Over the last month or so OpenNETCF has undergone some rather radical changes. Chris, Mark and myself are now working on OpenNETCF Consulting full time and we have a number of other partners on the team. We have established a revenue model for the Smart Device Framework, and we’ve got a number of other products in the pipeline.
Some people will argue that now we are attached a cost to the Smart Device Framework we should change the name from OpenNETCF to something else (suggestions have included Not-So-Open-NETCF). We have always maintained that source code is a valuable resource. As a way of response, I ask is it so wrong for us to want to attach a monetary value to the educational and technical value of our assets? Any realist living in today’s modern world will realise that no company has a future without a revenue stream. We need to eat, we need to pay bills. We need to spend the time to create great products that make your development lives easier. All this takes money.
If anything, attaching a price to the Smart Device Framework we are cementing our commitment to the product, the .NET Compact Framework, and our future within the industry. And this is were the crux of the matter lies. We want to survive, grow and mature into a great ISV for the device development community.
I’m not going to discuss the rationale for our decision any more as Chris has already wrapped up our thoughts on his blog.
As part of the changes we made to our business model, we’ve also changed our software license. In summary, we made the license a lot more open than in its previous incarnations. For example, you can now include the Smart Device Framework code in your applications with no acknowledgements or indications that it is our code. No headers need to be maintained, no EULA needs to be distributed. We have introduced a restriction on the distribution of the source code, but I hope you find that is reasonable and fair. Also, unlike some of the Microsoft shared source licenses, we still do not have any reciprocal rights policies so any changes you make to the code are yours to keep as proprietary assets. While we do not enforce propogation of modifications back to us, we do sincerely ask that rather than just fix bugs yourself, please report them to us using our bug database. All reports entered into the database are distributed to the entire team and we have a publicly visible audit trail so you can see how we are doing at responding to bug reports.
For the developers based in the UK, I urge you to take advantage of the strong pound ($1.84 to £1 at the time of writing this) and pick yourself up a bargain at the OpenNETCF online store.