DesktopX 3.0 Pro is Great but...

You can sell your gadgets, widgets, themes, etc.

The ONLY Limitation is that you may not build a desktop and then export it as a GADGET (.EXE).

So for instance, we made "Natural Desktop" (www.naturaldesktop.com). We don't want someone to buy DesktopX Pro for $70 and start cranking out kiosks, desktops, etc. with it.  We make a product for that called DesktopX ENTERPRISE ($500).

Gadgets should be programs, not desktops.

But other than that one limitationk, you can go nuts.

We are even setting up a site www.desktopgadgets.com to fasciliate people selling their stuff.

Yippe!
I can go nuts. I like going nuts! In a nutty type of way.

Wow, a complete developer's kit for only $70, are the Konfabulator folks listening? Lasted I checked they were saying EXE support was in question due to the fact that it could render Konfabulator as a program less needed. (Not useless since it would still be used like DesktopX Client is being used.)

One question Frogboy, what happen to Windows 98/Windows Me support. I was reading the documentation for DesktopX 2.0 Pro that originally costed $500 and it stated that you could create Gadgets (at the time simple stand-alone EXE Widgets) and they could run on Windows 98/Me/2000/XP. I am referring to the following site. Link

Which states...
"DesktopX Professional is a revolutionary new development environment that enables software developers to literally draw up their applications on their desktop, select them, and then export them as a stand alone EXE. No support DLLs. No run-times. Just a single EXE that will run on Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP."

I sent an email to sales@stardock.com about more of the same question, but I'll ask it here as well since it's on the same topic.

What defines a desktop? Does it means replacing taskbar, systray and icons? What about a sidebar gadget, is that a "desktop"?

Can we make freeware desktops with Pro?

I liked exporting the widgets to "gadgets" with the beta I had. I'm definitely gonna have to save my money and get the pro version.

Hmm, how to optain DX Pro ? Only thing I have is a serial (mail to support) but no download link. (?)

I got the download link right below the Serial number.

Me too. My download link looked like this:


Products Ordered:
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=

Product Name : DesktopX Pro 3.0
User Name : My Name
Email : my Email
Serial Number : My Serial Number
Download : http://somewhereatestardock/DX3ProInstallerFileNameGoesHere.exe
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=

Please print a hard copy of this information and store it in a safe place
as you may need it for future installations and or upgrades.

I removed all actual names and links to prevent unregistered users from trying to hack Stardock services to obtain the installer.

Can we make freeware desktops with Pro?

No, you can't distribute any desktops with pro.

A gadget is single element.  If you are making something that replaces the functionality of the desktop, then it is not permitted.

examples would be: a Kiosk, a limited desktop, a theme like: https://www.wincustomize.com/Preview.aspx?Source=Chadamus/dx/3206.jpg or https://www.wincustomize.com/Preview.aspx?Source=gef/dx/3211.jpg , etc.

 

Ok, thanks for clearing that up.
You may NOT create desktop themes for resale
with DesktopX Professional. It was this line that made me unsure, because it said resale and not distribution. Just wanted to know how to interpret it.

Thanks all for the replies. This is so cool! I actually have a forum people are actively reading an posting to!

Heh, you'll find that WinCustomize has very active forums.

Karmagirl, I thk these screenshots are pretty obvious that they are "themes", but I find "single object" hard to define also. Brad mentionned the Natural Desktop. Isn't that mainly a single object? I mean it's a weather widget but with intense programming that changes your wallpaper according to different conditions. BUt it's still just a single object isn't it? If I made (not that I would or could, I'm talking hypothetically) a calendar object that changes the wallpaper every day, would that be considered a single object?

From what I understand after speaking with Adam Nimeh and Kris kimmelli (sp) at Stardock, the $70 license allows you to create up to 5 widgets, gadgets, or whatever you want to call them for distribution for up to 100,000 users under commercial purposes. Meaning - whether you sell them, or give them away, or whatever, you can do so for 5 - to 100k people - if you were to distribute 8 widgets, then you would need to buy another $70 license. If you purchase the Enterprise Edition for $500 you can distribute an unlimited number of themes, widgets, etc,

I recently wrote Arlo Rose from the konfabulator and Arlo told me that he is not interested in even speaking about licensing konfabulator for commercial purposes right now because he has some major deal underway. I think the "major deal" is Apple Computer, Inc. I believe that he is currently negotiating with Apple's legal team over licensing fees for the bundling of the konfabulator with Apple's new OS releases. But, that's just my opinion. Think about it - the only reason that he wouldn't want to accept commercial licenses right now would be if these commercial licenses would be a hindrance for his negotiations with Apple, Apple would view any commercial licenses as a watering down effect to their new cool tools.

