Ahem, we can stop now with the latest Hillary outrage #regulationgate......

[MineralMan]

54. I used to own a small software company.

So small that it was just me. I averaged about $25,000 per year in profits. I was the programmer, the printer, the software duplicator, the janitor and the shipping department. It was a shareware company, so people could use the program freely, but were asked to pay a small amount to become a registered user. My software licence, however, required businesses and government agencies to pay for a registered licence. Just one, for the entire company or organization.

One of my programs was very useful and was widely used by many people. Just looking at downloads, it was in millions of computers. So, one day, I got a letter from a federal agency that wanted to pay the license fee. $15 for unlimited users. Same fee for anyone who registered the program.

Trouble was, they couldn't pay me unless I became an official vendor with the GAO. A few days later, I got a box from the GAO, with reams of forms to fill out to become an official vendor so I could get paid my $15. Guess what happened next: I changed my software licence, making it illegal for government agencies to use the software at all, since they could not pay me for it. I sent that letter to the GAO and to the agency that wanted to become a registered user.

Bottom line is that it would have been impossible for me to provide all the information demanded to become a vendor. Impossible.

In the end, the guy with that agency that wanted to register my $15 shareware program called me on the phone and asked if he could just send me a check for $15 to register the program and if his department could continue using the program. I said, "Sure." and wrote a separate licence agreement for that agency and re-labeled the program's interface restricting its use to that agency.

The GAO? They kept sending me more and more forms to fill out. They never responded to my letters explaining that I had no interest whatever in becoming an official vendor.

It was funny, but it's also typical of how government agencies deal with small and ultra-small businesses. They make it impossible to do business with the government if you are small.