Purchaser may buy a license for Compensated from our website

[zspencer]

At present, people are being asked to send an email about licenses; which is probably fine for now; but makes it look like we're a bit of a fly-by-night operation.

It'd be great if we had a payment form on https://www.zinc.coop/compensated that required people to accept some basic terms of use that assert that the purchaser has no lines of business that are for surveillance, incarceration, expanding fossil fuel usage.

We could rely on Gumroad, or we could toss the backend licensing stuff into Support as that seems like a reasonable place for customer-lifecycle responsibilities to live.

For the front-end; we should be able to rely on Stripe Checkout.

[drllau]

This is basic due diligence (can refuse custom to any not barred by law eg gender) but how can it be enforced on sublicensees? If Zinc Coop is setting up to be holier than thou, then how are the standards picked as to whom is deemed worthy of using the code? I'd prefer something along lines of "Zinc reserves right to refuse sales to those that don't meet ethical standards" and have a separate policy on how you define those standards (atmospheric license, hipocratic license, etc). Then you are left with the headache of do you revoke the license when a licensee is purchased/taken over by a moral degenerate?

Another way Zinc could try is my policy of interacting with non-profits which is that I charge them full-market rates, but then I donate similar amount (or more) back to their cause. I've had a lot of people ask for volunteer time and then take advantage which ended up being draining. Free != no-value (libre != gratis != nulla valorem). So I just donate back to the cause if I believe they are legit. So Zinc could just charge EVERYONE, then put a surcharge-rebate according to policy, save +100% if in the surveillance business, +200% in the dirty fuels, and +1000% if incarceration with a matching rebate if the license is Hippocratic, Atmosphere etc ...

[zspencer]

Hey @drllau; thanks for this. One request! Would you be willing to keep the issues labeled enhancement focused on the feature? More specific comments on visual and interaction design, documentation, and code changes and less on the holistic system design?

Issues labeled "enhancement" are the "inner loop" of a double-loop learning system. They exist to take the higher-order design considerations and turn them into changes to the underlying documentation, designs, or code. Issues labeled "request for comment" are for the outer-loop.

This ensures people who want to focus on "what to build" don't have to wade through long conversations to get to the mockups/use cases/acceptance tests; and ensures that people who want the broad, overarching philosophy can have those conversations as well.

You can search for issues labeled Request for Comment; or you can create new issues when you have a new topic or want to "branch" the flow of conversation.

I've created a few new issues to explore the two new topics you've raised:

1. Re: Sublicensing - Do we want to allow sub-licensing? If so, on what terms? compensated#54
2. Re: What usage restriction do we want to apply and how? - What usage restrictions do we want to impose and how? compensated#55

For further commentary on pricing; could you direct those thoughts to the RFC for pricing? zinc-collective/compensated#22

[drllau]

This ensures people who want to focus on "what to build" don't have to wade through long conversations to get to the mockups/use cases/acceptance tests; and ensures that people who want the broad, overarching philosophy can have those conversations as well.

ACK ... perhaps you can make those signals like RFC vs enhancement part of the contribution section since this is the first I'd heard of it. This is part of what we academics call tacit knowledge which is NOT documented but "understood" by insiders. That is why the badge system is good in that you can be tolerant of early contributors but expect productivity with higher badge owners. I raised in issue zinc-collective/compensated#56

[drllau]

The usual approach is a cart system where you might have

1. public License Zero for entities - last price Zee mentioned was $5k including all 0.x upgrades
2. private License Zero for individuals ($500?)
3. any other licenses (eg copyright clearance for sub/relicenses)
4. a rebate (50% for socially approved vendors like Zebra Unites, Hippocratic relicense, etc) ... some stuff can be automatic based on firm ID which can be verified to be L3C or non-profit.
5. a surcharge (100%?) for entities on Zinc's sin-bin (to be advised) which is manual due diligence at this stage ... this will slow down the whole process but self-attestment is prone to lying unless you add in a clause revoked due to XYZ.

Oh and before the checkout, a side-side comparison with others so they know what bargain they are getting ... stats like

• round-trip degeneration (how many back-forth payments before $100 goes to zero),
• reliability/uptime based on Zinc's operational experience
• lowest payment accepted to get to net zero receipt
• largest payment that if you made 2 of, will generate an overflow error down the line (US debt ceiling?)

Plus any necessary warranties and disclaimers for sale of licenses included under UCC, NAFTA or Vienna Convention.

[zspencer]

Did a bit of browsing of the Tailwind UI documentation for how to start assembling this and they have some nice bits that can make the UI side of this not suck:

1. Single Price With Details
2. Inputs with shared borders
3. Simple Stacked CTA Sections

The password to access the documentation is in the shared ZC Core 1Password vault that all members and other folks who have signed contracting/IP assignment agreements should have access to.