These are some the files that you can obtain from KAGI by using various "finger" commands, combined together. These files were downloaded on June 5, 1995. I modified them slightly to reflect the current state of Windows REGISTER application, and removed some info regarding Mac and Newton software - Greg ---------------- finger shareware@kagi.com ------------------- Kagi Shareware Frequently Asked Questions Kagi Shareware 1442-A Walnut Street #392 Berkeley, CA 94709-1405 USA shareware@kagi.com fax +1 510 652 6589 Howdy, The Kagi Shareware FAQs are arranged as a bunch of finger files. Use a Finger utility to receive them. This file you just received is the finger file for "shareware" on the machine "kagi.com" . The questions answered are listed below and they are split across several separate finger files since they are all too large to fit into one massive finger file. If these do not answer all your questions, feel free to contact us at and we'll add your question into this FAQ (and reply back to you directly). Kee Nethery kee@kagi.com finger "shareware1" on machine "kagi.com" for: - What is Kagi Shareware? - How does it work? - How much do you charge? finger "shareware2" on machine "kagi.com" for: - What services do you provide? - I want to pay all my shareware fees once a year, can you help? - How do people pay you? - How do I sign up? finger "shareware3" on machine "kagi.com" for: - Tell me about Register for the Macintosh. finger "shareware4" on machine "kagi.com" for: - Tell me about Register for the Newton. - How do I use Newton Register without Newton mail or fax capabilities? - Do I have to include the Register program with my shareware? - How often do you notify the shareware author of the payments? finger "shareware5" on machine "kagi.com" for: - What is your schedule for mailing cheques to the author? - What about the accounting for shareware with multiple authors? - What about taxes? - Will my shareware income increase with your service? - Is this service available to Canadians, etc?? - I have my own registration system ... - What do you do with comments accompanying a payment? - Can you ship product for me? - Can I just forward credit card data to you for processing? finger "shareware6" on machine "kagi.com" for: - Can you accept credit card payments for my commercial software? - How much space does Register for the Macintosh occupy? - What information is collected by Register for the Mac? - How does Register for the Macintosh handle electronic payments? - What is First Virtual and how does it work? - How come you don't use PGP to encrypt the credit card info? - Does Kagi Shareware have a PGP public key? finger "shareware7" on machine "kagi.com" for: - Will you be offering telephone/800 registration services? - Who uses your shareware services? - What about Unix, DOS and Windows shareware? finger "shareware8" on machine "kagi.com" for: - How would Kagi Shareware handle these scenarios? - How do I disable the "please register" dialog in Anarchie? - How do you pronounce Kagi and where did that name come from? ---------------- finger shareware1@kagi.com ------------------- What is Kagi Shareware? Kagi Shareware is a shareware registration service that is available to any shareware author and can accept a variety of payments from shareware users. Kagi Shareware handles all aspects of registering shareware; collection of payer information, processing of payments, replies to payers, detailed accounting to shareware authors, site license invoicing, etc. The idea is to make it easier for everyone involved with shareware; easier for users to pay shareware fees by providing a variety of payment methods, easier for shareware authors by easing the administrative burden. How does it work? The user acquires shareware through the normal channels. Included with the shareware is an intelligent forms registration application to be used when paying the shareware fee. By entering the appropriate data in the registration forms, the user selects the appropriate license(s) and the desired payment method. Payment methods currently accepts are: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, First Virtual, US checks, foreign checks in US dollars, and cash in a variety of currencies. The registration form checks for obvious errors and then formats the data for delivery to Kagi Shareware. Payments can be sent via email, postal mail, or fax. The registration information is printed with barcode for postal mail and fax transmissions. Kagi Shareware processes the registration information and if possible, sends the Payer an acceptance via email along with other information, or if desired by the payer, a receipt via postal mail. Shareware authors receive a detailed accounting of all the payer information. Payment to the shareware author occurs on a monthly basis after payments appear on the Kagi Shareware bank statement. How much do you charge? Kagi Shareware deducts 4.5% for the registration service when using the Macintosh or Windows version of Register, 5% when using the Newton version, and deducts the fees charged for the various