I've been approached by someone who wants to license the backend of my software, writing a novel client which uses it and presumably does other things, as well. The backend is currently distributed free, as it's only useful to folks who own the software itself - a typical remote control client/server type relationship.
This other developer wants to purchase my protocol spec and a block of support hours (at my consulting rate) as he goes about implementing the protocol in his own client. I think I should charge a per-copy license fee, since he is effectively licensing what I've written. Has anyone done something similar and could comment on how it worked out? Any must-do's or must-don'ts? Is there a standard for what to charge for such licensing? My gut is a percentage of unit sales - like 3% - but I don't know if that's unreasonable or even, if it is unreasonable, in which direction it's unreasonable: too high or too low? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Cheers, Evan [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
