[Qgis-developer] QIGS GPL -> LGPL - Tigers, Lions and Bears Oh My!

[Alister Hood]

> Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:09:24 +0100
> From: jr.morreale at enoreth.net
> Subject: Re: [Qgis-developer] QIGS GPL -> LGPL - Tigers, Lions and
> 	Bears Oh My!
> To: <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>
> Message-ID: <0483f1b76ab5b27321779b86fed3bf42 at enoreth.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
> 
> While we are on this subject, I would advice the reading of the only
> source that matters :
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
> 
> About plugin's licensing :
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean
> 
> to sum it up, you release your plugin under any other license
> recognized as compatible :
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
> 
> And now my selfish view on the subject :
> - GPL to LGPL would need agreement of every past and present
> contributor or the rewrite of their contributed code
> - a dual licensing such as Qt implies that the contributor agrees to a
> Contribution License Agreement, honk if you like administravia
> - giving people the possibility of releasing closed product based on a
> open product (even without direct modification to qgis) brings no
> positive return to the project, allows users and clients to be tied to
> one company, make it easier to have segmentation of the dev effort
> 
> Let's be honest here, if you give something to someone in the hope
that
> someday, somehow he'll repay you then I've a good deal to offer you :)

The idea of dual licensing is that they would pay up front to use QGIS
under a commercial license.  So it _would_ bring a positive return to
the project (a new source of revenue).  No need to hope to be repaid
"someday".

This doesn't sound like a bad idea to me (if you could get the agreement
of all past contributors).  Better than LGPL.  But are there actually
some good dual licensing success stories?

Are there any commercial licenses designed to only allow licensees to
create specialised applications which would not compete directly with
the freely licensed version?  A license which did that would probably be
sufficient for a client like this:
http://osgeo-org.1803224.n2.nabble.com/Qgis-custom-buil-to-read-obfuscat
ed-data-td6796238.html

Personally I think dual-licensing would be worth looking into if there
was a real demand for it.

Alister