Selling Sites/Licenses/Modules - Needs BoonEx Attention

Ok, So I have seen many many posts regarding people are advertising their website for sell that includes paid modules, wanting to sell their dolphin license, etc.

This has always been a hot topic for some specifically with the response of 'Well I bought it, so I should be able to sell it'. So with that said, I think its time we put some closure to what you 'can' and 'cannot' sell. Until I can get Andrew's point of view on this, I will continue to hide any posts that advertise the selling of website that include paid modules and/or licenses. Of course posting download links to paid modules will not only be removed, but will also get you a free vacation from BoonEx.

Here is what we do know about selling a Dolphin License (per License Agreement Section 5):

Licensee may not redistribute,
encumber, sell, rent, lease, sublicense or otherwise transfer rights to the Licensed
Software. Licensee shall not remove or alter the Licensor headers from the Licensed
Software. Any attempt to take any such actions is void, and will automatically
terminate your rights under this License.

Here is what we know about selling,redistribution of 3rd party modules (per Constitution Section 4.4):

4.4. It is prohibited to upload, post, publish, transmit, reproduce, or distribute information, software or other materials obtained through the BoonEx Unity websites or otherwise that is protected by copyright or other proprietary right, without obtaining the permission of the owner.

I personally request Andrew to elaborate more on the issues described above. The decision made by BoonEx will be what is enforced by their trusty Moderators :)

lol

Ive bought 10 licenses in my 2yr+ working with DOlphin, many sites were great ideas but just didnt work enough to justify my full attention. 

Luckily my main site is going well so at least Ive used 1 of my licenses long term!

I have 9 sitting in my account that are currently dormant!

$900...

Can I trade them for a mobile app, or some mods via market ;-)

 Well, I suppose you could email Andrew and ask him if you can trade in some permanent licenses for a mobile one :)

Thank you for bringing this up, Zarcon!

This is indeed a very hot topic and in many cases we have been put into position where we couldn't easily decide on what's allowed and what's not. 

Dolphin is marketed as a software for "independent sites" and one of the selling points here is that once you've built a good site, unlike with hosted software solutions, you can sell your entire site. This is nearly impossible if software can't be transferred. 

So, we do allow selling Dolphin-based sites, however, purchaser is supposed to obtain their own Dolphin license. It's only a $99 purchase or they may also use a free license if needed. The $99 price is in part formed with consideration that sites that fail to take off wouldn't be re-sold for license-value only. If there was a strong Dolphin license after-market, the price would have to be upped ten-fold.

We do not allow reselling of licenses, mostly because there's no license transfer mechanism at BoonEx, but there're many other issues and implications that make it nearly impossible to allow reselling. Dolphin license is tied to one's account.

As a price-fix courtesy, we do guarantee that when you sell your site, the purchaser would be able to obtain a license for the price not bigger that you've paid for yours.

----

As for modifications - they're not BoonEx products. Re-distribution of modifications is governed by the terms vendors imply in their licenses. Some may allow selling, some not. We don't have resources to cross-check licenses and agreements between vendors and webmasters, hence we do not allow re-selling of modification here at BoonEx.com. We do understand, however, that such re-selling may be perfectly legal.

Andrew

Thanks Andrew !!!

So in a 'nut shell' we can say this:

- You may sell your website but 'without' the license since it is tied to a user's account here at Untiy. Therefore, the buyer must already possess a Dolphin license.

- 3rd party modules should not be included in the sale of a 'full website' without the prior permission of the module owner(s). Considering there is no way to enforce this, we will have to work on the trust system here.

/////// Note to buyers with 3rd party module incorporated with website sale ////////

Most developers will verify that you have purchased the modules via your Unity account username before providing support and/or upgrades.

Would you agree to that Andrew?

Yes, that's exactly right. 

---

Effectively, selling a website is only effective when it's a big sale and one can justify re-licesning or re-negotiating with all vendors. 

This is getting closer to how iOS devices and apps work. You may of course re-sell your iPhone, but purchaser would have to buy their own apps. 

Awesome! Then moderation will be based upon the comments posted here as 'official resell rules'

Need to make this a sticky please.

I'll keep this all in mind when dealing with these posts in the future.  Thanks, Andrew!

Edit: I second the motion for a sticky. 

So for all the lucky people who got free lifetime licenses for $0 if we sell our site the new owner will be able to get one for $0?

Good catch! Yet, there would have to be at least some price paid, so we could match it. "Granted" licenses are marked as such in our DB and don't qualify for price match. 

