This reminds me that some years ago a British user tried to market some
Stata programs. I can't remember who or what, but my distinct impression
was that they weren't very successful, i.e. I heard about this once and
never again. One among many issues here is that once Stata code (meaning
do or ado files) has been sold the code is evidently highly visible
and/or copyable. Mata changes that picture a bit.
Nick
[email protected]
Maarten buis
--- David Airey <[email protected]> wrote:
> Maybe I understand. As far as I know, nothing is stopping you from
> building an application that uses Stata, as long as you and your
> clients have the right licenses, right? So, theoretically, you could
> build a nice front end to some process, and charge for it. Right? In
> fact I think there is some precedent to this for a panel data tool
> (PanelWhiz??).
PanelWhiz can do that relatively easily because the "price" is a
donation to UNICEF for which people can have a sympathie. If you want
to do this commercially there are some practical problems.
If your program is based on published procedures than everybody can
just make a free program that does the same thing (or more). If it is
not based on published procedures no one is going to trust/buy it.
Users makeing a free version is particularly a danger when you are
thinking of a relatively small command and someone thinks that you are
charging too much, or taking too long to fix a bug, or not implement a
feature request. So you'd have to do a lot of work for relatively
little gain.
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