Making a new CMS, not sure how to license it

[eluser]SomeFunkyDude[/eluser]
Hi,

I started working on a CMS that would be easy to use for both users and web designers. The thing is, I'm torn on how to license it, I don't know what a going rate should be. Should I charge per domain or installation, is there a financial benefit to open sourcing it.

So far I got the main things out of the way, which are to add/edit/delete images or text.

http://www.webkitstudio.com/sierra_cms/admin

the frontend would be

http://www.webkitstudio.com/sierra_cms (all i have it doing at the moment is display the image and title of all the images in the category "animals")

A side feature that flash designers will like, is it takes the images in a category and outputs an xml file that works with SlideShowPro. text/blogs to xml also which could work with news feeds.

http://www.webkitstudio.com/sierra_cms/xml/ssp is where the images xml file goes.

[eluser]Jondolar[/eluser]
It sounds like you are interested in generating revenue and not giving away your sofware. You can go open source and still charge for it. You can license it but still offer it for free and charge for services, installation and customization. If your software is open source there is a very big chance that it will be ripped off, repackaged and resold (assuming it is a worthy product).

If you encode your source code with Zend or IonCube, you will be able to protect it but not as many people will use it. Some vendors seem to be successful selling unencoded software. I used to sell unencoded software but about every 6 months someone would email me with a website that had completely ripped off my program, just replacing the name and the logo. Trying to get the website shut down was very time-consuming and not always successful.

Good luck with your project.

[eluser]slhawkins[/eluser]
Jondolar pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as open source goes. If you provide the code, anyone can take it and fork their own version. That being said...

The questions you ask are ones which you should look up yourself. You won't be very sucessful in business if you have to get those kind of answers from someone else. Research, look up how other companies charge for similar products, look at the prices vs. the features. Maybe consider giving the product out for free (Being as someone will probably knock it off eventually anyways....) And offer support? EXT JS is offered in such a way. There's the free version... then there's the subscriber version which gets updates every month and has access to the SVN. Running a business is going to mean researching your audience and understanding their needs. A product is only worth what someone is willing to pay.

[eluser]SomeFunkyDude[/eluser]
thanks for the insight, i might just open source it then sell the support services.