Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Agner Fog]

On 28-02-2017 13:22, Carsten Agger wrote:


The ultimate goal of the free software movement is that *all* software 
should provide its users the four freedoms. Proprietary software 
should become a thing of the past. This is a lot to do with the wish 
for a free society - Stallman's analysis of the problem indicates that 
*iff* we choose to build our society and infrastructure on software, 
software freedom is a  necessary (but nor sufficient) condition for 
society to remain free. A *necessary* condition, to repeat myself.
Yes, we would all like to live in such an utopia. Unfortunately, this is 
not the way the world works today.
Most of the companies who pay for my software library are making 
proprietary software tailor made to fit some hardware produced by the 
same company for some very specific application. They may make their 
software freely downloadable or they may charge money for it, but they 
will not make it open source because this would give their competitors 
an advantage. I don't think we are benefiting any idealistic goal by 
turning these companies down and insisting on GPL only. On the contrary, 
this would open a market for a proprietary alternative to my library.


Now, if all software is to be free software, it obviously needs to 
come from somewhere. Large organisations need suppliers they can rely 
on to supply support and to develop custom software. From the very 
moment (2005) I took a serious interest in free software and 
understood that the state of GNU/Linux was such that it can 
conceivably be used everywhere and there's no need at all for Windows 
or other proprietary systems, I realized that for this to become true, 
political lobbying is not enough - we need companies to produce and 
support the software that everybody is going to need. Public ("open 
source") projects manned (more or less) by volunteers and funded (more 
or less) by NGO's can do a lot, but municipalities, goverment 
agencies, ministries, huge companies etc. need business levels of 
support and development of free software.


Thus, business models for co-op's and companies and NGO's supplying 
free software is sorely needed. Living off the charity of advertising 
companies and proprietary software vendors such as Google, IBM and 
Facebook (as many large projects do) is *not* going to be enough. So, 
business models are important, are needed and are *in no way* at odds 
with the ideals of free software.

I agree.

If free software projects that are capable of generating a surplus (like 
mine) could be used for supporting other projects that need money, this 
would benefit the general goal of free software. If only we could agree 
on a way to organize this.


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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Mirko Boehm - FSFE]

Hi!

> On 28 Feb 2017, at 10:11, Agner Fog  wrote:
> 
> Mirko Boehm wrote:
>> I cannot speak for FSFE, but I think the setup can be made simpler: Anybody 
>> can donate to FSFE. Just ask them to provide proof of the donation, and then 
>> you give them a license. This way you don’t need any kind of organisation, 
>> and no arrangement for handling money.
> Yes, but the FSF or FSFE still has to endorse such a scheme because the 
> donors will ask all kind of questions about license conditions, pro forma 
> invoices, and other technicalities.

FSFE hands out donation receipts. You can say “I will issue a proprietary 
license if you deliver a donation receipt from FSFE”. The donation receipt is 
sufficient for the accounting of the donor. That is what I meant when I tried 
to explain to use a setup that does not connect the donation to the license. 
The details are of course up to you.

> A scheme with selling proprietary license requires a unification of the 
> copyright. Who should own the copyright, me, FSF, or all contributors? I 
> would prefer to avoid such problems by making donation voluntary.

If you issue the proprietary licenses, *you* need to have permission to do so. 
Either the contributors assign that right to you (by granting you a license, 
for example) or somebody else (FSF(E)) can be the copyright fiduciary but would 
still have to grant you that right. The author remains the copyright owner, in 
most cases.

> Is it common to assign the copyright to FSF, even when FSF has nothing to do 
> with the project? I can see the advantage of unifying the copyright, but also 
> administrative burdens on FSF, and potentials for abuse.


I would not think this makes sense in such a scenario. If FSF denies you the 
right to hand out proprietary licenses, then what?

Cheers, 

Mirko.
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Paul Sutton]

>
> Is it common to assign the copyright to FSF, even when FSF has nothing
> to do with the project? I can see the advantage of unifying the
> copyright, but also administrative burdens on FSF, and potentials for
> abuse.
> ___


Maybe this helps with enforcement when people don't respect the GPL
license which seems to happen,  a letter from the FSF legal department
is backed by their own layers where as if you had to try and enforce it
yourself it could cost a lot of money in legal fees.

Paul
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Agner Fog]

On 27-02-2017 15:44, Paul Boddie wrote:

What would be interesting to see is an organisation that can invoice people
for spending money on Free Software which remains Free Software.

