Licence Expiry and future Prices

[onkelmuetze]

I am wondering, how all this will develop in the future, what we have here is a well running project, with lots of effort from different sides.

Now we have the first software version with a licence expiry set, and as lee wrote on the webpage, pilotaware will probably not remain free of licence charge forever. People around keep asking me if I can build up hardware for them. So I am interested in lee's thoughts and plans about future pricing, before I build all that stuff and every second party is gonna scrap his device because of high costs when the tests licence expires.

Please don't get me wrong on this, Lee, i really appreciate your work, but I would like to know where we are gonne end pricewise.

[Admin]

I am wondering, how all this will develop in the future, what we have here is a well running project, with lots of effort from different sides.

Now we have the first software version with a licence expiry set, and as lee wrote on the webpage, pilotaware will probably not remain free of licence charge forever. People around keep asking me if I can build up hardware for them. So I am interested in lee's thoughts and plans about future pricing, before I build all that stuff and every second party is gonna scrap his device because of high costs when the tests licence expires.

Please don't get me wrong on this, Lee, i really appreciate your work, but I would like to know where we are gonne end pricewise.

This is an absolutely fair and valid question.
I think I will make a full announcement via a newsletter to the forum members

[onkelmuetze]

Thanks a lot for your quick respond!

In my opinion, announced costs are more than fair!

[Admin]

(email Contents)

Hi Fellow Forumites,

The following question was posted on the forum regarding 'Licence Expiry and future Prices'
http://forum.pilotaware.com/index.php/topic,59.0.html

This is an absolutely fair and valid question, and thought I should answer to all members.
I have been explaining my options at the LAA rally, and in various emails/postings, so here are my thoughts
in a bit more detail.

I am looking at a future subscription model, to continue funding the project, and hopefully recover some of the
large investment made to date.
I am not looking to make huge gains on this, this was never the intention of the project.
My current thoughts for pricing once the Beta Period has hopefully proved to be successful are as follows
£14.99 First year
£11.99 Subsequent years & for existing Beta Users

I hope you agree that this is a reasonable amount based upon the low barrier to entry for the hardware costs.
I calculated if you were to buy a F***M system, this would provide nearly 200 years of license subscription,
So when put like that I think it sounds quite reasonable 

There is lots of parallel work going on at the moment which has not yet been disclosed to the forum including
a drone project, a tracking system, and extensive work on providing a plug and play kit to overcome the construction
issues which many prospective users are clearly daunted by.
I am sure that those of you who have built your own PilotAware know this only too well, as I would wager you
have had many requests to build more PilotAware units from your friends and fellow aviators.

I sincerely hope everybody agrees this to be reasonable, I have spent over two years on this project and would
hope that nobody feels agrieved by my intentions.

My main concern is to make the project successful by achieving widespread adoption, and hopefully give us all a
better margin of safety when flying. I do not want to dissuade any potential users over unreasonable costs, this
would clearly negate the primary goal of the project.

Thx
Lee

[ianfallon]

Sounds entirely reasonable.

[tj80]

Hi Lee,

I'm sure nobody will take offence at you trying to make a modest return on this and your suggestion sounds entirely reasonable to me.  A few comments, if I may:

- Adoption levels are absolutely key to the success or failure of this.  Unless there is sufficient uptake to make it useful people will stop paying the subscription or, worse, won't sign up to start with.  I'd suggest keeping it free/in beta long enough to encourage widespread adoption - those already using it will almost certainly continue with the subscription model and newcomers will see value from actually having traffic to see!    If there's no traffic to see (except ADS-B) it's arguably not worth the subscription cost - viscous circle.
- Great to see a token discount for beta users!  However, please make sure those beta users and DIY builders continue to be supported in the future.  It would be disappointing if DIY builds are sidelined once pre-built units are available, although in terms of support I can see this being tricky.
- I know nothing of the commercials of such things, but this doesn't seem to me to be an obvious candidate for subscription pricing.  Have you considered a one-off perpetual fee as well or instead?  Annual pricing makes it easier for people to drop out, and somewhat perversely I would be more comfortable paying a larger amount up front than a smaller amount yearly!

Cheers,
Tim

[SteveN]

Sounds entirely reasonable.

+1

[bnmont]

I  think annual subsription at the amount stated is an absolute bargain! I hate to think how much time and effort  Lee and  others? have been spent  to get where we are today.
I would also consider an outright purchase of the software. Where would this leave us with future enhancements though?

[Wadoadi]

Sounds entirely reasonable.

