[ruby-talk:9254] Re: Licensing issues

This has been an interesting discussion. Rather 
than reply to each email, I'll consolidate my 
thoughts into just one reply.

The Ruby distribution should be open source so it 
will be as widely distributed as possible. 
However, I think there should be room in the 
RAA/GULP for alternate licenses.

The shareware problem for international folks is 
easy to work around, at least for the original 
poster's intentions. Provide a variety of 
destinations for the funds, and/or allow a wide 
variety of currencies.

Although I phrased my suggestion as 
"commercial/not", the proposal on the table is to 
allow "open source/not". I agree that if you 
released a dual GPL/Shareware license, someone 
could turn around and sell the GPL version. 
However, they would have to do so in an open 
source context. They would not be able to release 
that code as part of a closed source project.

Of course, with Ruby, source is always 
distributed now. At least until those compilers 
or shrouders come along. However, I suppose you 
could try to enforce copyrights on that source.

Another alternative for the original question 
might be to have a "suggested" donation for 
certain uses. Nothing binding, but a request that 
ethical folks would follow through on. It could 
apply to all uses, perhaps with varying suggested 
dollar amounts for different uses.

Kevin