Selling Rasberry Pi Projects w/ Retropie
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[Hello all! I've been doing my research and I just wanted to reach out to the community for some guidance I thank you in advance for checking out my post.
I've recently completed my Rasberry Pi/ Retro Pie project and being that the holidays are coming I was thinking maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea on the side to help create Rasberry Pie products for sale to others. I have done my research and I see it's recommended if selling Rasberry Pi hardware to supply a link to the site to download Retro Pie and have the purchaser download it.
My question for the community is I don't plan to make profit off of the software directly but more or so consulting for people that need to get going with this project and guiding them through it. If I were to charge a labor service to go out and help get this set up for them and help configure it with their computer and download the software would that be fair? I would only charge them based on hardware costs depending on what they would like to get accessories, storage, and controllers. However I wouldn't preload the Retro Pie but offer to come and help set it up and charge solely based off my time. In fact I wouldn't be opposed to donating after every download from the site in order to keep this software going and keep this great project moving forward.
Please let me know how the Pie community would feel and/or someone from Raspberry Pie please chime in this is your project and your hard work and I just want to here some thoughts.
Thank you..
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Sounds a lil shady if you ask me! If they need help setting up they should just focus on checkers. Everything pretty much straight forward.
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@space-cadet Is it also shady to pay someone to repair your washing machine or paint your apartment?
I'm not part of the project, but I see no problem in providing a paid service to setup Retropie, as it isn't different from any other IT service.
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personally i think that if the user can't set up retropie they have little hope in maintaining it going forward.
plus, wouldn't the cost of travel and time make the cost of on-site support unreasonably large?
i don't want to comment on the legal aspect, but i feel morally that charging for retropie, even indirectly, is bad. it also makes it into a defacto commercial product which (negatively) changes the tone of people coming to official channels for support.
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Even if it seems as a good idea and may comply with RetroPie's legal disclaimer, how would it make up for cost and time for consulting?
Would you provide support and consulting in a local area such as where you live in? or would it be in a larger area?
Its probably with good intention that you want to help other people, who dont know about Raspberry Pi and RetroPie.
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No, IMHO it's not legal and it's not right - you would be just profiting from RetroPie like the others that sell the system outright with RetroPie and the ROMs. Moreover, your actions will only be harmful to the project and your potential customers
- users will ask for support here and the first answer they'll get is that we don't support 3rd party images and they won't get any support. As @dankcushions said, RetroPie is not a commercial product and you'll scam your potential customers into thinking it is (they're paying money for it).
- since you'll also be distributing ROMs (are you ?) you'll associate RetroPie with ROM distribution - which I don't think falls into legal areas.
- your offer to 'recompensate' the project will also just make it look like the project is complicit to illegal ROM distribution and piracy services, almost like an endorsement. That's not how RetroPie works.
All in all - if you're making a profit from RetroPie, then you're using commercially and that's agains the TOS.
The legal page:
If you are selling hardware that supports RetroPie you should provide a link to our site for your customers rather than including a RetroPie image with your product.
So if you want to build and sell your hardware to your customers, making it sure it works with RetroPie, then fine.
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Yay, another legal discussion! :)
@mitu I still don't see how a paid installation and maintenance service for RetroPie would be illegal. RetroPie is a Linux distribution like many others for which fee-based service is legal and widespread. How does RetroPie differ from that?
Here's a thought experiment: Just exchange "RetroPie" with "Linux" in the concerns that you expressed. Are commercial services a problem for non-commercial Linux communities? Do donations to non-commercial Linux projects make them look illegal? (@miko87 didn't say anything about providing copyright-protected ROMs, so I would give him the benefit of the doubt in that matter until we may learn the contrary.)
On second thought, a consequently applied commercial support may even relieve the forum from a certain number of inquiries.
As for RetroPie's legal page, it doesn't have any prohibiting clauses against professional services. Besides, I highly doubt that such a clause would be legal itself, just like hardware manufacturers can't prohibit third-party services for their products; they may only deny their own support afterwards (AFAIK).
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@Clyde said in Selling Rasberry Pi Projects w/ Retropie:
@mitu I still don't see how a paid installation and maintenance service for RetroPie would be illegal. RetroPie is a Linux distribution like many others for which fee-based service is legal and widespread. How does RetroPie differ from that?
It differs through the license which prohibits commercial use of the distributed image, which is inherited from the emulators distributed by it.
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i think most larger linux distros have a clause in the T&Cs which state they will not distribute/include non-commercial software for this reason - because they want to implicitly permit the usage of their distro in a commercial setting. eg https://www.ubuntu.com/licensing
i think you can debate a bit as to whether the act of bundling the hardware needed for NC-licensed software X, and then selling it along with a consultancy in which you install software X, is violating the license or not, but i look at it as a 'spirit of the law' thing. the consumer here wants software X, so that is effectively what they're buying, and whether you pre-load it or charge for the install seems a fairly arbitrary difference to me.
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Thank you guys I appreciate the feedback!
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