The original post: /r/privacy by /u/Bachihani on 2024-11-09 19:24:47.

I developed software for enterprise resources management, i spent over a year working on it and it focuses a lot on point of sale functionality. I m planning on launching it for free, but the cost of development and deployment and everything in between is too high and it requires full-time work to maintain it. The reason i started developing it is cuz i was in the position of searching for similar software but all the offerings on the market turned out to be monopolised by one company and excessively pricey. I want to keep the original intent of offering free/cheap but also quality experience. So here comes conflicting part … I met some people who work in collecting and analysing consumer behaviour and they offered me generous deals for selling data that i would collect about what products my clients sell (generous enough to cover the cost of development as well as some profit for me). Do i sell that data ? (they don’t want the data specific to my clients, only about the things being sold through the software) Or do i deviate from the original idea and make my software paid ? Is there someway of ethically collecting data without compromising too much on the monetisation? I would love to hear your opinions.