put in to your distribution system? In order to keep it from just getting passed around through other people's sharing and torrents, you'd probably want to have some kind of system key or something like that. Where would that be implemented? Somewhere between flashing and re-activating the phone? And I'd assume you'd have to keep a growing database of key's to deal with the inevitable "I've lost my key" problems. And throw in some servers to host the files, that would have to deal with a potential high amount of people purchasing and downloading the software at the same time.

I don't have any experience with selling software, but it definitely sounds like something you wanna make sure you have all your ducks in a row first. If you're serious about this, I'd suggest starting a kickstart donation page, have a really good pitch as to why pay for a rom, and then start shopping it out to all the droid/droidx/android forums out there to start getting the ball rolling.

 

[tgyberg]

So, say it isn't illegal, how much thought have you put in to your distribution system? In order to keep it from just getting passed around through other people's sharing and torrents, you'd probably want to have some kind of system key or something like that. Where would that be implemented? Somewhere between flashing and re-activating the phone? And I'd assume you'd have to keep a growing database of key's to deal with the inevitable "I've lost my key" problems. And throw in some servers to host the files, that would have to deal with a potential high amount of people purchasing and downloading the software at the same time.

I don't have any experience with selling software, but it definitely sounds like something you wanna make sure you have all your ducks in a row first. If you're serious about this, I'd suggest starting a kickstart donation page, have a really good pitch as to why pay for a rom, and then start shopping it out to all the droid/droidx/android forums out there to start getting the ball rolling.

Yea, like the Liberty 2.0 fund! I'd be all over that!

 

[Laur3nNewm4n]

Don't a lot of people develop using the Android SDK? I know it's open source, is it part of the GNU Public License? Personally, I feel if you're developing using a platform that was free for the developer to acquire, and no one is making them develop the ROMS, they don't have a right to charge.

That said, I fully support donating to developers on your own accord.

 

[pc747]

The other issue with charging for a rom is unless you build it from source and compiled the code yourself it seems as if you would be taking somebody elses work and making money off of it. If you build on top of motorola's build, cyanogen's, or another dev or you use their code and you get paid then it would be only right for you to pay them. Now you have to charge more just to cover the fees you paid to use someone else's code. It seems like every time you put money into something drama follows. I understand its a grueling process and you would get more making apps. But even apps have to be worth the money for people to buy it. App developers are not banking.

 

[04CiviCon20s]

I understand everything your saying and its a good idea but a few things.

If developers starting charging people to download there roms (the code of which comes from bigger companies) could cause legal issues. If you remember beautiful widgets and htc getting mad at it for having the same looking clock they already made. Forced him to change the clock.

If developers charged for there roms it could be abused and they could put out a lot of smaller updates and charge for each one which over time adds up.

A lot of people already send these guys donations for there work. But legally I don't think they can charge you to download it but I could be wrong.

Bottom line: your posing a good idea and could work, but I think there's a few issues that could come about from doing it

I agree w/you NEX13

 

[shiccy]

May have already been said, but I personally had nothing but issues with my phone after rooting and had to go back stock. I would have been exceptionally angry if that had cost me $. I guess, in a way, it *did* as I paid for the Root package app (can't remember the name currently)

 

[johnomaz]

Personally, I haven't seen any theme I like. They are all so jumbled mostly unless its just icon changes. The only theme I ever used was a blackbar mod and that is now part of Rubix. As for paying for ROMs, maybe, but not if its expensive. The iPhone used to have a great free hacker community but they all got greedy as **** and it all turned to ****. Don't do that Android community. Keep the spirit of Free Open Source...well...free.

 

[phishfi]

Don't a lot of people develop using the Android SDK? I know it's open source, is it part of the GNU Public License? Personally, I feel if you're developing using a platform that was free for the developer to acquire, and no one is making them develop the ROMS, they don't have a right to charge.

That said, I fully support donating to developers on your own accord.

Wait, what? Just because they started from something that was free doesn't mean their final product should be free. That makes no sense. If I take clay and build a pot, i'm not allowed to charge for it. These devs work very hard.

As for the issue at hand, I would pay for some of the features that are out here. I bought the bootstrapper, don't use any DX roms. I think the difference is the level of support and the fact that a lot of themes are products that people are going to make anyways, for their own phones. I'll be more than happy to pay for the bootloader unlock. Same goes for cyanogenmod (even though I really like some of the features from the blur apps).

