Licenseware sat between the free disks of the public domain libraries and the boxed games in the shops. A PD library sold it like any other disk, by post from a catalogue, for a pound or two more than the usual copying charge, and passed the difference back to the author. Amiga Shopper put it in 1991 as a way to buy software that “is not freely copyable, but instead of having fancy packaging and oversized boxes, disks are distributed with the documentation as ‘read.me’ files”. For a programmer without a publisher it was a way to be paid for every copy sold; for a buyer it was a full program for the price of a cheap magazine.
Fast facts
- Also spelled: licenceware; the magazines used both.
- First seen: on the Atari ST, where Budgie UK of Rayleigh, Essex, was selling “licenceware” games by August 1989.
- Grew on: the Amiga, with the AMOS licenseware range by 1991 and labels such as F1 Licenceware and 5D Licenceware in the mid-1990s.
- Price: “typically £3-5 per disk” in 1991; around £3.50 for an AMOS licenseware disk.
- Author’s share: the money above the PD price, or “a percentage of each copy sold”.
- Copying: not allowed. “It’s illegal to distribute licenseware, yes even to your friends.”
How it worked
The author licensed a program to one or more PD libraries instead of releasing it free. The library sold it at a set price, a little above its ordinary disks, and paid the author a royalty on each copy. Pat Winstanley explained the arithmetic in Amiga Shopper in September 1991: licenseware was “priced at a pound or two more than those offered as shareware or PD - typically £3-5 per disk - the extra money is passed back to the author by the PD library operating the distribution. In this way the author often receives as large a slice per disk sold as from full commercial distribution, but due to the low end price is likely to sell far more copies.”
The deal only worked if buyers did not pass the disks round, and the magazines said so plainly. Winstanley warned that “if you pass or receive copies you are stealing from the author”. By 1994 Amiga Shopper‘s beginners’ pages were defining it in the same terms: licenseware was “more like commercial software in that you have to pay in advance for the program, but the author gets some of this money”, or, from another angle, “a form of shareware which is licensed to one (or more) PD libraries”, bought and paid for up front.
Where it came from
The earliest licenceware in the magazines is on the Atari ST. ST Format’s first issue, in August 1989, reviewed Ace Invaders, “written by Budgie UK and … one of their range of ‘licenceware’ games, not strictly PD but as near as damn-it. The distributor pays a small royalty to encourage the authors, but the program is still widely copied.” Budgie UK’s games were already in a PD library’s packs that April. The ST ranges lasted: in 1993 the Floppyshop library was selling “Budgie & Shoestring Licenceware disks” at £2.95 and £3.95.
That first description is looser than the later ones. In 1989 the royalty was “small” and copying was shrugged off; by 1991 the Amiga libraries were insisting that licenseware was “not freely copyable”.
AMOS and the Amiga
On the Amiga, licenseware grew with AMOS, the BASIC that let hobbyists write games without assembly language. By May 1991 a PD library was advertising itself as an official distributor of “The Amos Licenseware Collection”. Amiga Shopper reported that September that “AMOS licenseware is distributed by a wide range of PD libraries, and all follow the same numbering and pricing system”, every disk at around £3.50. Its example was Touchstones, a tile-matching logic game, available “from the AMOS library as LPD18”. That library was in Wigan, run by Sandra Sharkey; when she handed it on in 1992, Amiga Shopper noted that she “continues to handle her own very successful licenseware scheme”, the Deja Vu label, whose disks that autumn included Gary Stimson’s word processor Power Text, “written in compiled AMOS”. AMOS’s own licence recognised the category: its manual said that a program released “into the public domain or as shareware or licenseware” had to credit AMOS, while one sold “commercially” came under other terms.
By the mid-1990s the biggest name was F1 Licenceware. Amiga Shopper’s review tables in 1995 and 1996 list its titles beside the PD disks: a Beginners Guide To WB 3 at £3.99, an AMOS disk magazine, AMOSzine, at £5.99, a Guide To Blitz at £4.99, and Blackboard 4 at £8.99. Another label, 5D Licenceware, had a disk at £2.95. At the end of 1996 F1 gathered its range onto a £9.99 CD, advertised with the reminder that “the programs are commercial, with copyright owned by F1 Licenceware. All programmers receive a royalty for every CD sold”.
Who got what
The two magazines that explained licenseware most carefully did not agree on how well it paid. In 1991 Winstanley thought an author “often receives as large a slice per disk sold as from full commercial distribution”. John Kennedy’s guide in Amiga Format in October 1995 was more cautious: “The library pays for advertisements, postage, distribution and packing (which normally consists of a Jiffy bag) and the author gets a small cut of the net profit. You’ll probably never get rich this way but you will see some return”. Either way, he wrote, “we have left the PD world and entered into the realm of low-cost commercial distribution”.
Quality
Amiga Shopper’s 1994 guide claimed licenseware was “generally of better quality than PD, but costs less than shareware”. The magazine’s own reviewers marked it like any other disk: in its 1996 tables F1 Licenceware titles scored anywhere from 75% for Tell The Time to 96% for J-Windows, an AMOS extension.
Sources
- ST Format issue 1, August 1989, public domain pages: Budgie UK’s Ace Invaders and “licenceware”, the “small royalty”, Budgie UK’s address.
- Atari ST User vol. 4 no. 2, April 1989: PD library advertisement listing Budgie UK games.
- Atari ST User issue 86, April 1993: Floppyshop’s Budgie and Shoestring licenceware ranges and prices.
- Amiga Computing issue 36, May 1991: advertisement for “The Amos Licenseware Collection”.
- Amiga Shopper issue 5, September 1991, pp. 107–108, Pat Winstanley’s public domain education column: the definition, prices and the author’s share, AMOS licenseware at £3.50, Touchstones. P. 83, AMOS 3D review: the AMOS licence terms.
- Amiga Shopper issue 18, October 1992: Sandra Sharkey’s licenseware scheme, the AMOS PD Library “(also Deja Vu)” in Wigan, and Deja Vu Licenseware’s Power Text.
- John Kennedy, feature on PD software, Amiga Format issue 76, October 1995: licenseware, registered libraries, the author’s “small cut of the net profit”.
- Amiga Shopper issue 33, January 1994; issue 40, August 1994; issue 44, December 1994, p. 92: beginners’ definitions of licenseware.
- Amiga Shopper issues 56 (December 1995), 60 (March 1996), 61 (April 1996), 62 (May 1996), 64 (July 1996) and 65 (August 1996): F1 Licenceware and 5D Licenceware titles and prices.
- Amiga Computing issue 106, December 1996: advertisement for the F1 Licenceware CD.