Business ethics

[Urs]

Really interesting thoughts!

To make things clear: I do not want to dictate anything to anyone. I just want to see your opinions and I think I'm even happy to change my mind on some things. If a common denominator can be found - great.

Also, I think it's totally cool to feature artists, do interviews and all. What I dispise is that simple and dumb "Product XY is the very best emulation of VintageZ I have ever heard" that you find all over the place.

I disagree though if any top ten producer is "entitled" to an NFR though. On the other hand I sometimes happily swap NFRs for CDs and concert tickets. Or dinner.

Regarding license transfers... I found they are not as many as to get concerned. Sometimes I have one every day, but the overall percentage is very low. With some products I sometimes remove suspicious ones from whitelists within the plugin (a technique that I happily discuss in the private forum), so they can't upgrade to the next version - this is essentially a way to stop a serial from working, if you have the patience.

The idea of an exit strategy is cool, but it isn't an easy one (if I die, my stuff has to still feed my wife...)

Good night,

Urs

[trimph1]

As far as an exit strategy is concerned there might be a way of a 'succession' of sorts that could be done before someone passes on.

[Dominus]

When a car or vacuum cleaner or whatever manufacturer goes out of business, you still have the item for as long as it lasts. It will stop working, parts will not be available, etc no matter how much you cherish it. Should the administrators of the company release all details of parts so that they can be made again; do the previous directors of the defunct company have a duty to service those items? It may be that your cherished electric drill bought from a company that disappeared 5 years ago is accidentally dropped & the motor stops. It had been fine before that, but now it just won't work, and nobody else makes a motor of the same dimensions - should the company have posted all it's designs somewhere just in case?

In the case of a vacuum cleaner or electric drill, it's easily replaceable by another brand, usually for less money. It's also mechanical, and prone to stop working, and everyone accepts that.

Software, on the other hand, can be quite unique, with few alternatives. It can stop working through no fault of your own (as in the case of C/R tied to hardware that needed to be replaced.) I actually prefer C/R over dongles, but I do have concerns about my software not working if a company goes under and I've upgraded. I'm a huge fan of Revalver. To me, NOTHING sounds like it for what I need, and if something happened to the server handling the C/R, I'd be very unhappy.

If your car company goes out of business, there's still plenty of mechanics to repair it and parts to be had. Software is closed off, unless you find someone that wants to hack it.. but let's keep this ethical.

[Dominus]

The idea of an exit strategy is cool, but it isn't an easy one (if I die, my stuff has to still feed my wife...)

Well, isn't your copy protection serial only? As long as someone can reinstall the software on their new computer and not need interaction from the developer, that's fine... it's just in the case of copy protection that can lock people out.

[nollock]

One other trademark matter you might want to consider for your ethics manifesto - ethical use of keywords in search driven advertising. I know for a fact one of our competitors is paying for sponsored links and featured YouTube videos based on keywords relating to our products. Not sure whether I should consider it as unsporting behaviour, or retaliate in kind... recent EU case law suggests the latter.

Im sure prolly already know this, but if they are using your trademark as a google adword, you should let google know. It is against google terms of service.

[Urs]

@contact-info:
i generally agree that this should be present, but does it really have to include the phone-number? what if i don't even have phone? i mean, i do have phone, but i consider it as my private phone number which i don't necessarily wan't to spread around the world (as my business phone number or otherwise). tax-number ...mmmhh i failed at that too. i wouldn't mind to add it but for what is it relevant?

Robin, as an EU-based business you even *have* to post your international VAT ID and your telephone number (See the "Abmahnwelle" on websites that lack a proper "Impressum"). I'm sure though that you do not need to post these things if you don't have them.

Regarding the telephone, I think I got a total of about 10 calls in 8 years from people who had actual questions about my stuff. One of these was Klaus Schulze, which was a rather pleasant surprise

Whether it make sense or not, or whether posting a telephone number or not adds to your credibility as a business is of course debatable.

#---

As for posting a postal address, I still think this is a must when doing ecommerce (not talking boxes on store shelves)

When a customer buys a license from me, he and I basically sign a legally binding contract (not talking fraud). Any customer must give his full address to get the sale through, and no matter if he fakes that or not, at some point in the chain he left his real address that identifies him, e.g. for his bank account, for his credit card or for his paypal account that he verified with his credit card. I would expect no less, because without credentials no-one can become a customer in a webshop. That has a benefit for him too, because with his credentials he can also receive support and get issues solved.

Now, for a contract between two parties to be binding you'd commonly assume that it needs to contain credentials of both sides. As a customer I would expect to see at least a postal address (can be a postbox of course) of the business, as this is in common law also the place where the actual sale happens in ecommerce.

My gut feeling as a customer tells me that any company that doesn't have a postal address is either not credible, or is for whatever reason afraid of letters from lawyers.

You can argue, of course it could be faked, but then *anything* could be faked. The world however doesn't work that way. The world works because there is a common faith that certain things are what they are. Instances where this faith is not met (e.g. exploited) are called black sheep, it's common but it doesn't defeat the purpose in itself.

As for Rurik and his stalkers - my wife has a (probably benign) stalker too, so I can somewhat relate to your resentment. I don't have an answer to that, but then I think you're also not asking so much for your products that the address thing really applies. In the postal address issue I was merely thinking of businesses who trade for considerable amounts, where e.g. buying a product may equal a weeks salary for some customers and thus may pose an existential risk to some.

#---

A question though to those who have boxed products and/or don't do online sales at all: Do you include your postal address on the boxes anywhere?

[bishop666]

As a user i want to see a complete release, bugfix and update history of every plugin, daw, etc. (take a look at reaper)

This is most important for the user! A central point of fair marketing.

