At Fawcett Innovations, we are funded by whatever sales we can make. We have not tried to sell this technology to any of the large corporations because we believe it should be something anybody can do.
That being said, we have spent many years and many, many thousands of dollars developing this code and would really like to get a little of that back. This is why we came up with this pricing model.
We don’t want to stand in the way of innovation, so we have set the price at something we think affordable. We hope that you will, too.
You will receive a license to establish and operate one (1) FrogNet, or one (1) network of FrogNets, provided that you own all the FrogNets within that network. This means that you can have a FrogNet at your home, one at your shop, and a third location if you desire. However, if you want to connect your FrogNet network with networks owned by someone else, both parties must have separate licenses. Similarly, if you have two FrogNet networks that never join, then you would need two licenses.
This networking approach is revolutionary. Our goal is to provide everyone—literally everyone—the ability to create a FrogNet wherever they choose and to connect FrogNets together in various network topologies without requiring access to the upstream Internet.
We achieve this goal with our pre-configured systems. We only have a limited number of pre-configured systems available, so, as an alternative, we offer a source license along with instructions for installing the system on any equipment you may have available. For those skilled enough to install Linux on a computer and download the necessary file upon completing your purchase, we provide a simple, one-step process for installing all the required packages and the FrogNet system.
We believe that this makes a source license worth $250. This price point makes it more than a casual purchase for most people, but it’s reasonable enough to fit within a typical budget. Our aim is to put this technology in the hands of innovators and inventors, enabling them to develop previously unimaginable products. We want to empower individuals.
We are not interested in selling out to large corporations that would seek to monopolize our technology. Instead, we aim to sell enough source licenses to ensure a living wage for ourselves while also funding the development of pre-configured systems.
We have a small number of Raspberry Pi and Intel NUC computers that we were going to use for another project. We are making these available as computer-only FrogNet hosts. If you wish, you may also select a generic router and/or WiFi antenna, and we’ll put them all together for you. If you tell us the Domain you would like, we will complete the configuration and deliver a turnkey system.
You only need to register that you’ve purchased a license. This is done by running /usr/local/bin/registerFrogNet.bash and providing your email. We will verify that your email address has an authorized purchase and return an access token that will be stored on your machine. If that access token is not registered within two weeks of installation, the product will stop working.
Yes, we are.
First of all, we hate subscriptions as much as you do. Second, even if we wanted to, putting in any sort of subscription would negate the entire reason we built the thing in the first place — an offline network that requires the Internet, even if just for a license check, is not an offline network.
Sure, we expect to. We’ve been in this business long enough to know that pirates will have the software within days, if not hours, of its release. We’ve just decided it’s not worth the trouble to fight it.
We hope that there are enough honest people out there that we will be able to support ourselves anyway.
We go out of business — it’s that simple.
We have spent thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars designing, implementing, testing, and revising our algorithms. The journey has taken almost everything we have, but we made it work, and it’s a beautiful thing.
Because we took the time to implement a solution that’s portable and can work on low-end hardware, that solution is vulnerable, and that’s OK with us.
It may be naive of us, but we believe that most people are honest and will try to do the right thing, and that’s all we ask. We’ve made the conscious choice to follow a revenue model that lets us distribute the algorithms and the possibilities they represent to the greatest number of people, quickly, recognizing that the implementation will be copied and used in unauthorized products almost immediately.
FrogNets are an innovative technology that will transform how we connect and manage local networks, especially in smaller areas. We’ve created smart systems that address common issues with network setup, like directing data and managing address assignments, making everything work smoothly and simply.
However, we recognize that our approach isn’t the only way to do this. We invite other ideas and implementations and encourage open conversations about our methods and solutions.
