Christian wrote:
Unfortunately I haven't found an existing open source license which
would reflect those restrictions. Some even said this wouldn't be an
open source license according to definitions of XY, but personally I
think it would. So maybe we would have to write a new license, like a
"Participation License" or something which might also be used by other
projects in future of course.
Anyway, no decision is made as of today. But would be interesting to
know what you people think of it!
If they really want to get people to give money then they should just
make it so that you have to pay or contribute code/time for a while to
get access to the newest downloads from their site. Keep the stable
version far enough behind the development version that people will pay
to get the newest code base.
Codeweavers use this kind of approach (although you can't get a stable
version for free anywhere AFAIK) and I have also seen an even more
aggressive approach used by the KVCD developers. It's very difficult to
find easy to grok information about how to make a KVCD but you can get
it easily and quickly for $4 from their "closed" forum. $4 or $5 can be
handled by a lot more people than $300 - $2000 which some other similar
software is selling for. BTW KVCD has a few thousand forum members.
It won't stop all the people who want to get a free copy but it should
keep most of the freeloaders at bay. It will also serve to make the
developers "appear" more professionally oriented to a non initiated user.
If they are not prepared to do something like that then they should just
forget about trying to get a big company to give them any money because
they will get eaten alive by lawyers as the FSF most probably won't be
able to help them if they change the license.
Cheers.
--
Patrick Shirkey - Boost Hardware Ltd.
Http://www.boosthardware.com
Http://lau.linuxaudio.org - The Linux Audio Users guide
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"Anything your mind can see you can manifest physically, then it will
become reality" - Macka B