forms of payments. The fees charged by other services for the various forms of payment vary according to each type of payment: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, First Virtual, US checks, foreign checks in US dollars, and cash in a variety of currencies. Basically processing costs incurred by Kagi Shareware are passed through directly to the author. Because some rates vary based upon the total value of all transactions, the rates listed below are only very well educated estimates. Visa/MC rate is around 2.5% plus around US$ 0.47 per transaction. American Express rate is around 4.0% plus US$ 0.47 per transaction. The rate varies. First Virtual rate is 2% plus $0.29 per transaction. US checks at present have no processing fee but that might change in the future. For now, if a check bounces, the bounce fees would be deducted. Foreign checks in US dollars also for now have no processing fee but there is a delay of several weeks when deposited. Cash in US dollars has no processing cost as yet. Cash in currencies other than US dollars have the standard conversion rate fees and there is a delay of several weeks when deposited. They too seem to have no processing cost. There is no minimum monthly fee or anything like that. The minimum shareware registration rate right now is $0.00 per month (you don't have to have some minimum amount of payments being made on a monthly basis). Of course, we reserve the right to change the minimum shareware payment rate and the processing rates listed above are estimates. ---------------- finger shareware2@kagi.com ------------------- What services do you provide? The primary service is the collection and processing of shareware payments and all the tasks associated with that. This includes: - data entry of payer information - submitting payments to credit card companies - depositing checks - verifying other electronic payment methods - email reply of "payment received" to payers - postal receipt to payers when requested - handling the paperwork for invoicing of site licenses - archiving payment information for audit purposes - tabulating payer information for author's use - calculating statistics on payment rates, etc. - transfering shareware payments to authors Kagi Shareware provides a variety of services to shareware authors in addition to collecting and processing shareware fees. Permanent email addresses: We can assign you a permanent email forwarding address that we point to whatever you are using today as your email address . Include the forward address with your software so that when you move to a different email address, your mail continues to reach you. Permanent postal address: We assign you a permanent postal address that gets included in your software. Checks and cash go to your permanent postal address. Postal payments will continue to reach you regardless how many times you change your actual mailing address. We are open to suggestions as to what other services shareware authors would find of value that seem reasonable for us to provide. If there are other services that you desire, ask us. I want to pay all my shareware fees once a year, can you help? Quite a few people have asked us to provide a version of Register that has payment selections for all the software processed by Kagi Shareware. Send email to and on a yearly basis we'll send you a complete list of all shareware we process. How do people pay you? The trick to keeping costs low is automation. For Macintosh shareware we provide an application called Register so that payers can enter the payment information and have it format the information in a standardized manner. It gets customized for your products. Without some standardized format, the man-hours (and cost) for processing would be too much. For Newton shareware there is an application called Newton Register. Both registration applications munge the credit card information so that it is not sent cleartext over the internet. How do I sign up? To sign up, you need to have shareware that is available for downloading and you need to answer the following questions: 1. We need your complete name, postal mailing address, phone number, fax number, email addresses, etc so that we can fill out the agreement between us and then email it to you for your signature. 2. If you are in the USA, We'll need your social security number. (must be on the agreement) 3. Do you want an @kagi.com email forwarding address? There is no charge for this service. Basically it is just a mail forwarder that forwards incoming mail for you to your current email address, whatever that might be. It gives you a permanent email address that you can refer to in your software. We need the forward name that you prefer @kagi.com and the address you want that mail to go to . 4a. For Macintosh software we need to customize the Macintosh registration application for your shareware and your author information. What are the names of your shareware? What is the price for a single user license? What is the price for a site license (recommend a multiplier of 20 or more depending upon what seems reasonable to you)? What is the price for a world-wide license (typically another multiplier of 4 or 5 and it rarely is chosen but it makes people feel good about paying the site license because they could be paying a whole lot more :-)? 