Yes, exactly. An organization to sell license exceptions to GPL software.

Do you think the FSF will endorse such a scheme? (I can't get access to
their mailing list even though I am a member).

If the software remains Free Software. If you're selling proprietary licences,
I'm pretty sure you'll be told what has already been said in this thread.

But what about a voluntary donation scheme?

Mirko Boehm wrote:
I cannot speak for FSFE, but I think the setup can be made simpler: 
Anybody can donate to FSFE. Just ask them to provide proof of the 
donation, and then you give them a license. This way you don’t need 
any kind of organisation, and no arrangement for handling money.
Yes, but the FSF or FSFE still has to endorse such a scheme because the 
donors will ask all kind of questions about license conditions, pro 
forma invoices, and other technicalities.


A scheme with selling proprietary license requires a unification of the 
copyright. Who should own the copyright, me, FSF, or all contributors? I 
would prefer to avoid such problems by making donation voluntary.


Is it common to assign the copyright to FSF, even when FSF has nothing 
to do with the project? I can see the advantage of unifying the 
copyright, but also administrative burdens on FSF, and potentials for abuse.

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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Mirko Boehm - FSFE]

Hi!

> On 27 Feb 2017, at 14:40, Agner Fog  wrote:
> 
> On 27-02-2017 11:06, Mirko Boehm (FSFE) wrote:
>> You will need permission/license from the other contributors to sell 
>> proprietary licenses.
>> You need a scheme that fairly distributes the licensing revenue so that it 
>> motivates people to contribute. You could pay out shares of the revenue to 
>> them, or you could make it a public service effort by donating a share or 
>> all of the proceeds to a organisation with aims that benefit the general 
>> public, for example FSFE.
>> A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) can be used to set up such a model. 
>> Usually, FSFE would not recommend using CLAs that enable proprietary 
>> licensing. However in your situation this is already the case, so in my 
>> understanding it would make your software more free (because others can 
>> contribute to it). Please be aware that this is not an official FSFE 
>> position.
> My initial idea was that proprietary users would automatically get a license 
> by donating a certain amount of money to some organization that supports free 
> software, such as FSF. But I understand from this discussion thread that the 
> policy of FSF or FSFE does not allow such a scheme. So I guess this will not 
> work. I don't want to put in a random charity organization because the 
> contributors might have different opinions about which organization to 
> support.

I cannot speak for FSFE, but I think the setup can be made simpler: Anybody can 
donate to FSFE. Just ask them to provide proof of the donation, and then you 
give them a license. This way you don’t need any kind of organisation, and no 
arrangement for handling money.

> So I guess the only solution is to use a more permissive license and let 
> proprietary software vendors use the library for free. Right now they are 
> actually paying, but this becomes too complicated if there is more than one 
> contributor to the software library.
> 
> I could still encourage commercial users to donate money to FSF or some other 
> organization, but I am not sure whether a voluntary scheme would work. The 
> commercial users want an invoice and a piece of paper that says "license". 
> Some even require that I register into their database of suppliers. Donation 
> to charity doesn't fit into their administrative routines, I guess. Or maybe 
> they can put it on their PR budget or their "Corporate Social Responsibility" 
> budget?
> 
> Do you think the FSF will endorse such a scheme? (I can't get access to their 
> mailing list even though I am a member).


As suggested, I would make the scheme consist of two mainly independent parts, 
where you don’t need approval between the two. 

Best,

Mirko.
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Paul Boddie]

On Monday 27. February 2017 14.40.50 Agner Fog wrote:
> 
> The commercial users want an invoice and a piece of paper that says
> "license". Some even require that I register into their database of
> suppliers. Donation to charity doesn't fit into their administrative
> routines, I guess. Or maybe they can put it on their PR budget or their
> "Corporate Social Responsibility" budget?

What would be interesting to see is an organisation that can invoice people 
for spending money on Free Software which remains Free Software. I remember a 
case where a municipality that gave a donation to a project was criticised 
(presumably by proprietary software shills) for doing so, but if some kind of 
umbrella organisation could be a supplier, certain forms of organisational 
entity (companies, municipalities, public organisations) would find it easier 
to pay for Free Software.

> Do you think the FSF will endorse such a scheme? (I can't get access to
> their mailing list even though I am a member).

If the software remains Free Software. If you're selling proprietary licences, 
I'm pretty sure you'll be told what has already been said in this thread.

