ULPs and Scripts

Question

Hi,

I am using Eagle professionally and have been developing useful ULPs and Scripts that make work flow much faster. I am thinking of selling my add-ons to other businesses to add to my profits. Is there a licensing issue with doing this? If so, would CadSoft be willing to buy my packaged add-ons?

Thanks,

Dan

Netlist PCB, LLC

autodeskguest · Answer

Daniel Hobson wrote on Sun, 12 April 2015 00:26 I am using Eagle professionally and have been developing useful ULPs and Scripts that make work flow much faster. I am thinking of selling my add-ons to other businesses to add to my profits. While I can believe your scripts and ULPs are valuable to you, most likely you are grossly overestimating their value to others. In particular, their commercial value is basically zero. Lots of people have created useful scripts and ULPs that make their workflow faster. Occasionally they might be useful to others, but even that is very different from others perceiving them as useful enough to actually pay for. I have created various ULPs and scripts too, and couldn't get along without them myself. Even though I can't imagine how others get along without my wonderful ULPs, somehow most of them do. For example, I created a whole automatic BOM generation system as soon as you could have arbitrary attributes in version 5, and long before CadSoft brought forth their own ULPs and scripts for the same purpose (unfortunately CadSoft then did their own thing, even though my scripts and ULPs were freely available and documented, so now my stuff looks non-standard to anyone new, but that's a different story). I also have ULPs for making assembly drawings, a component index list with both board and schematic locations, aligning text in different ways, etc. Anyway, the point is that I tried to look at the value of my ULPs and scripts realistically, and decided that getting any money for them simply wasn't going to work or be a lot more trouble than it was worth. Instead I decided the best way to get value out of them, other than using them myself of course, was to give them away for free. Put another way, trying to get money looked like a losing business proposition, but getting some positive reputation instead was possible and much less work to do. I could have upload the ULPs and scripts to the Eagle site, but I already had other free downloadable software on my site, so I instead added the Eagle Tools as a separate release within my existing mechanism. Once or twice a year I run the release script, which captures the latest code and packages it up into a self-extracting EXE, and upload it to my web site. Even if no reputation is ever gained, the cost is low enough that it doesn't matter. So this is all to say, forget about selling your stuff. It all has to be in source code form anyway, so there is no way to keep it on a leash if you tried. Instead, give it away and become a hero among your peers if it's really as good as you say. At least that won't result in negative value as selling will. If you are really trying get reputation points for your code, make sure to put your name prominantly at the top. I didn't do that with any of my stuff, and some of it seems to have taken on a life of its own. For example, I originated the "shorts" library that seems to be floating around in various guises now. If I really cared about that, I would have put my name on it prominently. You do seem to care and think your stuff is valuable, so make sure your name is on it. On a separate topic, it would be interesting to see what your software does. At least provide a brief description of your ULPs, scripts, and programs here. You might get some interesting feedback on what others have already done but not bothered to make a big deal of. Or, maybe you'll even find I'm wrong and everyone does want a copy. -- Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca. Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.