4b. For Newton software you need to contact Flash Sheriden and obtain information on what variables you need to put into your Newton application so that the Newton Register program can display your program's payment information (and process payments). Once you have Newton Register installed, send a payment query for each of your Newton Software applets via email and include a note stating that you want to be represented by Kagi Shareware. We need to see how Newton Register spells the complete name of your software applet. 4c. For Windows software contact us directly. The Windows Register program is about to be released. 5. We receive the signed agreement and set up all the infrastructure to process your payments. 6. You add the registration software to the package of stuff that accompanies your shareware and then post your shareware on appropriate servers. ---------------- finger shareware4@kagi.com ------------------- Do I have to include the Register program with my shareware? We insist on the Register application (or an equivalent) to keep the processing fees low. Basically for credit cards, it verifies the number via checksum before it is sent, it "encrypts" the data, it calculates the amount and it formats all the text in a standard way so that the paybot can automagically pull the info, charge the credit card, and enter the info into a database. We no longer have to manually touch electronic payment forms, the paybot does it all. How often do you notify the shareware author of the payments? Each payer (paper fax or email) gets an email reply. The author can receive a copy of each reply if they wish to (or if they need to for purposes of supplying a registration code to the payer). There are other ways in which the authors can receive a summary of payments that are in the queue to them. A full listing of payment data is emailed when the checks are postal mailed to the authors. The payment data is text tab delimited for easy importing into a database. Payments are made on a monthly basis after all the monthly account summaries are received from Kagi's various credit card and banking accounts. ---------------- finger shareware5@kagi.com ------------------- What is your schedule for mailing cheques to the author? Maximum payment schedule is monthly. We base payments on the deposits acknowledged by the bank. Foreign currency and US$checks from banks outside the USA take weeks to process. The idea is that if the money makes it into the account, we pay it to the author. We typically write US$ checks to the authors and mail them. It is possible to generate non-USA checks but the banks charge us $15 per non-USA check. We can hold payments for a minimum payment amount if an author desires since non-USA folks might have to pay a processing fee for depositing US$ checks. The only author payment method we will not use is to send cash. We need assurance that the moneys were received. Haven't looked into postal money orders in the currency of your choice but that is probably also an option. What about the accounting for shareware with multiple authors? The registration information details what portion of a payment is allocated to what software license. Payments are tabulated according to each shareware package. Multiple authors per shareware software is not a problem. In fact, the registration applications themselves have a royalty associated with them so that all payments today are split between three entities right now: the shareware author, Kagi shareware, the author of the registration software. What about taxes? We are a service and in the USA, service (labor) is not a taxable item. If we delivered software, we would be in the sales business and we would need to deduct tax on each sale. Of course, each shareware author must declare their income to the appropriate tax authorities and Kagi must file documents with the USA tax authorities stating how much income has been transferred to each shareware author. Taxes need to get paid, they just don't need to be deducted by Kagi Shareware. Will my shareware income increase with your service? So far, I'd say that half the payments are credit card and half are check/cash. Due to folk's comments that accompany their payments, my guess is that many of the credit card payers would not have paid via check or cash. Various of the current shareware authors have also commented that they feel that their payments have increased. The increase could be due to the growth of the Internet or it could be due to this payment service, there is no way to know for sure. Is this service available to Canadians, etc?? Yes, it's available for anyone. The setup seems to have the greatest appeal to folks outside the USA (payers and shareware authors) because of all the currency exchange issues. I have my own registration system ... Many authors want to retain their existing registration