Paul
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Agner Fog]

On 27-02-2017 11:06, Mirko Boehm (FSFE) wrote:


  * You will need permission/license from the other contributors to
sell proprietary licenses.
  * You need a scheme that fairly distributes the licensing revenue so
that it motivates people to contribute. You could pay out shares
of the revenue to them, or you could make it a public service
effort by donating a share or all of the proceeds to a
organisation with aims that benefit the general public, for
example FSFE.

A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) can be used to set up such a 
model. Usually, FSFE would not recommend using CLAs that enable 
proprietary licensing. However in your situation this is already the 
case, so in my understanding it would make your software more free 
(because others can contribute to it). Please be aware that this is 
not an official FSFE position.
My initial idea was that proprietary users would automatically get a 
license by donating a certain amount of money to some organization that 
supports free software, such as FSF. But I understand from this 
discussion thread that the policy of FSF or FSFE does not allow such a 
scheme. So I guess this will not work. I don't want to put in a random 
charity organization because the contributors might have different 
opinions about which organization to support.


So I guess the only solution is to use a more permissive license and let 
proprietary software vendors use the library for free. Right now they 
are actually paying, but this becomes too complicated if there is more 
than one contributor to the software library.


I could still encourage commercial users to donate money to FSF or some 
other organization, but I am not sure whether a voluntary scheme would 
work. The commercial users want an invoice and a piece of paper that 
says "license". Some even require that I register into their database of 
suppliers. Donation to charity doesn't fit into their administrative 
routines, I guess. Or maybe they can put it on their PR budget or their 
"Corporate Social Responsibility" budget?


Do you think the FSF will endorse such a scheme? (I can't get access to 
their mailing list even though I am a member).
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Mirko Boehm (FSFE)]

Hello, 

> On 25 Feb 2017, at 09:54, Agner Fog  wrote:
> 
> Hi, I have a problem with several open source projects. Neither GPL nor LGPL 
> license seems to be appropriate.
> 
> One such project is my C++ vector class library 
> (http://agner.org/optimize/#vectorclass 
>  )
> Right now, I am using a dual license system. The library is published under 
> GPL, following the advice at
> https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html 
> 
> 
> However, there is a significant demand for using this library in commercial 
> closed-source code. Therefore, I am selling commercial licenses to anybody 
> who want to use the library in commercial code.
> 
> Now, there is a problem with unifying the copyright. I want to put this code 
> on github and make it a collective project. But then I can no longer be the 
> only copyright owner. It is not fair that others should contribute to the 
> project for free while I make profit on selling licenses. We would have to 
> set up an organization to own the copyright and sell licenses. But the 
> administration cost of running such an organization would probably eat up all 
> the income. And open source programmers prefer to spend their time on 
> programming, not on administration of an organization.
> 
> An LGPL license is not possible because the program code that uses a class 
> library will be a "derived work", not a "combined work", and it is impossible 
> to meet the relinking requirement of LGPL. The application code and class 
> library code are mixed together and compiled together so that the two cannot 
> be separated.
> 
> An Apache or BSD license might be possible, but I don't think commercial 
> users like the requirement that the end product should include various 
> required notices. Also, I think these licenses are too permissive. I like the 
> protection against tivoization, DRM, and patent retaliation in GPL.
> 
> More importantly, people would have little motivation to contribute to an 
> open source library when their work only goes to somebody else's profit. The 
> motivation would be higher if the effort could somehow contribute to the 
> general goal of supporting free software. That's why I prefer the dual 
> license solution. The only problem is who should own the copyright and sell 
> commercial licenses?
> 
> I have asked the FSF, but they are not willing to sell licenses, and frankly 
> they are quite difficult to communicate with. That's why I am now taking the 
> discussion to FSFE. Is there any other suitable non-profit organization who 
> could be the copyright owner and sell licenses?
> 
> I have also thought about a scheme that requires no administration. You would 
> get a commercial license automatically by donating a certain amount of money 
> to some non-profit organization and posting proof of payment to some 
> repository. Would that work?
> 
> Or do we need a completely new license concept for open software libraries 
> and other code that is likely to be used in proprietary derived works? Any 
> suggestions?

The situation you are describing cannot easily be solved with a license alone. 
Your intention is to release copyleft free software that can also be used in 
proprietary environments. You already went with dual-licensing. This is a 
proven approach that models your intention better than using an 
academic/permissive software license. 

