I wrote: >However, we do not wish to deprive open source developers the bounty of our >labor and have no qualms their using our tool to build open source programs >that they give away. [CFC]
Bruce Dodson replies: > What you seem to be suggesting is what FSF calls "semi-free". > http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/categories.html#semi-freeSoftware Yes, I can see how what I would like seems close to that (and in some sense falls into that category). However, I am just tyring to extrapolate some of the "benefits" of the GPL. I have worked for companies that will not use free software for fear of tainting their development efforts and having their propietary code made free. >From what I have read, we are not the only ones looking for these kind of protections. I recall reading just recently about a license that tried to regulate "external deployment". It was that license and Russell Nelson's posting that prompted me to ask the question I did. Bruce Dodson again: > Then by protecting your revenue stream, you would be depriving us of the > full bounty of our own own labors. Use of your software would be a "poison > pill", that prevents us from selling the the open source programs that we > build. (Some of us will never sell our software, but all of us, and all of > our licensees, retain that option.) I don't intend for our software to be a poison pill. In particular, I expect to ensure that any open source program that is written which incorporates the run-time library we provide is distributable under an open source license. (And as a matter of practice we have never charged run-time royalties for the use of our run-time library. We have only ever charged one-time fees to cover the cost of our development efforts. Currently, we offer a maintenance program that includes a recurring fee for support and upgrade, but it is not a requirement for the license, a one time fee is the only license requirement for our commercial version.) However, at some level someone is losing the full bounty of their labors. If your software includes ours and you are using yours to make money, then you have appropriated our labor for your profits. We are only looking for a fee to pay for that labor. I'm just tyring to find the license that "scares" the most commercial developers into paying the fee, as I am well aware that some will and some won't and there is little I can do about those who won't aside from using the most restrictive open source license that I can find and hoping it makes some of them think twice. Bruce Dodson again: > You can't hold onto your custodianship of this technology through licensing > restrictions. I think you mean "and still release the product as open source", because today we do a perfectly good job of retaining our technology through licensing restrictions. And again this is an argument for our releasing a "gratis" (or semi-free) version, where the run-time library is released as true open source, but the "tool" part is not. That is a less than satisfactory position, but it is an option for us. Bruce Dodson again: > I believe it could hurt the open source community, since it could > take mindshare away from legitimate open source CASE projects like > ArgoUML. So, you believe reinventing the wheel is a good thing (as long as the reinvented wheel is an open one (and the old wheel wasn't))? I can understand that position and why someone might think so. However, that's more of a moral (for lack of a better word) stance than I am interested in taking. I make my living writing software and I intend to continue profit from doing so. I would like to make the world a better place in the process. However, so far, no one has offered to pay me what I expect as a salary and allow me to write the software that I want to write and also give it away, and I don't really expect them to either. If I can tweak the process to make things a little better, I will do so. Thank you for your time, -Chris -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
