From: Ben Tilly <ben_tilly@...>
Date: 2001-01-12T21:18:31+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:9194] Re: Licensing issues

Robert Feldt <feldt@ce.chalmers.se> wrote:
>
>On Fri, 12 Jan 2001, Kevin Smith wrote:
[...]
> > How would people feel about stuff in the RAA with
> > a dual license: if it's used in a non-commercial
> > product (say, GPL or Ruby license), then GPL
> > applies. Otherwise, it's shareware requiring a
> > $xxx one-time donation to the Xxxx organization.
> > Thoughts?

If you say that GPL applies in *ANY* situation then anyone
can modify trivially and release under pure GPL.  That can
be used in commercial settings.

>This is exactly was I meant. A dual license being essentially:
>   * GPL, or Ruby for (open-source) GPL/Ruby work, but
>   * Shareware with a fixed, one-time, low price for commerical use with
>     garantueed approval (no filtering of companies allowed to buy).
>
>I guess it is hard (or even impossible, see Ben Tillys prior mail) to
>actually write one license with the above meaning but IMHO it might be a
>good thing.

It is impossible to be open source and charge for commercial
use.  See items 5 and 6 of http://www.opensource.org/osd.html.

Violating that definition will cause significant problems.
For instance Debian will be unable to use it for any
significant items.

>One advantage with such a license would be that you'd actually know which
>corps (if any!) use the stuff you've developed.

Assuming that I did.

> > kind of "ask us and we'll figure something out".
> > I didn't want to invest time learning something
> > that I might have to abandon later. Fixed price
> > and guaranteed approval are important.
> >
> > >BTW, commerical use is probably hypothetical at the current state of 
>Ruby
> > >development but this might/will change in the future, eh?!
> >
> > Not at all hypothetical. As soon as an
> > appropriate project comes along at work, I'll be
> > pushing hard to use Ruby.
> >
>Would you/your employer consider paying a low price, say $30, as a
>one-time fee to use a (large/powerful/important) Ruby-extension?

You are asking the wrong question IMO.  Of course companies
pay money for software.  They do it all of the time.  The
question is what barriers you are putting to people
working in those companies.  That can be more considerable
than you imagine.

>BTW, my impression from the relatively low "traffic" in this thread is
>that it is kind of tabu to think in terms other than GPL/Ruby/Artistic
>licenses. Or is it simply that people dont care? Please share your
>thoughts! I'll summarize all points and put them on a web page for future
>reference.

Random note.  IANAL but my understanding is that the
Artistic License is legally garbage.  Its use is only
appropriate IMO as a statement of opinion.  Perhaps I
should mention that it has worked well for Larry Wall
largely because his attitude towards lawyers is to
wonder if they will go away if he ignores them long
enough.

>Another q: Anyone knows a mailing list or newsgroup discussing licensing
>issues?

The following mailing lists are entirely devoted to that.

license-discuss@opensource.org
cni-copyright@cni.org

There are many, many more where it comes up.  For instance
debian-legal@lists.debian.org.

Cheers,
Ben
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