[Gambas-user] Gambas Software Farm in revision #6676

[Kevin Fishburne]

On 11/25/2014 07:07 PM, T Lee Davidson wrote:
> On 11/25/2014 05:25 PM, Benoît Minisini wrote:
>>> Now, for those who may wish to use the Farm as a
>>> (pseudo-)marketplace. I wonder if adding the ability to
>>> password-protect an application/component listing, like "published"
>>> and "private", would be worth considering. It would definitely not be
>>> ideal, but might be workable.
>>>
>> Please elaborate.
> I don't know if I can elaborate much as it was just a conceptual idea.
> Wordpress allows pages/posts to be published as public or private. It is
> a similar concept but applied instead to application/component listings
> on the Farm.
>
> Conceptually, publishers could choose to password-protect their listing.
> It may be visible, with its description, in whatever directory or
> listing there is, or found through a search. But, to view the source
> code or to download/install the program would require a password that
> the user would need to get from the publisher.
>
> One of the reasons it is not ideal is that passwords can be easily
> shared. A publisher might, therefore, wish to periodically change the
> password for their listing.
>
> Again, not ideal, but maybe workable. For a true marketplace, specially
> coded (redirect) download links would likely be generated on-the-fly
> after payment processing.
>

Since the farm (as it stands currently) is only for free software (as in 
GPL), users will be free to circumvent payment by downloading the 
application from another source, such as someone who paid and then began 
hosting the source code and/or binaries themselves. This is perfectly 
legal, as the GPL states users may modify or distribute the application 
as they see fit as long as they provide access to the source code. So 
payment will effectively be for convenience, application support or 
kindness rather than the only way they can access the application.

I'm thinking that creating a payment system for GAMBAS would be an 
insane amount of work and probably isn't a good idea. A much easier way 
would be to support existing payment solutions such as PayPal. Here's 
some information on their "digital goods" payment solutions:

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/digital-goods

https://cms.paypal.com/cms_content/US/en_US/files/merchant/paypal_digital_goods-express_checkout_getting_started.pdf

"Express Checkout" supports NVP and SOAP while "Adaptive Payments" (not 
sure what the difference is) support those and JSON. Adaptive Payments 
also supports multi-party payments, meaning Benoît can have his 10%. =)

When submitting an application to the farm it would need to give you the 
option to enter a PayPal merchant ID and a sale price. When someone 
chooses to download that project, the farm would use PayPal's mechanism 
in conjunction with that information. When the purchase is successful, 
I'm guessing PayPal would communicate back the payment status, after 
which the Farm would download/install the application. I think all of 
this is web-based, perhaps someone else has more experience with this?

-- 
Kevin Fishburne
Eight Virtues
www: http://sales.eightvirtues.com
e-mail: sales at ...1887...
phone: (770) 853-6271