

Ask HN: Selling Software and Sarbanes-Oxley? - api

A while back a friend and colleague of mine told me something that I found a bit incredible: that Sarbanes-Oxley imposed special accounting rules that made it complex and cumbersome to sell software via the old licensing models, and that this is one reason almost everyone is moving toward software-as-a-service in the cloud.<p>He said SOX imposed onerous per-feature accounting requirements that made it really hard to sell &quot;boxed&quot; (with or without a physical box) software, etc.<p>I have been unable to find any information on this one way or another, so I wanted to ask around here: is there any truth to this? Is this a reason that larger vendors have moved away from actually selling software as opposed to SaaS?<p>Or is it just that SaaS offers recurrent income?
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timthorn
From dim and distant memory (ie 10yrs ago), I think the issue is establishing
a true value for your IP if you're not selling to a price list. I believe that
the addition of S&M components to a sale can assist in evidencing the value.

