Invisible wrote:
> That sounds like a sensible workflow. And I guess if the AMI gets 
> started under the customer's account (which your tool presumably has to 
> somehow obtain)

It asks.

> they get billed, and you can still take your cut.

Yes.

> ...until somebody else realises that all your AMI actually does is untar 
> the files and launch POV-Ray, and they build their own AMI that does the 
> exact same thing. Now they can do exactly what they did before, but 
> without paying a cut to you. ;-)

Except my tool does more than that. It pushes a bunch of individual jobs up 
to S3, launches multiple AMIs which coordinate to copy down the sources, run 
the jobs, copy the results back up, and starts on new jobs as each machine 
comes free, shutting each down when no work remains. And they don't all have 
to be POV-Ray.

But yeah, if all you're providing is a machine preconfigured with a free 
program, it's going to be rough to get someone else to pay you to run it.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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