I have also communicated with Andrew over at kapsules. The kapsule technology is currently available for commercial purposes free of charge, but that is going to change within the next ninety days. The cost for a commercial unlimited license to distribute widgets using kapsules will be very realistic at around the $500 range - same as DesktopX Pro. I believe that kapsules allows scripting in a number of different languages, not only vb script and java script, thus it has more capabilities - per se. But, from what I understand, it is possible for Desktop X Pro to work with C++ code, provided that a C++ plug-in is written.

I could use some assistance with a project that I am working on, should anybody have the time to commit to it. We've been able to assemble some of the brightest minds throughout the world to work on the DayBreak project, and I'd love to speak to anybody else who could join the team, and add value to what we are working on. I currently have a proposal to Brad Wardell with StarDock regarding getting StarDock's assistance with some of the critical pieces of the puzzle developed for DayBreak. On the interface side of the DayBreak project, we have Matt Crockett, from Hastings, United Kingdom, leading the way. I think that tiggz is the best interface designer in the world - if there were an Olympics in skinning, I would think that he would walk away with numerous gold medals for design, useability, functionality, wow factors, and attention to detail. I am hoping that I can find the equivelent for the programming and development efforts toward meeting DayBreak's project goals.

My name is Doug Monahan, I am 48 years old and I live in Austin, Texas, USA.
In 1992, I founded Sunset Direct, www.sunsetdirect.com, on credit cards and eighty thousand in available credit. Over the past ten years, Sunset Direct has grossed over 150 Million dollars, and sold over a billion dollars worth of product. I sold Sunset Direct this past August in entirety, to start DayBreak Direct, Inc.

There is a link at www.daybreakdirect.com/marcom, where you can find about thirty flash presentations, and a 45 page pdf file that describes what we are going to be selling. We are in the late stages of the product marcom development, all of our web site materials are "up behind the scenes" but not up to the general public.

There are a number of developers assisting this project, all working on the same proposal that I mentioned on the skype forum. We are funding five thousand dollars to each for five thousand dollars worth of value coding, - hopefully delivered over a thirty day time period. Meaning, the way that we are "signing up" those who work with us is this - we identify only the best and the brightest, I get in touch with them to explain that a) yes this is real, we have a legitimate product, c) we have a real need, and d) exactly what we are doing. This gives you the chance to check us out, google myself, read the different numerous news articles about myself at Sunset Direct, and, then check out our ftp site at www.daybreakdirect.com, user name is daybreak and password is ftpftp.

If you are interested in working with us, let us know how much time you can devote to this, for the five thousand dollars, we are expecting a full time effort, if you can only work part time, we can speak about a lower initial funding. For the next funding, you need to demonstrate to Myrna Garcia, VP of Finance and Wyatt Wacicek, Vice President DayBreak, all that you have done for the initial five thousand dollars, they will either say yay, approved, or no, ney, we need some more work, go back to the drawing board, and come back in several weeks to revisit more funding.

This type of system enables us to draw upon the very best of talent, because we are taking all of the risk up front. It also gives everybody a chance to get to know each other, because just because we have a lot of monies to do this project, doesn't mean everybody will like us, or want to work with us, after a month, it gives us to check out your skillset, and determine the same thing; ie, you may be the very best coder in the world, but impossible to get a long with, at least for us, and then we would both go our own way.

This method has worked quite well so far. We have twelve individuals working around the world that are developing code for different aspects of this project. We would need to figure out exactly how your skill set could integrate into the work that others are currently doing.

The area of expertise that I was specifically writing you about, was the code to assist us with the viewing window, the harvesting window, and the possibility of adding the skype functionality into daybreak's little black book product. A gentleman named John Leo, from Bangladore, India, is handling the initial coding of the viewing window. I am looking for the right kind of talent that can assist him with his effort.


Antony Clarkson, www.sitescraper.co.uk - email is antony at sitescraper dot com dot uk from the United Kingdom, is leading our spidering efforts.If you have any spidering skills, you might be able to assist him work on his display window - the web harvester, that I mentioned above. If you are interested in the spidering function because of previous work done, please let me know about what you did, and how you would be able to assist this process. Antony's told me that for the most part he has all covered, but, who knows, maybe you have some cool way of attacking the issue that we've never thought about.