 Done.

I'm the webmaster for a non-profit organization and I've recently purchased the license (Prime package) and 50+ modules under my name but on the club's behalf.  As long as I'm the club's webmaster there should be no issues.  But what if I'm unable or unwilling to continue as the club's webmaster.  The new webmaster would become a new manager of the site's Dolphin license and vendor modules.  What's your 'license' policy for this type of transition?

Hi, epaulo!

Normally you'd see that the license would outline the policies. In most cases webmaster in the company is not the license holder - the licenses are bought in the name of the company. Company would own the BoonEx account as well and could change web-masters if needed. 

Licenses of 3rd-party products may be different and may have different rules. 

Andrew

I'm a professional webmaster and for my work I'd have made sure everything was in the company name and used the company credit card as work progressed.  However, for my "after work" volunteer webmaster position... especially since I was the one that decided to use the relatively unheard of "Dolphin" instead of Drupal... I put everything in my name and on my credit card.  At this point I'm okay with it staying in my name during the development phase... but later, after I get reimbursed, I may request the license be transferred to the organization associated with the website it's being used for.

Well, as I said, in some extraordinary cases we may manually process transfers. It may incur a fee, though.

then basically the answer of yes, you can sell your dolphin site, because you would only be able to market a developed site. saying that one would have to remove the 3rd party modules and any 3rd party templates, would put you back to selling what can be downloaded here. hence you have just dropped the complete market value of the site. 

If the requirement is for one to purchase a license if they are purchasing a site, equal to that of the original owner, that is feasible. 

so i think there should be an added inquiry on the module submission is the module transferable on a site sale. many of these products in the market have no licensing attribute, and they are winging it every time they make a sale, and just hope that it dont end up over on [Removed] but will become stand-offish if you mention selling what you have purchased. 

i personally could careless one way or the other, because if i wanted to sell my dolphin site, which i dont, i would just give the unity account with it. so nobody would know the difference at that juncture. none of these unity members have to produce any type of ID, so yes, you can resell dolphin and there is essentially nothing that can be done about it. if you are a developer and using dolphin as your platform. if you purchased a license for $99 or $999 its nobody's business what you do with that site once its developed. 

Though i guess the gist of what is being asked here, is can you offer your dolphin site for sale on unity. that would be the only controlling factor, and most sites here and the people that are using them still or struggling to use them are running in the red and have absolutely no marketable value at all. the most you could get out of purchasing a dolphin site is a domain that may or may not have a value. 

if a person has developed a dolphin site, invested their money in the modules, then decided that dolphin was a failure for them for whatever reason, i.e. marketing, or lack thereof, lack of operating captial, then it is highly unlikely that it would be purchased here. 

so yes, at one point in the past, there was discussion that you could sell your dolphin site, and your dolphin license, and there was a transfer fee involved, that would have been equal to the original license that was purchased. however, to blatantly state that  you cannot resell a developed site, but you can strip it down and sell a default dolphin, with a failed track record, and in order to sell it  the purchaser would have to purchase a licnense, is ludicrous. 

[Removed link to Dolphin warez site. - Nathan Paton]

I suppose if you want to sell your site and the license, you could just purchase the new license for them using their name and apply it to your site once the transaction is complete. Just add the price of the license in with the site.

Personally, I wouldn't buy a full on license here until Boonex actually completes one of their builds. That's what I have been waiting for ....

Well I've just purchased a license some days back and I'd like to know where it is!!!

so... If the license was purchased by my company and I sell the company as a whole including the site then the new owners should own the licences?

Unrelated to this topic, but check here: http://www.boonex.com/websites/licenses

If it's not there, send a ticket: http://www.boonex.com/help

Guess the account would have to be transferred to the new owners, unless something was worked-out with BoonEx to have the license transferred.  They announced plans for a transfer system, but that never materialized.

As you may have noticed in a previous post, I asked BoonEx about a very similar topic several months ago, i.e. transferring a Dolphin site license to the site owners (after i finish development).  Andrew replied there would be a charge to do it... he didn't say how much that charge would be.  A license transfer system would help... for both the Dolphin license and 3rd-party modules.

Would be interesting if there was an official section for this, kinda like we have 'websites' as its own section (although very out of date...) we could have a site market...

If there was a rule where any 3rd party modules included in site would have to be listed, and then the price of those modules was removed from the sale price and given to developers, with the remaining purchase price given to the site builder... surely all would come out on top.