Opening up the project to other contributors means to introduce a conflict of 
interest, as you describe correctly. If the plan is to stay with copyleft 
licensing (which I would recommend, but that is a personal opinion), you will 
have to solve two problems:
You will need permission/license from the other contributors to sell 
proprietary licenses.
You need a scheme that fairly distributes the licensing revenue so that it 
motivates people to contribute. You could pay out shares of the revenue to 
them, or you could make it a public service effort by donating a share or all 
of the proceeds to a organisation with aims that benefit the general public, 
for example FSFE.
A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) can be used to set up such a model. 
Usually, FSFE would not recommend using CLAs that enable proprietary licensing. 
However in your situation this is already the case, so in my understanding it 
would make your software more free (because others can contribute to it). 
Please be aware that this is not an official FSFE position.

Hope this helps, 

Mirko.
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Agner Fog]

On 26-02-2017 19:48, Carsten Agger wrote:


If our business models never involve releasing under a proprietary 
license, we're not contributing to the proprietary software economy, 
and that's that. 
Acturally, we are contributing indirectly if an open source library is 
used in proprietary software.




Honestly, I think we should focus speculations on business model on 
providing software under free licenses. For that reason, I'm 
personally against the selling of exceptions.


Yes, we need to focus on how to finance open software. But to me, the 
word "business model" is at odds with the ideal of free software.



Whether an open source project needs funding, and whether a project is 
able to attract funding, is two different things. For example, some 
projects might raise money by selling support or custom features while 
other projects are unable to do so.
Software libraries can make money by selling license exceptions, but 
have no need for the money. That's why I want to redirect these money to 
some other projects that need them, but apparently we can't agree on how 
to do this.
Another thing: As a developer, I think the GPL is too restrictive a 
license for libraries. If I write a very small, nearly trivial, 
application based on a given library, I like having the option of 
placing it in the public domain or releasing it under the two-clause 
BSD license or any other free license that's not the GPL. For that 
reason, I believe I'd always place any library I write myself under 
the LGPL or similar.
I agree. But the LGPL works only for dynamic libraries (.dll or .so) 
because it has a requirement that the library can be relinked.


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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Carsten Agger]

On 02/26/2017 05:40 PM, Agner Fog wrote:

This is the best proposal so far. But it still nags me that this gives 
proprietary software vendors a free lunch when they are actually quite 
willing to pay, while the open source movement has so many financing 
problems. Here are some low-hanging fruits that we are not picking 
because we cannot agree how to organize it.


Business models is an interesting topic. Many companies use some sort of 
proprietary licensing to finance free software development. E.g. 
Collabora, who sell their support packages for LibreOffice with a 
proprietary binary so they can charge per seat. I'm not sure I think 
that practice is very compelling, I think they should rather call the 
support agreement a support agreement and charge per seat or however 
they want, and stuff the redundand concept of a proprietary binary 
consisting only of free software.


Honestly, I think we should focus speculations on business model on 
providing software under free licenses. For that reason, I'm personally 
against the selling of exceptions.


If our business models never involve releasing under a proprietary 
license, we're not contributing to the proprietary software economy, and 
that's that.


Another thing: As a developer, I think the GPL is too restrictive a 
license for libraries. If I write a very small, nearly trivial, 
application based on a given library, I like having the option of 
placing it in the public domain or releasing it under the two-clause BSD 
license or any other free license that's not the GPL. For that reason, I 
believe I'd always place any library I write myself under the LGPL or 
similar.

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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Agner Fog]

On 26-02-2017 10:50, Carsten Agger wrote:


But maybe Agner might consider using the Mozilla Public License 2.0? 
It differs from the GPL and LGPL in that


...

So changes to Agner's library would remain free software, but people 
can use it to build proprietary application which they supply in other 
files.
This is the best proposal so far. But it still nags me that this gives 
proprietary software vendors a free lunch when they are actually quite 
willing to pay, while the open source movement has so many financing 
problems. Here are some low-hanging fruits that we are not picking 
because we cannot agree how to organize it.


Florian Snow wrote:

What you might
want to consider is setting up a CLA that gives you the right to sell
exceptions as long as all the money from those sales goes to some
defined Free Software organization.  That way, you don't need to set up
your own organization, contributors have a guarantee that you won't do
random other stuff with their contributions and if you do, you lose
their contributions
This would in reality be a one man organization doing all the 
administration work, and everybody would have to trust me. And what 
would happen if I die or become unable to continue? It would also get me 
into tax problems.


