To sell it or give it away? That is the real question.

I am sitting here finishing up one heck of a project. This one project will give me a complete new line of software products. It did take me a long time but this new line will be pretty sweet.

The whole product line revolves around the concept of the user being able to customize their own software and create something they want instead of relying on the software developer doing it for them.

Here is the premise of one product I was going to build.

It allows people to create their own software. They download what I call the Software Player (this will be like the Flash player that you would need to download and install to run flash movies) to run Software Layout files that would be created by the Software Layout Creation tool.

The user would be able to run several layout files through the player. It will catalog them so the person can select which layout to work with. The software player will take the layout file and open up a software program that you will be able to interact with, like any software program that can save data and so on.

I hope this makes sense. I think this has a lot of potential but I was thinking what would happen if I gave this technology away for free. I think I could monetize this software if other ways and I was thinking the community that could be built around this free player layout tool could be pretty big.

So what are your thoughts? Would you consider giving something like this away to build a HUGE community or profit from traditional sales on it?


Thanks for the thoughts,