Preventing Stolen Software
Hey all,
I'm Chris, developer of the Reddit Capture Kit (rck.carrd.co)
I have a small python script that takes screenshots of Reddit posts and cuts them down line by line to increase the rate text to speech Reddit Youtubers can produce content. My present concern is having the software simply shared to other Youtubers without seeing a transaction on my end.
Presently, I am considering simply marketing the script to individual creators by cold email, and selling on gumroad for a one time price, and considering a small upgrade charge for future versions for those who have already purchased. How do developers deal with unethical distribution of an MVP like this?
Is this even a concern in a market that is in competition with itself?
EDIT:
I can see the confusion here, but I only intended to sell the script to allow the end user to be able to run the project. My target-market is assumed to have little technical experience outside of video editing.
Is the script executed as a .py file?
what you will need is some kind of licensing service so only users who have bought it on Gumroad can access it and users that you have cold mailed (send them a code in the mail that they have to redeem to get premium access).
Now you can put that into your script that you distribute as an .exe or .pkg . If you are going to keep distributing the raw python script, anyone can change the code, so that's a no go. Another way to distribute it is as a web app, where the script runs on your server and get called over AJAX.
The script is executed as a .py file.
I'm honestly not very familiar with implementing any of the techniques you just mentioned. Do you have any tutorials or videos that explain how the distribution as an .exe/.pkg, or in converting to a web app (would this be handy with Django?).
Also, how does distributing as a .exe prevent sharing of the software?
Have you tried to build SaaS based on your script? In this case the script will be hosted on your server and your customers will be able to use it without ability to share the source code.
That's what I'm considering most strongly at this point. I need to develop the skillset (or hire someone with it) to make it into a SaaS.
Building a simple SaaS is not that hard as it may seems like. You may even use something like memberstack.io to handle payments and memberships. Then you'll just need to build a simple web UI for your app.
Would something like Django work for a web UI?
I'm not very familiar with the front end of everything.
Yeah, Django should work for that, you don't need to have a super-skills in frontend. You'll be fine with basic knowledge of html/js.
I have started a Django tutorial online, and it seems everything I've built so far will be okay, minus a specific feature I might be able to work around.
Also decided I'm going to charge per comment that is being cut, and working on how to develop a payment system accordingly.
Thanks for the help!
As mentioned before you can't protect python code. However, you can monetize by providing paid support or by selling your script as a service. You could also expose your script as an API and give your users a script that calls that API. Good luck!
Is there a platform to sell the script as a service available by denying access to the service if payments are not made?
I've never done it myself but after a quick google search, I found Apigee by Google. It can help you monetize your api:
https://cloud.google.com/apigee/api-management/monetize-apis/
Just so I can conduct further research, what search terms did you use?
I would have googled it, but I would not know what to look up
E.g. "monetize API"
I would keep it simple, create API server using heroku and python, https://medium.com/@parthibansudhaman/how-i-have-created-and-deployed-restful-api-using-python-and-heroku-step-by-step-guide-5b9612e6a532
; Later you can switch to apigee or aws. Generate an api key for each user yourself and charge them via PayPal. Key will be an input to the client side script. On server side keep keys in python file and authorize by checking if client key is in there. With every new client you will have to deploy server with added API key to a python file. Later you can put keys into a database. I would use mongodb or S3 to store some analytics or client inputs later on. When you get some traction either build your own API server or switch to apigee.
If your product is a python script, you absolutely cannot protect it. I would argue that it isn't yet an MVP, to be honest, and needs packaging in such a way as to create more trust with your user, and enable you to protect as per the post above.
Thank you for the honesty.
I will be looking for ways to achieve this.