FAQ: FrogNet Pricing and Licensing

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 don't.  The system was designed for use in situations without any Internet access, so there's no possible way to enforce any license restrictions.

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.