poisondart wrote: [John J. Lee:] >>Secondly, do you think it's a bad thing for anybody to sell software >>that makes use of the *concepts* in your code (provided that the use >>of those concepts is not restricted by financial or other legal >>means)? If so, why? >> >>John > > To be honest. I'm not sure. The knowledge that I learnt was all given > to me freely, I just consolidated it into these programs. I feel that > it would be unfair that along this chain of knowledge passing, one > person decided to exploit the free system and harbour his knowledge for > profit.
You can't copyright concepts and ideas. If someone wants to make commercial use of the knowledge, he can do so, and no license of yours can stop him. What you can copyright is your expression of that knowledge in code. So let's be a little clearer about exactly the actions that you can forbid: the redistribution of *your code*. Not the use of the knowledge contained therein. Your choice of license can't affect the issues you seem to be basing your decision on. As one academic to another, I am asking you to consider using an authentic Open Source license rather than one that forbids commercial redistribution (I don't think you've answered my question, yet, about whether you want to forbid commercial *use* as well, but I'm against that, too). You have every right to require that people redistributing your code to not profit thereby, but with an Open Source license, you have the opportunity to join a broader, more vibrant community. My experience with no-commercial-whatever academic projects is that they almost never develop a real community of code. The initial developer is the only developer, and the project languishes. Having a real Open Source license, especially one of the copyleft licenses like the GPL, encourages users to use the code, improve it, and gift the improvements back to the community. You end up with a community of people freely contributing their expertise to the world. That's a lot more than what you alone could provide. But you can get the process started. -- Robert Kern [EMAIL PROTECTED] "In the fields of hell where the grass grows high Are the graves of dreams allowed to die." -- Richard Harter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
