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surveyjs / survey-creator

Scalable open-source survey software to generate dynamic JSON-driven forms within your JavaScript application. The form builder features a drag-and-drop UI, CSS Theme Editor, and GUI for conditional logic and form branching.
https://surveyjs.io/open-source
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Idea: Use public/private API Key for Commercial Products #2003

Open aaronsheldon opened 3 years ago

aaronsheldon commented 3 years ago

SurveyJS is fantastic. I'm working with TechmateLabs.ca to build a Bubble plugin that integrates the SurveyJS suite. For the commercial side i.e. creator and analytics, it would be great if you could generate signed API keys. Bubble offers the ability to pass API keys to plugins so that the plugin can validate the key on behalf of the developer who installed the plugin. We could then use the API key to ensure individual Bubble developers have ALSO purchased a licence with your business.

What this would entail:

  1. Putting a public key into your commercial products.
  2. Wrap the public key in a validate key method, that accepts a signed API key.
  3. Using your private key generate some for of signed API key, something like a JWT
  4. Developers would then call the validate key method to gain access to the commercial code.

In the end this would give you the ability to tap into the Bubble developer market as an additional revenue stream. As well if you want to take a look at the plugin we have built let me know. We would be excited to see it added to your list of integrations.

andrewtelnov commented 3 years ago

@aaronsheldon Could you please tell us more about your business case? Our license is royalty free if you are creating applications for end-users. If you are developing product for another software developers then in fact, you start to compete with us using our own libraries. Here is the quote from our “License Page” and you can find the similar text in our License Agreement:

Under the terms of the commercial license, you are not allowed to resell the library "as is", with code modifications, or as a package with other libraries, to software development companies/departments or individual software developers. In other words, you cannot use SurveyJS Creator code to create a competing product of SurveyJS commercial products / libraries. However, you may have as many non-software developer, end-users / clients that use SurveyJS Creator in your application(s), as you wish or can.

You can contact us at info@devsoftbaltic.com. We can try to find a solution.

Thank you, Andrew

aaronsheldon commented 2 years ago

These are exactly my concerns! We have developed a private Bubble plugin that wraps the commercial SurveyJS libraries. We currently use this plugin in house in our own projects. We would like to offer this plugin under the MIT licences for free on the Bubble Marketplace, for obvious promotional reasons to demonstrate our capabilities. Unfortunately under the current SurveyJS commercial implementation this would allow other Bubble developers to piggy back on our commercial licence. This is neither fair to us and our investment, nor to you and your commercial licencing.

The only way to be able to release our plugin would be if SurveyJS implemented Developer Key based API authentication so that our plugin could do pass through licence verification.

andrewtelnov commented 2 years ago

@aaronsheldon I suggest you to go offline and write me at info@devsoftbaltic.com Our license is royalty free unless you do not sell your product to other software developers. If we do not add this section into our EULA, it will allow any other company to repackage our software and start competing with us. It is not my first company that develops software libraries and I see this before. Again, we are all reasonable people here. If you want, we can discuss this topic and if there is a mutual benefit then we can find a solution.

Thank you, Andrew