system. A good way to do this is to include a text file (or your own registration system) for paying you directly and configure the Register application to send payments to Kagi Shareware. Your address information might become stale over time but the Kagi Shareware addresses will remain valid for a very long time. Some authors outside the USA include a text file that lets folks in their own country pay them directly with checks in their country's currency, something Kagi Shareware is not currently able to do. So to answer the original question, include both and let the user choose. If you do not wish to include the Register program, you will need to modify your registration system to include all the features inherent in our registration program; bar code output in PICT to a teachtext document, currency conversions, munging of credit card data, data checking all the payment data, conforming to the output format, etc. It will take a while to implement this stuff but it's essential that it be there if your registration system is to format the data correctly. Assume at least a month of testing once you finish making all the changes to your registration program. What do you do with comments accompanying a payment? We attempt to pass comments from folks on to the author but it is way better for the authors to receive email directly from the payer. Can you ship product for me? No. Kagi cannot collect payments that are prerequisites for receiving a product. That would be sales and Kagi does not do sales, we do payment processing. If you are shipping a commercial product through some company that handles payments and shipping, and you like their service, please let us know. Can I just forward credit card data to you for processing? Credit card companies do not allow one company to charge sales on another company's credit card merchant account. It's called factoring and it's not allowed. The only way to have Kagi Shareware handle credit card payments is if the payer relays the credit card information for a shareware payment directly to Kagi Shareware. Shareware authors can let their users know that they can pay by credit card by contacting Kagi Shareware. ---------------- finger shareware6@kagi.com ------------------- Can you accept credit card payments for my commercial software? Probably not but ... Kagi Shareware handles a specific situation and if your comercial software fits into this situation, then it can be handled. The user has to have free access to the software so that they can try it out before purchasing it. When the user decides they like the software, and they decide to pay for it, they fill out the registration form and send it to Kagi Shareware. Within a week of making it to Kagi Shareware's in basket, it gets processed and the payer should receive an email reply stating that their payment has been received along with any information the author desires to tell the payer (FTP sites, mailing lists, other software, etc.). If the author wants to receive a copy of the email reply going to the payer, that is no problem. If the author wishes to provide the user with additional application information that provides the user with additional functionality, that is also no problem (as long as the payer has provided an email address). So, the main difference between this and a commercial demo that gets unlocked when paid for is the time delay between user payment and user receipt of some additional information that might provide additional desired functionality. If you can fit within these restrictions (primarily the time delay) we don't care whether you refer to your software as commercial or shareware, to us it is shareware, they try it before they pay for it. How much space does Register for the Windows occupy? Version 1.0 is about 110 kbytes and the help file is 12 kB that. It compresses down with PKZIP to 67 kB. If your program is using DLL version of MFC, you may obtain a DLL linked version of REGISTER, which is much smaller. What information is collected by Register for the Windows? Register provides fields for name, email, and postal address as well as selections of software registered, payment information and comments. Optional keywords for every registered program may be also collected from the user and passed to the author. The keywords may be used to generate unique passwords for the end users to enable certain features of the registered software, or remove the "please register" messages. The output it generates tells how to get in touch with the author. We collect all the information on the form, regardless whether it comes in via email or via paper. We provide authors with a database importable set of data about each registration and the specific payments made for each piece of software that was registered. Comments are manually entered and passed on to the author via email, everyone likes compliments. How does Register handle electronic payments? People can pay via AmExp, VISA, MC or FirstVirtual. For the credit cards, they enter their card information, the Register program checks the data entry using the