Of course, would take some setting up, especially if it was an automated system... or one of the Boonex moderators could be given this section to run, and take a small commission on each sale for manning the station?

Just a thought....

The site-developer will (should) have already paid the module-developer so all funds will go to the site-developer.  What needs to happen is ensuring the license is properly transferred from the site-developer to the site-owner... so the module-developer is aware of current license ownership.

Yes, but the issue with site resale and module re-sale is not everyone will be honest! 

Im sure there would be some who would sell and re-sell modules...

Maybe a transfer license then...?

If your idea is that every time a license is transferred a fee must be paid to the code developer... it will not work.  Most site developers will not agree to paying additional fees to BoonEx and module developers. 

However if a 'no-fee" formal process is added to the BoonEx site that manages and "certifies" the transfer of Dolphin and 3rd-party module licenses from site-developer to site-owner, and it becomes a required procedure, then it should help module developers' fight against unethical site-developers that attempt to sell (or transfer) a single license to more than one site owner.

Out of curiosity.... what has happened in the past when businesses have sold either their site of their entire business? I know some sites that have done well have been sold so I would be interested in finding out.

We were approached last week for the entire business, but we are far from ready to even considder an offer at this moment in time. Its early days for us, but we do have an exit stratergy (the same as anyone on her should have), and if and when the time comes and the price is riight, we will bail.

 you know its funny how this topic is danced around. i have a client who purchased several licenses, and when i say several i mean several prime licenses, and it was fully understood the sites were being developed for clients, and not personal sites. there was no balking when the money exchanged hands, but now you get into oh we dont transfer licenses. annoying as all get out. 

the downside to that is because its not greasing the pockets then there is no interest in accomodating those who have developed as a business. if you grease those pockets anything is possible. you would need to create a unity account, and all of your transactions will need to be transferred to that account, this is easily done with some database editing, but again, bring your pocketbook when you ask for this to be done. 

When it comes to Dolphin licenses - there's a simple solution. 

Allow a unity membership level where you can create 'sub accounts' and then allow setting different login details to those sub accounts.

If a user can then allocate which of their licenses sit in which sub accounts, and can give access to those sub accounts away, then this solves that problem.

Would only take one lots of 'work' done by boonex, no database fiddling to transfer with each ongoing request...

With 3rd party mods, This would still work ( Im sure) if the mod sale receipt was locked to the sub account used, and not the main user account. 

Problem solved?

I think this IS an area that Boonex would do well to improve upon. It would certainly open a 'market' for site builders which would effectively bring in more professional DOlphin users.

Ive seen lots of Dolphin sites get half setup by people with a great idea, bags of enthusiasm but no DOlphin building experience. 

Unfortunately, very often these sites get left half finished as the user will have to make tweaks and adjustments to get things the way they want. They either run out of budget, run out of time and run out of patience = zero enthusiasm!

1 lost customer later, another picks up a new site...

If it was easier to 'pass on' sites to customers, then the builders market would open up big time.

Im sure it would benefit everyone. 

Just gotta think outside the box to set it up!

Sub accounts? Sounds like a lot of un-needed work to me from a programming point of view.

I think it would be far easier just to build in a system to transfer ownership to another unity account.

what if you just registered your site and everything in it with a company name, and in turn sold the "company" and gave all the login info to the new owner?

I feels like yet again on here that users that pay good money and invest substantialy to build a good product are being held to ransome and squeezed. Andrew... Please realise that members on here - (those that have purchased a license) and also those that have purchased modules from developers and invested in custom work are the life blood of Boonex wether you like it or not.  ithout them there is no boonex  or development / custom market and no dolpin.

There are more and more alternatives to dolphin. You are on  the right track with your product, but dont hang your users out to dry when they get the chance to make a profit from your product - Support us.

Surely you must realise it takes just one site built on dolphin to get a fre million memmbers and then get sold for a tone of cash and then every social developer on the web will be running to your front door. The way things are you appear to be putting every obsticle in the way of this ever happening.

I suppose the easy way to do this would be just to create lots of boonex accounts, link each one to a new site build with a new licence. Then just pass on the whole account with the site sale...?

Although, it would be great if there was a section on UNITY for site sales!

I for one would have a list of sites that would be ready to sell and I know there are lots of potential Dolphin users out there who dont have time to build their own...

Would generate new customers for mod developers also and new license sales for Boonex!

Whats stopping it happening? Been enough interest shown from long term DOlphin users surely..!

