Well, the first thing I'll do then is clone it and stick an AGPLv3 license on it, and ask you for a commercial license sign-off when someone asks me to make a product that doesn't require releasing the silicon masks for.
There's plenty of ways AGPLv3 (or just plain old gpl, or even LGPL) hardware can be commercial, and generate revenue. I'd say forget the dual license nonsense, and just require that anyone you accept patches from *assign* the copyrights to an organization (non-profit? cooperative?) that can then re-license the code for a fee, which is then distributed to the people who wrote the code. See the section 12 at: http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/SubmittingPatches Now why is it a problem if someone who doesn't contribute code is bothered and whines on a mailing list? I'm more bothered by the BS that goes on with proprietary graphics chipsets and drivers... The big companies just hire their competitor's employees, and then bury the code so deep so no investors can figure out they are just ripping each other off rather than doing something new. We are going to have commercial products making money off the work we've layed out on this mailing list, whether we license it or not, and I'd prefer to redirect the complainers energy to holding the proprietary world accountable. If you get too caught up in dual license ethical gymnastics now, I think you're ignoring the reality that someone in another country with a fab is going to download the HDL and ship 100 million units of it regardless of what license you put on it. The only way to make money in open source is to charge for your time *up front*. If you have to perform license tricks to get paid, it might be time to forget about hardware and go work for Disney or the NFL instead. As for the potential for appearance of a conflict of interest... Just document it. I think you're asking for a lot more trouble by putting yourself as the sole legal point of control with a non-standard license. Stick with AGPL and everyone knows what it is. Or just dual-license it AGPL/BSD, like http://infiniband.sourceforge.net/duallicense.htm On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 10:52:24PM -0500, Timothy Normand Miller wrote: > Back under Traversal, we had a license that was attached to source files > and put up on the Wiki that explained that Traversal had copyright in a > dual-license manner, and that anyone had the right to strip off these > licensing terms and make it pure GPL. > > Unfortunately, this didn't work out so well, because some individuals > assumed that it was ONLY GPL and were bothered when they saw this stuff end > up in a commercial product. This is despite the fact that the licensing > terms were in every source file and on the wiki and stated this clearly. > > SO, as a formality, to avoid this problem, I think I need to apply a > special license. There should be only one license, which is that I (as its > benevolent guardian) have legal control over it, and that at any time, > another individual wanting to fork the published code can CONVERT it to > GPL. This is an explicit step of removing one license and applying another > in accordance with the original licensing terms, rather than simply > removing one of two concurrent licenses. > > This way, in the remote chance that the hardware has revenue potential, I > can license it to some company or other under arbitrary (i.e. non-GPL) > terms, and it's all above-board, because the version I'm licensing is NOT > GPL and NEVER WAS. This also affords me the opportunity to work into the > license any necessary disclaimers pertaining to avoiding potential conflict > of interest with my work at Binghamton University, etc., etc. > > Now, just to be clear, just because I have LEGAL control doesn't mean I > have complete MORAL control. Sure, I'm probably going to end up writing > most of the code, but I have gotten design advice and other documentation > from other contributors to this project, and there will be lots of other > kinds of input, like from people synthesizing some GPU configuration for > standard cell and reporting back timing and energy info. This is still > morally public property, so it's not like I can just pocket the money. It > has to be invested in open hardware and software projects, and it's also my > job to ensure that this is done wisely. > > Let the endless discussion and paranoia begin. :) > > -- > Timothy Normand Miller, PhD > Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Binghamton University > http://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~millerti/<http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti> > Open Graphics Project > _______________________________________________ > Open-graphics mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics > List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com) -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Troy Benjegerdes 'da hozer' [email protected] Somone asked my why I work on this free (http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/) software & hardware (http://q3u.be) stuff and not get a real job. Charles Shultz had the best answer: "Why do musicians compose symphonies and poets write poems? They do it because life wouldn't have any meaning for them if they didn't. That's why I draw cartoons. It's my life." -- Charles Shultz _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