checksum in the card number, and then it disguises the card data so that it can be transmitted with some small amount of safety across the internet. (Please note, the algorithm that munges the credit card data is not guaranteed to be secure, it just does a fairly good job of making the credit card data not look like a credit card number.) A paybot slurps in the electronic payment information, parses the data into a database, sends a reply to the payer (with a copy to the author if desired) and then submits the payment to the credit card processing company. What is First Virtual and how does it work? It is a method of allowing electronic commerce across the internet. First Virtual uses a system where you sign up with First Virtual and give them your credit card number and some secret code words. When you buy something, you send your secret code words to the merchant. The merchant sends the code words to First Virtual who in turn asks you to verify that you did make this purchase. If you agree, they charge your credit card and eventually send money to the merchant. For the First Virtual FAQ send email to: help@fv.com How come you don't use PGP to encrypt the credit card info? PGP uses technology licensed from RSA. The RSA technology has some pretty strong restrictions on export. We are looking into providing RSA encryption into Register for the Macintosh in some future revision. Why not just use PGP? Well the main reason is that most payers do not have PGP and if we required them to have PGP to send credit card information via the internet, most would not do so and the payment rate would drop. Instead, we include an algorithm that disguises the credit card information and allow folks to postal mail the form if they desire greater security. Does Kagi Shareware have a PGP public key? If you feel the need to encrypt your email message to kagi shareware, our public key is shown below. -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.7 mQCOAy9qFQ8AAAEEAJ3wn/2AOqYZXV8vIHS8POTcsOSaTsAYZzQwDZhPxXXHekbj cyIgx8124f61cDRpkRlno9iKNv4I1zcauHE9nmc8tR6EFEx3p6R3xJ1BQhN2YL9K PXurk6GyVCYdMKygZV/TsTTOjRomnlvIH6TD3FI3nyT0E+kFDfO5VkDNIkidAA9A B7Qxa2VlIG5ldGhlcnkgLSBrYWdpIHNoYXJld2FyZSA8c2hhcmV3YXJlQGthZ2ku Y29tPg== =dbnW -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- ---------------- finger shareware7@kagi.com ------------------- Will you be offering telephone/800 registration services? I am considering purchasing equipment so that folks could dial into a US phone number (at their expense) and interact with an automated attendent to enter shareware payments. I figure the way to implement this is the build something that uses Apple's PlainTalk voice recognition, deals with touch tone recognition, allows for PlainTalk speech output, and is totally controlled via AppleScript. I do not anticipate doing this any time soon because the technology I wish to use is still in beta testing right now. Concerning an 800 number (a telephone number in the USA where long distance charges are paid by the receipient, not the caller), I do not anticipate installing an 800 number. I've looked into it and the costs would eat up a significant portion of a shareware payment. The other disadvantage is that such a service has a minimum monthly charge which would add to overall processing costs for everyone. Finally, such a service would only be useable for people in North America and a significant portion of payments come from countries outside North America. I think telephone shareware fee processing is a good idea but I must automate it completely. Hiring someone to answer the phone would be way too expensive. Who uses your shareware services? I am currently processing payments for: Macintosh: Peter Lewis: Anarchie, Assimilator, SOCKS, Finger, FTPd, Talk, TFTPd Chris Owen: Control_Strip_Modules, Login, Tiny_Saver, OtherMenu_Modules, Synch_Stuff, UUCPShare/Monitor, Auto_Series, Auto_Backup, Auto_Fade, Auto_Filelist, Auto_Purge, Auto_Reboot, Batch_Reminder, BBIB__>HRMS, Board_Cleaner, Delete_Account, Finger_Hermes, H/UX, Hermes_Toolbox, Import_Plus, List_Text, Manager_Series, Bulletin_Manager, Logoff_Manager, Logon_Manager, New_User_Manager, Quote_Manager, Reports_Manager, User_Manager, Network_Access, New_User_Mail, Node_Guard, Non_Modal, Offline_QWK, Othello, Plastic, Record_Launch, Smart_Descriptions, Stop_Crashmail, User_Stats Andrew Trevorrow: OzTeX, Anagrams Olivier Lebra: AutoCat, DiskLocker Steve Martin: Dockernaut Lloyd Burchill: Knot Simon John Poisson: TarotWorks Gregory D Landweber: Greg's Buttons, Greg's Browser Francois Pottier: Disk Wizard, Decor Jonathan Greenfield: DropZone(tm), Serenity(tm) James W Walker: Dialog View, OtherMenu Dair Grant: Follow Finder Alias, Church Windows John McLaughlin: Supreme 500 Pete Keleher: Alpha Wayne Walrath: ACME Script Widgets Federico Filipponi: MyEyes Vincent Tan: Jigsaw Newton: Flash Sheridan: AnyMessages?, Disabler, PizzaBeamer Hardy Macia: Drag, NoPasswordInk, MPG, PocketMoney, ScrollingDoPopup, AssistCalc, NameDropper, NoteScroller, TimeLock, VtMail, ALOHA, CardStyle Ed Martin: Bills_To_Pay Steve Weyer: