[OSGeo-Discuss] QGIS plug-in-based software

[Vincent Picavet (ml)]

Hello Oskaras,

Great to see new actors coming to the OpenSource and QGIS World ! Welcome to the
land of freedom !

Some remarks below.

On 16/03/2021 09:15, Oskaras Alsauskas wrote:
[..]
>  1) Are there any kind of restrictions, licenses, or fees to take care of in
> order for us to sell licenses and distribute our QGIS plug-in-based solution
> commercially?

If you distribute a QGIS plugin, it has to be under the GPL version 2 (or later
) licence.
The GPL does not prevent you from selling the software. But any person buying it
would be allowed to use, copy, modify and redistribute the plugin. The
proprietary licence-based economic model therefore does not work with opensource
software.
If you distribute your plugin, you must make the source code available
somewhere, with according licence.
You should also be careful when reusing other software components in your
plugin, as they must be compatible with the GPL to be linked.

There is no other restriction, for plugin development, and no fee.

Additional constraints exists though concerning the QGIS brand and trademark.
Its use is detailed here :
https://qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/governance/trademark/index.html

> 2) Do you know what is the usual license selling approach when it comes to QGIS
> plug-in-based software, since any QGIS plug-in must be open source?
> 
> I have come across companies selling their QGIS plug-in(s)-based software and
> initially thought that there should not be any issues for us to do the same, but
> after diving into the GNU GPL it looks like there are plenty of details, we have
> to figure out before making the decision.

As said, you can sell your plugin, but this is not usually a stable economic
model. At some point your plugin will be freely available.

What you can do is provide commercial services around your software :
- publish your plugin freely, sell added-value services in your field of
expertise, using the fame of your plugin as a funnel to your company
- publish your plugin freely, sell IT services around the plugin, like feature
development contract
- publish your plugin and sell a full package of services around it : yearly
maintenance ( bugfix), training, etc
- publish your plugin freely and have another proprietary side application with
a paying licence-based economic model. The side application should not be
necessarily required to be able to run the plugin or you would also break the GPL.

Usually companies fear to opensource their work as they do not want "competitors
to steal my software and take my clients away from me". This actually almost
never happens : the reality is that if you develop the software actively, you
always have a lead on expertise on the software, and noone will try to overrun
you, it would be too big of a risk and investment. Forking a software costs a
lot of money and usually fails. ( Disclaimer : this is untrue if you start
playing in the same field as GAFAM, who have unlimited investment budgets and no
care for pet opensource companies ).
There are plenty of companies living from opensource software. We could talk for
hours on how to organize an opnesource business to be sustainable, as there are
many issues at stake ( like HR, communication, recruitment, environmental
impact...).

If you encountered companies selling the QGIS plugin with restrictions on its
use ( as "do not copy or redistribute the plugin"), then they are out of their
right, and should change their behaviour ASAP, as it is not only irrespectuous
to the opensource community, but also infringing QGIS licence.

hope this helps,
Vincent


> 
> Any kind of information regarding the QGIS commercial use topic will be highly
> appreciated.
> 
> Looking forward hearing from the community.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Oskaras Alšauskas
> 
> 
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