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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Paul Boddie]

On Sunday 26. February 2017 08.01.00 Agner Fog wrote:
> 
> If we don't make a way for private companies to pay for GPL software
> libraries then we are forcing them to develop a proprietary alternative
> to the library. This would not be good for the promotion of open software.

We are not forcing them to do anything. And I believe that RMS made a few 
reasonable points on the broader topic in the following essay:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

Stallman even mentions Trolltech, who were a pertinent example of how you 
could have a model where proprietary software vendors pay for permission to 
use what would otherwise be Free Software in those vendors' own proprietary 
software. As far as I remember, those vendors lost any privileges they might 
have had to modify the software under the Free Software terms accepted by 
everyone else. (Even if they didn't, they weren't getting something they could 
do absolutely anything with, as if they had bought permission to completely 
ignore the normal licensing.)

This could be tolerated because the company selling the licences held the 
copyright exclusively and because most of the developers worked for the 
company. Bring in other people and you *do* start to have the issue of what 
their contributions are worth. (You can say that those people can commit to 
not getting paid themselves because the money would go to a non-profit or a 
"good cause", but those people may still have an opinion about whether the 
pricing is appropriate or not and whether the actual recipients of the money 
are getting paid enough.)

[...]

> Allow me to repeat my initial idea:
> > I have also thought about a scheme that requires no administration.
> > You would get a commercial license automatically by donating a certain
> > amount of money to some non-profit organization and posting proof of
> > payment to some repository. Would that work?

I imagine that many people contributing to a copyleft-licensed project would 
not be too happy with this, if the licensing itself were one of the factors 
that motivated them to choose that project to contribute to, instead of 
choosing to contribute to a permissively-licensed project of a similar nature 
instead.

I wouldn't be happy about it at all. It would be like someone being able to 
claim that the rules don't apply to them because they have money. That the 
little people who choose the terms of their contributions and who ask that 
those terms be respected can simply be "bought". I know that this is how 
things tend to go on in the wider world, but I don't see why Free Software 
developers should choose to encourage it.

I suggest that you read (or familiarise yourself again with) discussions about 
contributor licensing agreements and what people don't tend to like about 
them.

Paul
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Florian Snow]

Hi,

I think you may just need to add additional permissions to the the GPL
which it specifically allows for.  However, you need to contact a lawyer
to figure out the details because I cannot give you legal advice and I
am not even sure that your assumptions about the requirement of the LGPL
apply in your case because I don't know the details.  In any case, there
are plenty of licenses out there and since you can always grant
additional permissions, you can have any degree of copyleft/other
conditions that you could possibly want and that way, you don't
sacrifice license compatibility.

>From a more general perspective, I can tell you this: What you might
want to consider is setting up a CLA that gives you the right to sell
exceptions as long as all the money from those sales goes to some
defined Free Software organization.  That way, you don't need to set up
your own organization, contributors have a guarantee that you won't do
random other stuff with their contributions and if you do, you lose
their contributions.  Perhaps you can specify a fallback license so
people can still use the project as a whole under the free license in
that case.  Again, you will need a lawyer to help you draft such a CLA.
This CLA will make some people not want to contribute, but with your
plan, that is something you need to live with.  As variant of that model
would be to have all developers agree on a case by case basis.  There
may not even be that many contributors to make that difficult.  The
alternative is just a plain Free Software license where the inbound
license equals the outbound license which is pretty much a community
consensus for many projects according to Fontana.

I think you are trying to support Free Software here with a business
model that is really just on the border of being ok.  I'm not even sure
that it is an acceptable business model.  The FSF does not even have any
member projects that they sell exceptions for, so I am not surprised
about them not being able to help you.  The FSFE also does not do any
business of that kind because the FSFE is not about writing software,
but about educating the public about Free Software.  Perhaps you can
contact one of the umbrella organizations for Free Software projects and
see if they are interested.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Florian Snow]

Hi,


Carsten Agger  writes:
> But maybe Agner might consider using the Mozilla Public License 2.0?
> It differs from the GPL and LGPL in that
> * it is a strong copyleft

I would argue that the MPL is weak copyleft because of its file-based
nature.