Slurpee, NewtDevEnv Rob Bruce: Stasher, WeatherMan Ben Gottlieb: Drop_To_Do, Big_Notes, Wake_Up_Week, More_Folders, What_Error?, User_Picker, KeyMan, Scroll_Menus, Clipper, Periodic_Table Windows: Greg Kochaniak: SnapShot/32 What about Unix, DOS and Windows shareware? Register for Windows is now ready and Kagi started accepting payments for Windows software. No one is currently planning to produce a Register for DOS, win fame and a very small royalty stream by writing Register for DOS for all those shareware authors writing DOS code who need a shareware registration service. Frankly, I have no idea how big the DOS shareware market is these days so unless you are a DOS shareware author who desires this kind of service (and thus you have a need for Register for DOS) I wouldn't want to make you think there is a big need for Register for DOS. Register for Unix is an interesting idea. There are several Unix projects that solicit contributions and there is no reason why a Register for Unix couldn't be used to make it easier for folks to contribute. But, again, unless you have a specific need for Register for Unix, I have not received any requests for such an application. But, on the bright side, the authors of the Registration software receive a percentage of the Kagi Shareware processing fee for each payment sent using their registration application. They have each spent a considerable amount of time building their software to meet our needs. ---------------- finger shareware8@kagi.com ------------------- How would Kagi Shareware handle these scenarios? What would you do if you were sent: a. Japanese postal money order. b. A Canadian check where the user has written US Funds or the like. c. A Canadian check with a US affiliate printed on the check. d. A Canadian postal money order. e. A EuroCheque made out in UK pounds sterling. f. A EuroCheque made out in US$. g. Foreign currency or a check drawn on a foreign bank. Either a check is drawn on a US bank or it's not. If it's drawn on a US bank it gets deposited in the normal way. Otherwise if it is in US dollars but from an entity outside of the USA, it is deposited separately with similar non-USA checks and it takes longer to clear. So far all postal money orders have been payable in US dollars. The Register application provides a variety of payment options such as foreign cash and credit cards but it does not allow for a check drawn in a currency other than US dollars. So far no one has attempted to pay a shareware fee using a payment method not allowed by the Register application. If someone transmitted a check in some currency other than US dollars, they would be contacted and asked if it would be possible for them to use some other payment method. If all else fails, the check in some other currency could be assigned to a shareware author in that country as part of their shareware payments. Otherwise, it is a non-payment since the processing fees for foreign checks can be up to three times the typical shareware fee. h. A check that bounces (or the account cannot be located) If possible the payer would be notified of the problem and asked to pay using some other payment form. Otherwise since the check has no value, no payment was received, thus the shareware is not registered. The author would be notified accordingly. Any bounce fees would be considered as check processing fees and deducted from the author's account accordingly. The possiblity of bounced checks (and potential stop payment on credit card charges) is the reason there is a slight delay in payments to shareware authors. i. Someone sends a check for the wrong amount. The Register application provides a total of the amount to be paid. So far all check amounts have been consistent with the amount calculated by Register. A significant percentage of people feel the need to pay more than what is required and the Register application allows this through the mechanism of a Bonus. Users can grant a bonus to an author and can assign it to a specific software application if the shareware author has multiple pieces of shareware. Bonuses turn out to be quite common. How do I disable the "please register" dialog in Anarchie? Older versions of Anarchie, before version 1.4, sometimes had problems remembering that you had told the software that you had paid. So first, make sure you have Anarchie 1.4 or greater. Launch Anarchie. Select Preferences in the Edit menu. Click on the check box that tells the software that you have paid. That should do it. How do you pronounce Kagi and where did that name come from? Kagi: Ka as in COpper, gi as in GEEse. Accent on the first syllable. KA-gi. Kagi is the Japanese word for Key. Seemed like a reasonable choice for a company name that was not already trademarked given that Kagi Shareware is operated by Kee Nethery. Kee is a european family name from way back, my guess is that it is an abbreviation of McKee but I'm not certain. If you pay by check, on the endorsement on the back of your check look at the logo upside down. ------------------------- that's all folks! -------------------------