Hi James,
From a pure legal point of view, GPL should be sufficient. A company
that don't
respect GPL will probably not respect those new statements.
Regarding the Vista certification requirements costs, maybe an idea is to make
people/compagnies donating before downloading the Vista certified driver.
People who don't want a certified driver, either because they don't have Vista
or they don't want to have a certified driver(meaning the click on
"yes" is not
that annoying for them), would still have the right to.
Finally, Openvpn is not the first nor the last opensource project facing
problems with redistribution statements. Maybe the Free Software Foundation is
a well placed actor to discuss with.
Keep up your excellent work James!
Didier
Quoting James Yonan <j...@yonan.net>:
As always, it's a challenge to maintain a popular project such as
OpenVPN on a shoestring, and I'd like to thank everyone who has made a
contribution thus far.
The Windows TAP driver is becoming more expensive to support, especially
with the new Vista driver signing requirements. I plan to jump through
the hoops so that the Windows TAP driver will be fully signed for Vista,
however this comes at a recurring cost, and I am considering ways that
the OpenVPN project can offset these and other costs by increasing its
sources of revenue.
The Windows TAP driver has always been dual-licensed by OpenVPN
Solutions LLC, with the GPL license for free usage, and a paid
commercial license for companies that don't want to be restricted by the
terms of the GPL, or that want to package the TAP driver in commercial
software. One method I'm considering to help increase project revenue,
but in a way that won't affect the vast majority of OpenVPN users, is to
change the dual-licensing terms for the 2.1 Windows TAP driver, so that
the free license would explicitly not allow commercial redistribution.
This would mean that companies that package the Windows version of
OpenVPN or the Windows TAP driver into a commercial product or service
would now need to obtain a paid commercial license. Keep in mind that
the terms of the GPL already restrict commercial redistribution of GPL
and non-GPL code, and most companies that want to do so already must
obtain a commercial license, however I'm proposing to make the
delineation between the free and paid licenses more legally precise, and
centered on whether or not commercial redistribution is occurring.
This is just a proposal at this point, and I would like feedback from
the community. Is this a reasonable idea for funding the project?
Comments appreciated.
James
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