Happy hacking!
Florian
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Carsten Agger]

On 02/26/2017 10:09 AM, Simon Hornbachner wrote:

Honestly, I don't think you'll find one, for the reasons I mentioned
earlier. For any NPO with the main goal to protect and strengthen Free
Software, buying yourself out of the need to comply with the GPL would
just be inherently at odds with their core mission.

I understand that telling proprietary vendors to either "deal with" the
GPL or go away feels like a waste of ressources and opportunity, but I
honestly believe that any other position leads us down a very very
slippery slope that in the end will not lead to more free software, but
a weaker, watered-down version of copyleft that I personally wouldn't
want.




IANAL and I'm unaware of the finer legal intricacies that might apply.

But maybe Agner might consider using the Mozilla Public License 2.0? It 
differs from the GPL and LGPL in that


* it is a strong copyleft
* it applies on a per file basis, meaning that only files that you 
actually changed are affected by the copyleft.


Thus it's permitted to build a proprietary application (a derived work, 
I believe it would be) which uses the MPL library - any changes to the 
library itself, indeed to any files covered by the MPL, need to be 
distributed under the MPL.


So changes to Agner's library would remain free software, but people can 
use it to build proprietary application which they supply in other files.


Best
Carsten

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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Simon Hornbachner]

Ahoy hoy,

first of all, I understand your desire to engage with proprietary
vendors in a more nuanced way than to just tell them "If you don't like
the GPL, just go away." However, such an approach does come with
certain problems and controversies.
Most importantly, you create a conflict of interest for the receiving
organization where their financial success is at odds with
strengthening Copyleft software. Bradley Kuhn puts it very good in his
recent Keynote[0] at FOSDEM, where he says
„At this point, we would get paid to just look the other way.“
The whole presentation is a very good listen regarding copyleft,
copyleft defense and freedom VS popularity of your code.

Agner Fog  wrote:
> I have asked the FSF, but they are not willing to sell licenses, and
> frankly they are quite difficult to communicate with. That's why I am
> now taking the discussion to FSFE. Is there any other suitable
> non-profit organization who could be the copyright owner and sell
> licenses?
Honestly, I don't think you'll find one, for the reasons I mentioned
earlier. For any NPO with the main goal to protect and strengthen Free
Software, buying yourself out of the need to comply with the GPL would
just be inherently at odds with their core mission.

I understand that telling proprietary vendors to either "deal with" the
GPL or go away feels like a waste of ressources and opportunity, but I
honestly believe that any other position leads us down a very very
slippery slope that in the end will not lead to more free software, but
a weaker, watered-down version of copyleft that I personally wouldn't
want.

Best, Simon

[0]https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/copyleft_defense/
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Re: A dual license system for code libraries?

[Agner Fog]

On 25-02-2017 18:49, Paul Boddie wrote:

On Saturday 25. February 2017 15.43.54 you wrote:

Don't get me wrong. It is not my goal to make money. My goal is to make
free software libraries.

But it is still like asking for business advice, because many of the issues
are exactly like structuring the interests in a business. I mentioned the
matter of assessing shares in a project, and this is the kind of thing that
platforms like Gratipay explicitly avoid because it is a difficult problem
I certainly want to avoid that too. Distributing money among 
contributers to a project would be a nightmare.


Again: I don't want to make money. I want companies that make profit 
from an open source library to contribute something back to the 
free/open software movement. The money could go to some other project 
that needs it or to FSF or some other non-profit organization.


If we don't make a way for private companies to pay for GPL software 
libraries then we are forcing them to develop a proprietary alternative 
to the library. This would not be good for the promotion of open software.



projects like PostgreSQL are permissively licensed, but they do have
companies operating in their community that do fund the development of such
projects. The issue here is whether those companies contribute enough back to
the project or not.
Intel is contributing a lot of work to the Gnu project. But their 
motivation is to serve their own interests, making sure Gnu software 
works optimally on Intel processors. Intel's competitors cannot afford 
to contribute as much, so the result is that Gnu software might perform 
less optimally on AMD and VIA processors. I think this kind of industry 
contribution is problematic.



Allow me to repeat my initial idea:
I have also thought about a scheme that requires no administration. 
You would get a commercial license automatically by donating a certain 
amount of money to some non-profit organization and posting proof of 
payment to some repository. Would that work?
Any suggestions for worthy organizations that would be happy to receive 
this money?
It has to be organizations or projects that somehow contribute to free 
software or digital freedom. Anything else would probably be too 
controversial.


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