+1

Sounds very fair to me too!

Question would be the pricing is for the early adopters, so how much will it be for the others and will it be a barrier to them taking it up?

[eddiecartwright]

I'm sure Lee is going to try to be fair to early adopters/ beta testers, but I totally agree that thought has to be given to build the network without putting people off.

Currently I guess there is a lot of interest, as it looks like a free of charge product, as far as software goes. However, it would be interesting to see what the dropout rate is once charges are made.... hopefully not too many as I am concerned the system may not grow fast enough. Depending on the growth rate, it may be worth extending the beta keys until critical mass is seen. Maybe profit can be made by selling the hardware and software as a one off purchase.

Another point that would be nice to know. If you design your own hardware (if this is planned), then what is the view of the beta units? Will the firmware be cross compatible with the RPi versions?

[trapdoor]

Theoretically, if someone has invested in the hardware then a small (by comparison) license cost should not see them dropping out.

I agree that beta testers should benefit from a reduced cost - when I did work for both TUTV and YouView, we were provided with hardware free of charge (and to keep) and in fact, they provided me with a new LCD TV too as part of my testing work. Once the alpha and beta programs were finished and the product put to public release, then we were back to full sub rates but we kept what was several hundreds of pounds worth of kit by way of 'payment' for the efforts put in.

When the beta testers have invested some of their own money to build the hardware to help validate the software, it would be nice if they had the benefit of a reduced cost as after all, it's a leap of faith that the development and ultimate full roll-out will continue. But it needs to be recognised that Lee has invested a lot in this and should be expected to get some kind of return.

[stephenmelody]

Anyone who thinks 12-15 quid a year is too expensive doesn't value their life enough. 

Seriously, this is a negligible amount compared with the cost of flying. If I don't fly at all in a year, the annual subs alone on my plane would equate to 1080 quid. This is less than 2% of that cost.

In flying terms for me, it's about 15 minutes. I can easily knock 15 minutes off a year to offset the cost of potentially saving my life.

Having this product adopted widely could have possibly avoided the very near miss I had the unfortunate pleasure to be involved in.

With SD at 90 a year, this is hardly bank breaking.

[DavidC]

I agree that Lee deserves recompense for his efforts and that the price proposed isn't going to break the bank. I don't know what (if any) the ongoing costs for competing systems are, but would prefer a one-off price. At the same time, I'd like to see long term support for bugfixes, robustness and probably a few incremental features. Perhaps there are other optional products or services which could attract a premium such as those mentioned earlier.

What I've noticed elsewhere is that the system is often referred to as a "hobbyist" solution. Changing that perception is critical to achieve mass adoption. This may need Lee to setup a company and put in place mechanisms such as software archive in case he gets run over by a bus etc. Some might be put off by simple things like there not being a physical address published on the website to add credence (I'm not suggesting anyone should post their home address here though). All this all costs money and takes time. But it sounds like Lee has a plan.

I suppose that if the Pilotaware interfaces are published then someone could re-engineer the system using their own code (and offer it at a lower price or publish opensource code for free), but if the licence pricing is kept low then it probably wouldn't be worthwhile.

I'm quite keen to try this out and encourage a few others at our airfield to do likewise. Will be interesting to see the system working live. Just waiting for the rest of the bits to arrive...

[chrismills]

Thanks Lee, for being open and making your plans clear. Personally I'm a  big fan of open source and free software but clearly a lot of time and investment has been spent. There's a  line to tread between stimulating mass uptake which would produce the most useful system especially if it was free, and sustaining the project which requires some finance.  I echo the above sentiments that 10-15 per year is certainly within the budget of anyone who flies.

From the point of view of the Android app, I'm not a professional programmer and worked on this for myself , for love and because I think the project is a great idea. I'm happy to keep developing this and provide it for free provided I have the time.

Chris

[Admin]

Another point that would be nice to know. If you design your own hardware (if this is planned), then what is the view of the beta units? Will the firmware be cross compatible with the RPi versions?

This is a good point. The intention is to maintain an open reference platform, so if you wish you can still knife and fork your own or even develop integrated shields (jeremy Curtis), i will also maintain backward compatibility where possible.
A good example of this is that I am currently incorporating a barometric pressure sensor which is controlled over the I2C bus. You may have noticed in the latest web interface the ability to input the QNH in order to compensate for the pressure altitude comparison, this means you can choose to continue with the current configuration, or add the pressure sensor as (will be) defined by the reference platform

Thx
Lee