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

[Alister Hood]

Sorry,
Just to clarify, when I said dual licensing I obviously meant with a
commercial license, not with LGPL.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alister Hood
> Sent: Friday, 18 November 2011 11:17 a.m.
> To: 'qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org'
> Cc: 'jr.morreale at enoreth.net'
> Subject: Re: [Qgis-developer] QIGS GPL -> LGPL - Tigers, Lions and
Bears Oh My!
> 
> > 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