Comment by kevinpet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevinpet | Hacker News Reader

If you want to call something a "regressive tax", please make sure that doesn't mean the exact opposite of what you're describing. A flat licensing fee would be regressive. A huge upfront cost would be prohibitive for small developers, but no problem for large companies.

On top of that, it only comes into effect after $50k revenue. If Flash reduces your development costs (not making that argument one way or another), then this is a great deal for small developers and will only be pushing away the large developers who can afford to invest in other technologies.

Is this a good idea? I don't know. I'm guessing this is the same type of licensing that a game engine would offer, but it does sound very expensive.

> A flat licensing fee would be regressive.

No. It would be flat. A regressive tax would charge the small companies more than the big companies.

A regressive tax charges small companies a higher PERCENTAGE of income than large companies, which is exactly what a flat fee would do.

Flat tax generally means a flat percentage not a flat fee. Regressive tax is where the rate (percentage) goes down as you scale up. A tax that is a fixed total amount (not a fixed total percentage) is regressive because the same amount is a lower percentage of a higher income. You can still charge the rich total more than the poor and have it be regressive; eg a regressive tax where you charge 10k income at 10% and 1k income at 20% you still charging the rich a larger amount.

Or to give the US example, sales tax (and 'vice' taxes like cigarettes and liquor) - because of the different spending habits of different groups, they're effectively regressive taxes.

UDK is $99 upfront with 0% royalty until $50,000. After 50k the royalty rate is 25%. But they have other options depending on what you need the engine for.

Unless I'm reading the license totally wrong.

Of course, Flash is not UDK so it's not a fair comparison. Plus, if you use UDK within Flash your royalty rate will be 34% split between Epic and Adobe.

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