Yes, one can sell their Dolphin licence (site) and any third party products licence.  This is no different from buying a copy of Microsoft Office and then later selling it.  When you sell an application and transfer the licence; and this would include any third party products, you transfer everything and destroy any local copies  In other words, you can not sell your dolphin site; along with any third party products, and keep a copy of it as well.  Furthermore, any new Dolphin sites one creates, they must obtain a new Dolphin licence as well as any third party products they want to include.

Actually you are incorrect.

You can sell the site, but not the licence. Not all software companies allow transferring of licences. Boonex does not allow it either. See Andrews post here. 4'th post.

Companies that do not have licence transfer systems in place, or companies that cannot perform licence verification or lockout of licences usually do not allow transferring of licences.

The licence is tied to the domain.  So there is no way to unbundle the licence from the site.  So, one sells the site along with the domain name and the licence goes with it.  Why not allow one to sell their site?  There should be no problem with this.  In fact, if you allow this under these conditions, you will be selling more licences as people build and sell sites.  You win, your customers win.  Everyone happy.

Actually, no one owns it since it has been released as open source; however, they do own the licensing part.  I have not read the full licensing agreement but maybe I should considering I am getting ready to buy one.  However, I understand that your comment was not to try and educate me but to try and ridicule me.

Licences can be reset on the boonex site. Thus effectively releasing it from that domain.

The licence is also tied to your boonex account. So your boonex account has to go with it as well because there is no way to transfer the licence to a different boonex account. Without that, the licence cannot be reset.

Besides... if you have to quibble over a lousy hundred bucks when selling a site, you probably don't have something worth selling.

BoonEx owns Dolphin.  It's released under the terms of the CC-BY license and has their name stamped in the header section of all the files.  You can "remix" the "work" (code), but only under their terms of attribution, which are the file headers and banners.

For example, if someone wanted to release their own version of Dolphin called "Twisted Dolphin", the file headers from BoonEx and the banners would have to remain intact.  Removing either would violate the license.

Dolphin used to be under the GPL, but that was only in version 5.6 (and maybe a few versions after).  You might still find some individual files with the old headers (which mention the GPL instead of CC-BY).  IANAL.  Nor do I swing that way...

Hi i bought a licence through boonex and i cannot access my account anymore and the email on file is my old email and it is not valid anymore so when i try to reset password there is no way to access that info. I have contacted boonex for the past 2 weeks sending MANY emails and tickets and i cannot get anybody to respond from boonex on how to access my account. Can somebody please help HELP!! on how to contact someone from boonex to help me get my site back up and running?

All of you here are just a joke.

I would not sell Boonex / Dolphin to anyone after all the shit I have read here about selling a site as a going concern.

None of you have any legal training. If you have, than shame on you.

None of you know about sale of goods and services act , company's act , design copyright and patents act, contract law,  unfair contract terms act and plain old good business practice.  UK leads the world in all of these areas.

Boonex/Dolphin is built by amateurs on an ego trip for amateurs who dont know any better.

You can only fool some of the people some of the time......

I speak from first hand experience.

I make this contribution purely out of fury that I was bullshitted for so long.

I feel a bit daft reading my previous post.  I apologise unreservedly to the pros out there.  You know who you are

I think I was having a bad day.

I am just furious that I cant sell my $99 license for v 7.0.9 to my client.

My client is willing to buy a new license for $99 for v 7.0.9 but this is no longer possible.

No thought was given to this with the new licensing structure.

No answers anywhere just a lot of blah blah blah.

So what is to prevent someone from just selling their whole account? 

So, if I want to sell everything that I buy here on boonex, could I sell my boonex account whith all products that I buy here?

To be honest, those who buy/sell accounts don't mention it.  That may be a hint.

It's all too complicated. Here's what I get from it all. If you buy a license and build a successful site and then decide to sell the site, you really can't because you can't transfer the license that you already paid for with the site. You lose the money you spent on the license and the person you sold the site too has to send money to Boonex to re-license a site that has already been licensed once.

Great plan ... for Boonex but not for anyone else. This way, each time a successful site is sold, Boonex gets another license fee.   For the same site, repeatedly.

The license should go with the the domain, not the user. Any other plan is just a way to multiply license fees at the users expense.

well I have to agree with Sky .... Current licensing scheme is not vary fair.. better said only  who profit from this is Boonex - everybody loose money. Its logic if u buy something you should be able to actually sell it. More than that .. those who really want simply sell whole boonex account along with site as mentioned here so whats the point.