#Discussion: Monetization module

[johannesmutter]

Hi Manish,

I have just read through the License info and FAQs.
I’m curious about your thoughts on the Monetization Module (in both web3 and web2 contexts):

Types of monetization models

There are probably a few dozen possible monetization models. E.g. the mentioned pay-per-use and concrete instances of such, e.g. pay-per-CPU-hour, pay-per-KiloByte, pay-per-DAU/MAU. Also the billing cycle may vary, e.g. pay upfront (buy credits), pay-per-month, pay-per-transaction (instantaneous). Some of these come with potential major downsides like maintaining a constant & stable internet connection the monitoring server of a Monetization Module (e.g. how webfont services track font usage).

I think all (?) possible variances of the Monetization Module would need to be defined in the license terms of the Sustainable License similar to Creative Commons License to make the license conditions easy to search and read (in Google/ NPM/ ...): e.g. CC BY-NC ("Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial"). What do you think about such license extensions for the Sustainable License, e.g. SL-PPU-RM ("Pay-per-use with realtime monitoring") or SL-PPU-EOM ("Pay-per-use with end-of-month payments: usage data is submitted in a single transaction to the licenser after a month and payment becomes due").

Privacy

Usage information may be business sensitive and companies may want to keep this information private, even to the developer of the S.L. licensed software they are using. Do you think there needs be a clause in S.L. that prohibits the licenser from using such information other than monitoring purposes and also prohibits selling usage data to third parties? Alternatively how could the developer receive usage metrics in an anonymised form? And in such a scenario how could a developer respond to a license violation if the other party is anonymous? Would there be the need for a neutral entity that stores the keys to decrypt anonymised contact details and makes them available if called by an arbitral tribunal? (thinking out loud here)

Cheers 🙌
Johannes

[manishrjain]

Sorry for the long delay in replying here. I do like the variances idea.

Regarding privacy, a system could be used which charges your credit card via Stripe (but doesn't store the info), and issues you an API key. Or, any other means of payment. And that API key is what goes into the system. I've seen that being used by Mullvad VPN.