Tony Butterfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > My motivation is in finding an open-source model for software that > promotes all the well known and discussed aims of open source but that > allows a small independent startup to create a revenue stream. > > I am working on a provocative short paper titled something like "Why > current open source revenue streams conflict with the open source > philosophy" that I would like to forward to this list for comments.
Note that this topic has been discussed at great length for many years now. > 1) What is the current OSI certification status of the Sleepycat > licence? This is in the context of their frontmatter defining > distribution in a non-standard and restrictive way outside the licence > itself. More generally, can ambiguity in the licence which is then > clarified externally in a way which contradicts the open source > definition invalidate the certification? The Sleepycat license is OSI certified: http://opensource.org/licenses/sleepycat.php Sleepycat's definition of ``redistribute'' does not in any way affect the open-source status of their license. What Sleepcat is saying is that if you ``redistribute'' according to their criteria, you must include the complete source code for your application. That is a standard open-source requirement, found in the GPL among others. Sleepycat definition of ``redistribute'' does not remove that right; it actually give you more rights (i.e., not distribute source code), and thus can not decrease the open-source status of the license. > 2) Dual licencing approaches allow revenue to be created from > distributees who want to avoid the terms of an open licence. But this > seems only useful for distributees who want more flexibility as > distributors. It couldn't really work for "end-users" as they can pretty > much do as they require under the terms of an OSI licence as long as > they don't distribute. Is this a fair understanding or are there more > subtleties that I have missed? I believe that is a fair understanding. Most people feel that open source licenses may not restrict running the program. Ian -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3