Wyatt Wacicek, from DayBreak's Austin, Texas office. Is developing some of the basis C++ administrative tool windows needed to determine how our spiders are doing, the data they have collected, how many we have running at any one time, ways that we can fire up many spiders all at once, over many different machines through the network. (I plan on using Sunset Direct's hundreds of computers on nights and weekends for spidering efforts)

Matt Crockett, or tiggz, from Hastings, United Kingdom, is the best skinner in the world, in my opinion.
He is developing the interface and the skins. I have high hopes for a multitude of skins developed for our technology - following on tiggz design platform.

John from West Virgina, is a 16 year old sophomore from West Virginia. He is receiving five hundred dollars a month and is responsible for designing a number of the widgets and other artwork needed for our web site, and flash presentations.

Noah, from Atlanta, is 16 year old sophomore as well. He is also receiving five hundred dollars a month. Noah is responsible for designing widgets in either the konfabulator platform (for now), and then switching that code to DayBreak's own platform when it is completed in about two weeks.

Adrian from Houston, is writing tools in Cold Fusion to enable the Desktop X Pro technology to access our sql databases. I am not a programmer, thus I really can't explain exactly what Adrian is doing, but I know there is an issue about how to get the sql data displayed in a widget. Supposedly, the way to do it is to develop something in Cold Fusion that talks to the sql databases, and then have Cold Fusion speak to another set of rules I think developed in visual basic scripts??

And we have another half a dozen or so individuals based in Austin, Texas that are taking care of tasks such as custom dictionary creation, cleaning data, managing accounts, and the sales process.

The biggest need we have right now is getting a. the viewer b. the harvester c. the skype element

Please check out all of the information that I included above. Let me know if you are interested, tell us in detail about yourself, and why you think that you would be perfect for this type of environment, and work. Let us know a bit about yourself personally, and if it all makes sense, for both parties, we will wire you the monies immediately, and get started immediately. We would like to be able to release our product within a sixty to ninety day time period, hence the staffing up on talent for coding.

In summary - DayBreak will be introducing a contact management software application that provides the basic contact management needs - not something that is even in the same league as salesforce.com, act, goldmine, filemaker, or other such contact management tools - BUT, we will be providing the CONTACTS which is something that none of the other software developers provide. Our list of contacts can be imported directly into ACT, GoldMine, Siebel, salesforce.com, etc. Rather than doing all in .html - we want to take advantage of DEsktop X Pro's functionality - but push the limit. I would guess that we need a C++ plug in. I would guess that we need some powerful sql tables designed and implemented. I believe we have some needs on the Cold Fusion side, or another way developed to take sql data tables and display them in a widget. And, for grins, we want throw in some various widgets - just cause.

Let me know if you are interested. No this isn't a joke. Yes, we have the monies to pay you. My skype is dougmonahan2, my email is doug@daybreakdirect.com. My phone number is 512-342-8220 x 30. icq is 236-880-147. Let me know how you can help, and join the DayBreak Team!

From what I understand after speaking with Adam Nimeh and Kris kimmelli (sp) at Stardock, the $70 license allows you to create up to 5 widgets, gadgets, or whatever you want to call them for distribution for up to 100,000 users under commercial purposes. Meaning - whether you sell them, or give them away, or whatever, you can do so for 5 - to 100k people - if you were to distribute 8 widgets, then you would need to buy another $70 license. If you purchase the Enterprise Edition for $500 you can distribute an unlimited number of themes, widgets, etc,

  

Actually that's the DesktopX 2 Pro license.

The DesktopX 3 Pro license is much more forgiving and can be found on the DesktopX 3 Pro purchase page:

https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/propurchase.asp

In summary - there is no limitation on the # of gadgets you can make nor how many people can use them.  The only restriction is that you may not build a "Desktop" and then export that as a gadget. A desktop being a set of objects that are not connected together as a single unit in some way (for instance, an aquairum with fish is a desktop, the fish aren't related to one another, they're independent objects). 

 

Frogboy: Actually, in the license agreement in DX3Pro it says it is limited to only five applications and for 100 000 customer/users. I didn't see that on the purchase page of DX3Pro and therefor desided not to install it until I had gotten some reply from sales@stardock.com.



Is it the license agreement in the installer that is out of date?

The license agreement on the page is the correct one.

Ok. But if I click agree in the installation file I got, doesn't that bind me to the license agreement in the setup file? I'm a bit wary about agreeing to any sort of agreements, hence all these questions.

Maybe Stardock can release a mini "patch"/"update" to update the installer to include the licensing changes. I know how it can be sometimes. You are so excited about releasing a new version that you forget to update the legal stuff. And we all know that is the best and most favorite part right?

That would be nice. I really do not feel like clicking the agree button. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Stardock would cause me problems if I did, but there I some things I prefer to get right. And license agreements, contracts and such are matter I want to get right.