[ruby-talk:9222] Re: Licensing issues

[e-mail] wrote:
>
>Ben Tilly wrote:
> >
> > Robert Feldt <[e-mail]> 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.
>
>QT, the library underlying KDE, is available under a number of
>different licenses from TrollTech (the firm that developed QT).
>IIRC, the QPL attempted to do something like what you're after.
>Check out:
>   http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faq/simple.html
>   http://www.trolltech.com/products/download/freelicense/
>   http://www.trolltech.com/company/announce/gpl.html
>   http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/qt.html

Important point.

Most people who install a library do not develop with it.
That includes companies who use it.

Most people who develop software for a company are not
developing software for resale.  Therefore the GPL is not
an issue in practice for most professional programmers.

Trolltech is trying to make a business from the ones who
are left over.  (Well originally they were...let's not go
there.)  This is essentially the model that Sleepycat has.
But what is covered does not include most commercial use
of the software.

And an important point.  While free versions exist under a
number of licenses, they don't do that on all platforms.
So if you develop on Linux and later want to port to
Windows, you either need to port Qt (which will happen in
time) or you have to pay money to Trolltech.

Also note that when Qt's software was used by an important
open source project (back when its licensing terms carried
more of a potential to be a Trojan horse) it was seen as a
threat and spawned a competing project (Gnome) due to
license issues.  While the original license issues are now
history, the point remains that successful almost-free
software tends to cause efforts to create similar
truly-free software.

Cheers,
Ben
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