[RouterGeocoder] Dual-licensing

[Daniel Kastl]

Hi Andrew and others,

The recent posts were interesting. Because I was discussing this
dual-licensing  with Anton during lunch breaks, this is what I believe
is what a licensing model should provide:

    * It should assure when projects use the "free" license (for example
      GPL), that this leads to collaboration and contributions.
    * It should not lock out closed source, but allow proprietary
      software to make use of it through a "commercial" license. And for
      this license the Routing/Geocoder project could charge money,
      which would then help to sponsor development.

There are probably many successful examples. I don't know a dual-license
is the solution for this issue. I'm glad to be convinced that there is a
better way. I just thought this would be worth to discuss before
changing the license of existing projects.

Daniel


Andrew Ross schrieb:
> Hi Anton, Everyone,
>
> This is an interesting discussion, thanks for posting. 
>
> I'm going to make the point that driving business with dual licensing (and
> GPL specifically) is a myth. Here goes...
>
> Quoting directly from the GPL:
>
>     b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
>     whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
>     part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
>     parties under the terms of this License.
>
> Section 3 in the license goes on to state you must make the code available
> somehow. Either by providing it or offering to provide it for no markup.
>
> In other words, if your work depends on this GPL code, and you publish it,
> your software thus becomes GPL. This is obviously scary if you link your
> unprotected (via. patents, etc.) IP against GPL code and distribute it. 
>
> As an important aside, the fact remains code can be decompiled so if you're
> only protection of your IP is obscuring access to the code, good luck!
>
> What's more interesting is what happens if you don't distribute your code?
> i.e. you just use it to provide a service, but you don't modify it and don't
> distribute derivative code. Is such a service a derivative work?
>
>
> In the dual licensing model the commercial license provides the right to
> link against a non-GPL version of the code. Doing so would avoid GPL
> contamination of the code. It is felt that this is the crux of the dual
> license business model. This model is used by RedHat, Ingres, MySQL, and
> others. However, I'm not sure this is valid.
>
> Here's why: the end customer could go out and get the GPL and use it for
> free. They could even link to it. Unless they redistribute, I don't believe
> GPL contamination kicks in. Thus the GPL itself is *not* as far as I can see
> a motivating factor for buying the commercial license.
>
> However, if at 3am the code explodes causing mass carnage, they're on their
> own unless they have a support contract with someone. Thus support and
> insurance against failure is the value they're interested in. You pay for
> support from Company because they're good at it and hopefully can do it
> better and cheaper than you can in-house.
>
> In other words, in my opinion: business is based on insurance against
> failure. This is orthogonal to the notion of GPL contamination. 
>
> If anyone knows of any precedent that disagrees or agrees with the above, I
> would be delighted to know about it.
>
> Andrew
> As is obvious by Ingres' GPLv2 license - my opinions are my own and not
> those of my employer
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: routergeocoder-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
> [mailto:routergeocoder-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Anton Patrushev
> Sent: December 2, 2008 11:31 PM
> To: routergeocoder at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: [RouterGeocoder] Dual-licensing
>
> Hi list,
>
> I was thinking about how to adopt GPLed tools for proprietary solutions and
> I think the answer is dual-licensing.
> For example,
>
> 1. The community makes a Router/Geocoder library and grant all copyrights to
> the Foundation.
> 2. Foundation reissues it under two licenses - GPL for using with Open
> Source tools and some kind of commercial license for proprietary ones.
> 3. Commercial version is sold to proprietary tool developers and the money
> goes to the Foundation.
> 4. ?????
> 5. PROFIT!
> :)
>
> I think it is much better than reissuing existing tools under any kind of
> exotic BSD/MIT-ish license.
> What do you think?
>
>
> Anton.
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>   

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