AKA: Paid performance, Pay for speed, Pay for features, Crippleware, Feature-limited
Contributions made by a user to un-throttle or unlock higher performance or special features. Payment could be collected via an registration key, external API or use of a crypto wallet and could become recurring.
Requires:
- Setup of a payment mechanism (e.g. via hosted API or crypto wallet)
- Integration of a throttling or locking mechanism into the OSS
- Integration of a token validation service into the OSS
Variants & Options:
- API based: User pays by calling a paid API
- Crypto based: User pays by transfering a crypto token to the maintainers wallet
- ICO: Initial Coin/Token Offering with (discounted) sale (e.g., upfront payment for infrastructure development)
- Daily Checks: Check to unlock is done once per day
- Boot Checks: Check to unlock is done once per start
- Node Checks: Check to unlock is done once per day and node
- RapidAPI (Unlocking by hitting the paid API)
- Web Monetization API (Unlocking by paying with connected crypto wallet)
| Characteristics | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set-up | Days | Integration and setup of several small subsystems |
| Effort to maintain | Low | Probably only updating subsystem |
| Cost to set-up | None | |
| Cost to maintain | Low | Platform used for unlocking might cost a little (or a share of the income) |
| One-time Income | High | ICO might bring a bigger initial income |
| Recurring Income | Medium | Depends on the value created and number of running instances |
| Income Predictability | Medium | If users accept paying it should become stable; Crypto might be very volatile |
| Full income Threshold | 500+ | Price can be set by maintainers |
| Recipient | C | |
| Additional Work | Low | Extra work to initially develop unlocking system |
| Visibility | Low | Low performance / functionality might be OK for user |
| Necessity to pay | Low | Might be OK for user but can be made uncomfortable |
| Entry Threshold | Medium | Paying for API access might be easy but paying in crypto might be more complex |
| Countervalue | Perf. | User pays for performance or unlocked features |
| Scalability | Medium | Scales with the number of users (who need the performance) |
| Effort for marketing | Low | Will make waves but no "sale" is necessary |
| Competitors | None | |
| Software types | Special | Best for stand-alone systems on one server (e.g., databases, blogs, LMS, etc.) |
NOTE: Due to the nature of open-source a user can fork and remove the unlock check. But he had to do it every time and the maintainers could forbid it in a special License.