A Follow-up on Licensing

Wheeeeeeee!

Been a bit of a week. After surprising the 3D Printing Nerd with a feather:

And him liking my fabric video

Along with the amazing callout in #hotmakes last night (PS I’m still more than willing to explain to both Nerdy J Mr Edge of Tech himself and Courtney from Filament Stories what is going on in the video)

All of a sudden there are more eyes than ever on HueForge and a lot of people wondering what the heck it is. I ended up writing an ongoing Twitter Thread on the history of HueForge (light on technical details alas). I am not quite up-to-date so expect that to change.
I also posted this slightly more explanatory thread last night on the print that is going on right now (well, probably it’s just about done with the layer it was on and is sitting around waiting for me). Of course I’m having printer issues that caused me to restart twice now on the one I posted and explained.

But you aren’t here for that. You want to know how much HueForge is going to cost - and probably when is it coming out. Unfortunately I can’t give a hard answer to the latter question. I’m still working on filament storage/use features and if the response this week has shown me anything, my plan to release some tutorial videos pre-launch is vital. I’d like to be done in 2 weeks but I think realistically it’s going to slip, I have a full-time job and a family that needs time as well.

My pricing philosophy is this - I want the everyday, personal user to enjoy HueForge with no recurring charges - and I want the continued development of HueForge to mostly be supported by those who make money from it. (Or who just want to support me and have the resources to do so)

Also - the filament library will be free for everyone, not just people who buy HueForge. In fact, I’d love to combine with The Filament Colors Library to both add Transmissivity to the data and make an easily HueForge compatible download from the site. I think it is going to be hard to even try to compete with the publicly available resources and I’m not sure why I’d even try. It’s possible I’ll give MORE detailed analysis to owners - like how reliably different filaments hit their transmissivity metrics - but it will be for all owners of HueForge and up to them if they want to release it.

Pricing

But here are the release pricing tiers - Prices will be good for at least the first month, all licenses are upgradable, but the prices will start to move up as new features are put into place. Those buying during the intro prices will be able to upgrade at the intro rate for the first year. (I commit to not raising prices until actual new features are in place - not bug fixes or convenience tweaks as I expect the first month might be a flurry of mostly bugfixing as new “testers” get involved). I’ll walk through some upgrade examples after the types:

---

UPDATE:

Maintenance:

After having discussions with multiple people interested in the Lifetime Tier - and seeing some cautionary tales out there - I have decided on the following changes to the two lifetime tiers (Personal and Lifetime). Updates and bug fixes are only promised for 2-years after purchase. After that, you may purchase additional fixes/update time at a much lessor rate. I think with Personal it will be 1/3rd the current rate and for Lifetime it will be the going Commercial rate at the time.

You will maintain all rights to use - and in the case of Lifetime - sell goods that you had before. You are not required to purchase maintenance updates at any particular time, but you will stop receiving updates once your time period expires. If you decide there are no new features/bug fixes you want, you are entirely fine paying nothing more.

Seats/Households:

For non-Personal licenses, the intent is that individuals are licensed to use the software, not nodes, and not companies (if a larger company wants a site license, they should contact me). The sole exception is a single business run from within a household, the makeup of the household isn’t important - partners, roommates etc - are all allowed to use a single license. If each roommate/partner etc runs a separate business, they would need separate licenses. If a business is not a single household business and wants to have multiple users, each user would need an appropriate license.

Personal license is a household license. All members of the household are allowed to use a single copy. The rights are tied to the household the original purchaser resides in at the time of use. This will all be in the EULAs and addendums.

---

Personal

$12 one time, lifetime license. Fully upgradable (for the difference). Bug fixes and minor convenience upgrades will be released Personal at the same time as all other plans, but new features will be delayed until they are considered stable (think of this as the Stable Release, no beta features or experimental features). You have no commercial rights to sell prints or model files - you are 100% allowed to post free models or give away HueForge prints. Membership STL files fall under Pro not “free” models.

Limited Commercial

$30 as an annual license and this is the intro rate. The current plan is $50/year after the first year. It comes with the lifetime Personal the first time you get it. Also fully upgradable, this tier also includes access to beta features in a separately updated location. (So you always have access to the Stable version), along with that beta access is rights to sell printed products made with HueForge, and greater access to shape the priority for new features.

Beta features have the most value to those using HueForge commercially because they will be the first to market with new techinques. But this is a really approachable price if you just want to support ongoing development and be more involved in the future of HueForge.

Pro

$80 as an annual license and this is the intro rate. Anyone creating a membership program with HueForge STL files as rewards (even infrequently) must use this tier. The current plan on a continuing rate is $100/year after the first year. It comes with the lifetime Personal the first time you get it. Also fully upgradable within the year to Lifetime. It has everything that Limited Commercial has with the addition of being allowed to sell model files (STLs, future 3MF etc) generated on top of the prints that can be sold in Limited Commercial. Pro users will have the loudest voice in shaping new feature priorities.

Lifetime

$175 one time fee (this price will go up as new features are added, but those who buy any tier in the initial pricing period will be able to upgrade at this price in the future. No guarantee will be made for anyone buying outside the initial pricing period, except that you can upgrade to this tier with credit for what you have spend in the current year) Lifetime includes all the benefits of Pro with no recurring costs.

Upgrading

Okay so let’s talk some upgrade scenarios.

NOTE: All upgrades, whether discount or not, start a new year at that point in time.

First - for Personal, you will always get a credit towards your first upgrade equal to what you paid. So if you pay $12 and in 9 months decided to get Commercial, you get to upgrade for the current commercial rate minus $12. If you wait 2 years, you still get that discount assuming you haven’t ever used it before.

As a special thank-you for buying at release time, I will give one upgrade to the release time rate for the tier you want for the first year. So if you buy Personal and want to upgrade to Lifetime, you will pay $153 even if the new rate is higher (I just picked the most extreme example). This will likely be a personal email operation so don’t wait until the last minute.

Let’s get complicated - You buy Personal, then start getting interest in what you are making and upgrade to Commercial a month later, your total will be $30 between both purchases (and you used your one Personal upgrade at intro price rate). Then you decide a few months later that you want to upgrade to Pro, you will get a $30 credit to the current Commercial price, which will start a new year of Pro at that point.

Lastly, let’s look at a case where you DON’T get the upgrade discounted. You buy Commercial at launch. It expires after a year and you revert to Personal. A few months later you then decide to go back to Commercial (or Pro). There is no discount because it is the same as renewing your annual license.

Please feel free to ask questions or critique this as it is not 100% set in stone, but seems to me to be a good compromise between funds to keep development going and being affordable for most.

HueForge Project Sales?

If you read this far, there is a gray area that I am tempted to leave alone. And that is selling images and projects to other HueForge owners. IE anyone (even Personal) would be able to do this. What are your thoughts on that?