Joe Kiniry wrote: > In short, the reason we have made our software available in the fashion that > we have is exactly because of the fear factor surrounding GPL and, > secondarily, we do not want competitors to sell our software without > contributing back to the community.
Hi Joe, welcome to this list. :-) Let's talk license fear factors. One of them is the mistaken impression that any open source license can ever prevent competitors from selling your software. But if you also insist that they contribute back to the community, then don't be afraid of the GPL; that is the principle of that license regardless of the licensees' fear. That is one major reason for Brent Turner and others to recommend the GPL for election software. By the way, nowadays I personally prefer either the Apache License (rather than the BSD) or the reciprocal MPL 2.0 (rather than the GPL). But it would be foolish for a licensor to offer both Apache and MPL as a dual license. Take the Apache License rather than the MPL if the foolish licensor offers that dual license choice. It is always better for a licensee. /Larry From: Joe Kiniry [mailto:kin...@freeandfair.us] Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2017 12:13 PM To: John Cowan <co...@ccil.org> Cc: Lawrence Rosen <lro...@rosenlaw.com>; Brent Turner <turnerbre...@gmail.com>; license-discuss@opensource.org; Alan Dechert <dech...@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] FreeAndFair license Thank you for including me in these discussions. I'm now subscribed to license-discuss. In short, the reason we have made our software available in the fashion that we have is exactly because of the fear factor surrounding GPL and, secondarily, we do not want competitors to sell our software without contributing back to the community. We have yet to interact with a single elections official who understands and is comfortable with GPL, let alone demands GPL. The most common licenses mentioned by EOs is BSD and Apache. Zero election officials have expressed an interest in the OSET public license to date. As with all R&D we do at Free & Fair and Galois, we listen to our customers and do what they ask. Thus, we release most everything we do under BSD, unless we are forced towards another OSI license due to build dependencies etc. Joe On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 11:58 AM, John Cowan <co...@ccil.org <mailto:co...@ccil.org> > wrote: On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 2:44 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lro...@rosenlaw.com <mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com> > wrote: > So, I still don't understand what role "principle" plays in BSD and > GPL dual licensing? The principle in question should be a legal maxim but isn't. "Damnunt quod non intelligunt", people fear what they do not understand. -- John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan co...@ccil.org <mailto:co...@ccil.org> Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that optimum or inadequate performance in the trend of competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. --Ecclesiastes 9:11, Orwell/Brown version
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