Put simply, the devs are getting what they are willing to work for, else they would simply stop uploading their stuff.

What devs could do is just make their latest update require a donation, and let people have the older version (so liberty 1.0 would be free but 1.5 would be 50cents or a dollar.... just an idea


Sent from my "Stock" DX

 

[Sudo_]

Okay, Sorry I haven't responded.... I have now read everyone's comments and here is what I propose.

The pay structure would be like that of LauncherPro and ADW (I assume, I've only used LP) Roms would be free to download from the forums. Features inside the Rom would only be unlocked through a paypal "donation" that returned a key in order to activate. A few rules would have to be in place for this to work:

1. Nothing could cost more than $2

This would keep the prices so low it would not matter if the user decided to only use the rom for a few days..... if you have a problem with paying $2..... too bad for you

2. Developers could only charge to unlock the features that they have written and were not included in the source code (to alleviate the legal problems)

A custom look/Icons/Backgrounds/Notification bar mods/Boot Animations/Overclocking/Liberty and Apex Toolboxes etc.

3. Payment could not be mandatory for installing the ROM

This would allow people to test the stability on their device before committing to the ROM


Themes would have to be on a trial period of some sort and expire unless you purchased them and could not cost more than $1. I don't see any legal issues with themes since none of it is taken from source.

I believe a structure like this could work. What do you guys think?

 

[DF Smod]

This will never happen on D/F or any of our Sister Sites - we are here for the community, and making members pay for anything we support is out of the question -

 

[Sudo_]

This will never happen on D/F or any of our Sister Sites - we are here for the community, and making members pay for anything we support is out of the question -

I completely respect that. I apologize if I am stretching the terms of the forums here.

Please understand that the only reason I have mentioned this is because I see how hard the developers are working and the amount of people who take the time to donate is ridiculously small.

I want the devs to be properly supported. If everyone who downloaded a rom would donate $1 there would never be any reason to mention a "for pay" system.

How many people who downloaded rubiX, Apex or Liberty did not donate anything and then went to the market and paid $2 for a live wallpaper or soundboard app?

We need to support the guys working hard that keep us coming back to this forum!

 

[UNC]

Paying for roms?!?!?!

Charging for roms would be a legal fiasco for a few reasons:
1. AOSP, I am pretty sure that as soon as you build upon the android source code you are entering into an agreement NOT to sell for profit
2. Oracle, Oracle will sue anyone using anything related to Dalvik VM for profit

 

[epsilonbass]

Well.... the legality of using AOSP might be in the realm of possibility (granted you get a written agreement with google...which is probably a big leap) ... according to android's site's terms of service Android.com

Under Section 8. Content in the Services
8.2 You should be aware that Content presented to you as part of the Services, including but not limited to advertisements in the Services and sponsored Content within the Services may be protected by intellectual property rights which are owned by the sponsors or advertisers who provide that Content to Google (or by other persons or companies on their behalf). You may not modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute or create derivative works based on this Content (either in whole or in part) unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google or by the owners of that Content, in a separate agreement.

Not helping, 10. License from Google
10.2 You may not (and you may not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Software or any part thereof, unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google, in writing.


Which that being said could put roms against google's terms of service (unless you have some deal with google that you can distribute your roms). Google might be too big to care about someone modding code and redistributing it, but selling the code could peek their interest.

 

[Sudo_]

Well.... the legality of using AOSP might be in the realm of possibility (granted you get a written agreement with google...which is probably a big leap) ... according to android's site's terms of service Android.com

Under Section 8. Content in the Services
8.2 You should be aware that Content presented to you as part of the Services, including but not limited to advertisements in the Services and sponsored Content within the Services may be protected by intellectual property rights which are owned by the sponsors or advertisers who provide that Content to Google (or by other persons or companies on their behalf). You may not modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute or create derivative works based on this Content (either in whole or in part) unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google or by the owners of that Content, in a separate agreement.

Not helping, 10. License from Google
10.2 You may not (and you may not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Software or any part thereof, unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google, in writing.


Which that being said could put roms against google's terms of service (unless you have some deal with google that you can distribute your roms). Google might be too big to care about someone modding code and redistributing it, but selling the code could peek their interest.

Selling it and "Forcing" people to donate could be considered two different things