geekarea.org, less scripting, need an opinion

[Vinay]

Hey all !!

ok, so i looked through the list of forums and couldnt find one which fits, so i'm just gonna ask here ! .. to mods & admins, if you think of a better place this thread belongs, feel free to move it (just inform me afterwards)

ok, here's the deal, i'm starting to build a PHP software directory at this link .. (click on programs and scripts) ...now, i'm kindof stuck regarding how i want to deal with COMMERCIAL software... so, here are my options... i'd like some comments regarding these, and if you know of a better option, feel free to enlighten me

1. right on that page, make a "Commercial Progs & Scripts" and a "Free / Opensource Progs & Scripts" ..... and put sub cats of the scripts in there, and boom shaka laka

2. make a "Progs & Scripts" .. as there is now, then split that, inside, into "free / opensource" , and "commercial"

3. make a tag in the program settings for it to be commercial OR free/opensource ... then put all progs & scripts into 1 thing ...

in the above 3 , if a program has a commercial licensed one and a crippled free edition, it would go ONLY in the commercial section ...

now, in 1 and 2, WHY i'm trying to split commercial and free is because many people dont really care about commercial software since they cant afford it, so they want to see the free stuff only.... however, if i were to put commercial and free together, the one with the highest votes/reviews would still be up on top ...

does anybody have anything for me on this ?

Regards,

[qslack]

Since Open source is not always $Free (in cash terms), I'd make a section for $Free and Non-$free (not the FSF's definition of free).

Just my $.02...

[Vinay]

from what i know (and i may be wrong) , opensource is not always free, HOWEVER, they MUST make it possible for the user to obtain the program at minimum cost, or cost of the media it is delivered on

for example, redhat sells for 90 bucks in the market, however, you can always download it for free ...

anyhow, i asked a few people on irc since nobody seems to be around sitepoint ... i thought about it, and this is what i plan to do:

i'm going to put a tag for FREE / Commercial .. (i dont really want to enter prices for software in the database, since thats just a waste of time considering this database is not hte prime attraction of the site) .... opensource will go under free, (for now, since majority of people dont know what opensource is anyhow) .. now, i'll add options later (at some future date) for you to fine tune the results , like order by this.. and chose only results which have the free tag on ,etc

this is it with all scripts modified to handle the tag ... thats how i'll keep it for now...

now i'm going to get back to finding some good php scripts and adding them to the engine, then reviewing my favorites