Hi, All in all, dual licensing is an interesting thought, but I'm afraid it inevitably leads to extra work and frustration. Because the users of the commercial branch will most likely be a major contributer of resources, the "free" branch would end up being treated as a second class citizen. (Please refer me to examples where this has not been the outcome if they exist.)
As for the general topic of relicensing: I would wish for a license with patent clauses for Christmas. But such a clause is supposed to scare the big company lawyers away. So, a switch to Apache would probably not help with the goal of getting big companies to consider RIOT. Personally, I'm not convinced these companies are really needed for RIOT to stay alive. In order to cater to commercial use *today* (because we don't currently have tools to help satisfy the linking clause of the LGPL), I'd rather add a static linking exception to our current license (or switch to GPL with linking exception which amounts to the same as far as I remember). I am aware that this probably makes the license even more troublesome for the lawyers in question as it would probably need extra ratification, but it would help smaller companies. One aspect of this rationale is that we currently have several interested smaller companies, while the big companies could as well implement the missing bits themselves. That being said I would also be excited to see some bigger company contribute to RIOT. If switching to MIT is what it takes to achieve this, I'm fine with it. Cheers, Ludwig On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 09:51:13AM +0100, ROUSSEL Kévin wrote: > Hello everyone, > > Maybe was it already envisioned, but another strategy would be dual > licensing, something akin to what FreeRTOS does for example. > > Using this scheme: > * we got (L)GPL by default, for academic contributors and everyone that has > nothing against open-source; > * the same code can be licensed under an alternative license for those that > don't want to contribute back. Financial resources could even be drawn from > this, as the project could charge for such a proprietary license. > > Of course, I guess this approach has its drawbacks; I was just citing a > possible alternative, I have not really thought about it. > > Best regards, > > > KR > > > > Le 12/12/2014 17:55, Emmanuel Baccelli a écrit : > >Hi Johann, > > > >Le 12 déc. 2014 00:48, "Johann Fischer" <johann_fisc...@posteo.de > ><mailto:johann_fisc...@posteo.de>> a écrit : > > > > > > Can you explain exactly what you expect of licence change? That more > >hardware > > > will be supported? That RIOT will be more spread? > > > >The motivation for a more permissive license now is that the RIOT > >community has significantly more chances to spread and reach a critical > >mass fast enough to not let the current momentum go to waste. > > > >There might be other strategies to reach critical mass, but for now, > >none have been brought forward. > > > >Reaching critical mass is arguably an important goal. If the community > >does not reach this goal, it might not survive -- and none of us wants that. > > > >Thus this thread, to propose and discuss a strategy based on a license > >change allowing direct and indirect interactions with more industrial > >partners. > > > >I agree this strategy is not without potential drawbacks. Other strategy > >proposals are very welcome ;). My main point is: we need a strategy. > > > >Cheers, > > > >Emmanuel > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >_______________________________________________ > >devel mailing list > >devel@riot-os.org > >http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel > > > > -- > > > Kévin Roussel > Doctorant, projet LAR > Équipe MADYNES, INRIA Nancy Grand-Est / LORIA > Tél. : +33 3 54 95 86 27 > kevin.rous...@inria.fr > > _______________________________________________ > devel mailing list > devel@riot-os.org > http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel _______________________________________________ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
