I'm an indie whoe doesn't sell games but rather a standard Windows application (security software). Today I was contacted by someone who inquired about licensing the software for his "large customer base". In his email he stated that he wanted the software renamed and that he would handle tech support for it.

I'm a little concerned about potential pitfalls here. Why would he want to sell the software under a different name? Something, I don't know what, gives me a feeling that something is a little strange about this proposed deal. Maybe I'm just paranoid, though. Is it standard practice for people to resell the software under a different name?

Has anyone entered into any similar deals, and if so could you give me some advice on how to proceed?

This happens but I would look into the deal more.

Are they offering a one time payment or royalties? What kind of company is this? Who would they be selling to?

Find out as much as you can first.

Alex

Which company is it?
Which developers worked before with this company?

What is there opinion about this company. Paying cheques on time, nice royalty rate, or no paying at all, professional communication or not, well/not organized, what is there niche, which countries do they sell, how is the pormotion and distribution handled, how is IP arranged, are there publisher/developer contracts fair etc.

What are there customers saying about this company? Are they satisfied with there service, support, can they keep there customers etc.

Why is it worth to work with this company? That is the main question. When most of the above questions can be honestly be answered, this main question can also be a bit more clear.

Renaming licensed products is common... nothing unusual at all about that. Typically it's for marketing reasons (developers often pick poor names for their products from the standpoint of marketing), but it can also be because they don't want to market a product that's being sold elsewhere under the same name.

I emailed back with some questions, one of them being how the program would be marketed and where I could find the web site of this person's company. He replied with several URLs, one of them being something like "mass-mailer.com". He said the program would be marketed through "newsletters". I decided not to go for this deal as it seems pretty obvious the program would be marketed through spam. I don't want anything to do with spam and it would also reflect extremely badly on my program and company, even with the name of the product changed. I guess my gut-feeling was right this time.