[trimph1]

I have put a return address on any packages I sent--that way if it becomes lost there is a tracer point that can be used as an originating source.

As to succession---something to peruse--

http://www.ehow.co.uk/facts_7256427_cor ... ssion.html

[Urs]

As a user i want to see a complete release, bugfix and update history of every plugin, daw, etc. (take a look at reaper)

This is most important for the user! A central point of fair marketing.

I agree that this is a good point and definately something I should start doing myself. I plead guilty for sloppy version handling. It was difficult to accomplish so far, but I may be up to it in the future!

[Nokenoku]

2.2. license transfers

I also think that licenses should be generally transferable, maybe for a little fee to prevent abuse. I think Audiodamage are the most user friendly company in this respect (you can even give a license back and get reimbursed within some time IIRC), but I think it's understandably that not every company will want to go that far.

Of course it's nice to be able to resell something, but I don't think this is a must.

A lot of customers seem to see it as unfair to not be able to resell. But as long as proper demos are offered and it's clear, that you can't resell, I don't see much of a problem.
A different thing is it, if there are no proper demos .. then the option to resell the software is essential.
Also I think very high priced software should be able to be reselled (with transfer fee of course). But in the end every customer and company can decide on his own, what to buy and how to sell.

In the end the option to resell something is nothing else than an indirect alteration of the price. And you can't tell other people, what prices they have to ask for their software.
Of course there are a lot of plugins with extortionate prices, but that's the companies own problem.

[Urs]

Yeah, I agree that license transfers are not a must.

I will still recommend them as a good-to-have policy because I think that many people won't even buy a software if they can't transfer it. It may even be so that the loss in sales for not granting license trasnfers is higher than the loss by transfers. I don't know, but I would consider the possibility.

[Nokenoku]

Yes, that might indeed be the case.

[Urs]

I think it's a very noble and honest idea, but unfortunately it will be almost impossible to accomplish and really change things on big scale. There are just too many music software developers around that do things their own way and will keep on practicing business like they are used to and the way they feel is best for them.. Many businesses are selfish and gaining too much from (somewhat) misleading customers with their marketing for instance.. I'm afraid it's too hard to change the world for the better.

Probably there will be businesses interested to join and perhaps even create a nice "trusted" logo on their website to show it but.. the problem also is authority. Who is going to supervise if they will stick entirely to the protocol? It will be a hell of a job. I hope you won't Urs, because I would rather see you spending the time on your excellent coding

I think no authority is needed other than the customer base.

If only some people here (customers, companies) start to raise awareness of fair business conduct then this will hopefully work out all by itself. I'm not saying that I am the instance to decide what's ethical business and what's not. I'm just saying for me it's this and that. For someone else it may be this or that. Just exchanging thoughts about it may be rather beneficial for everyone.

If for instance enough people send an email to a company saying "I would purchase your products if you had a proper contact info on your website" then this company will sooner or later consider that.

Also, if enough people start to say "What's up with all those buzzwords? - Can't you come up with proper names?" then people might start to become more reasonable with their claims.

And of course - and that's solely my opinion - KVR is already quite good at punishing an overly pushy developer with a good

No company will however come out and say "even if you can't hear what our software does, we want you to buy it anyway for your own good and for the sake of your music and that's why we faked some of the audio demos". And of course no company will say "100% dry audio examples" when the opposite could be shown with the demo version. In an aware community this would be a little business suicide.

[Urs]

All of your points, except 3.2, are not really specific to audio software, so maybe they are already covered by a charter in organizations like ASP or ACM ?

Possibly... do you have any links?

[Urs]

This is very Europe style business.
Phone is has been. You try to call, but there is time difference... Email is so much easier.

Well, yes, phone is highly debatable. In Europe we have to put it on our website, but for contact an email address makes more sense.

The reason I brought this up is a website I saw where the *only* way of contact was a webform. There wasn't even an email address. You coudln't even see which country its from.

Postal address, well, very has been too in a global world. On a project I used to work on, there were 4 countries involved.

Sure, we're operating globally. The more important it is to know *where* a company is located.

If you buy something in the store around the corner, then you deal with a tangible persons and you trust that the guy who sells something to you knows exactly what it is and where he's got it from, up the whole chain from sales agent over distributor to manufacturer.

Things are mediate in different ways in online sales, but yet posh websites don't make up for lack of integrity and credibility. Customer faith is a vast achievement in online distribution, and black sheep don't just hurt themselves but all of us.

Not being an anonymous entity is IMHO very helpful to put in perspective that we are humans too and that we have responsibilities towards our customers.

Tax id, well, very Europe style too. In Europe you have to put it everywhere. Not so in the US.

Yep, you're different in that way. In Europe we need it mostly for B2B to either avoid taxes, or to deduct them on our declaration.

Things are different in different countries. Starting a little business in the US is extremely simple, while it is a nightmare in Europe. In the US you can start this in your garage, adding the revenues (if any) to your personal income, then incorporating when it makes sense to. This allows for a lot of innovation. Thousands of companies have started this way, in an informal way.

I can't speak for all of Europe but my impression was the other way round in terms of health care and what not. That's however a political area that I'm not willing to tap into, and about which I do not have enough knowledge.

As a general rule, I tend to prefer "less rules", more freedom.
There are often way too many rules.
I tend to associate "less rules" with "more creativity".

Yes there are - but they also work both ways. Rules tend to torture and protect at the same time, and a resonable set of rules occurrs to be quite healthy to me. Hence I usually don't vote for less rules per se, but for less complicated rules.

Now to soemthing cmpletely different... I hope.