Thanks, but do you have a source for "15% gross receipts" as typical?
Quick search brings up this study, "PROFITABILITY AND ROYALTY RATES ACROSS INDUSTRIES: SOME PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE": "For software and content licensing, it could be as high as 50%"... "defined as a fixed percentage rate of sales" [1]
Which would make Jobs' ask more typical.
[Edit: on second look I think the paper's 50% figure may refer to gross margins not receipts.. but anyway, that would still cast the final deal as a completely typical software deal.]
A report from 10 years ago reflects a different economy from 30 years ago.
1980's software distribution was as complicated as making a manufacturing physical product. There was the manufacturing cost of the diskettes, packaging, manuals, telephone support, and marketing. Guess wrong about sales and you have a lot of worthless SKUs on you hand.
So yes, as I recall from being a software developer back then, 15% seems about right.
If this was a pure-play licensing deal, then agreed 15% is low, but the story made it clear that this wasn't a licensing deal, but a publishing deal in which the publisher had to hire developers to do ongoing development, provide support, etc...
I.E. They'd receive a hairy-ball-of-code and have to provide a soup-nuts package to customers, including bug-fixes, phone-support, etc... in return for the 85%.
15% actually seems low. Today Apple takes 30% gross receipts for anything that goes through the app store. A lot of developers seem to find that acceptable.
Quick search brings up this study, "PROFITABILITY AND ROYALTY RATES ACROSS INDUSTRIES: SOME PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE": "For software and content licensing, it could be as high as 50%"... "defined as a fixed percentage rate of sales" [1]
Which would make Jobs' ask more typical.
[Edit: on second look I think the paper's 50% figure may refer to gross margins not receipts.. but anyway, that would still cast the final deal as a completely typical software deal.]
[1] http://law.unh.edu/assets/images/uploads/pages/ipmanagement-...