Re: [racket-users] Re: Is it possible to sell commercial use rights to an open source Racket package?

2019-08-23 Thread Alexander Shopov 
The part "earning what other people are doing to earn money independently
using Racket." is interesting in itself - people may answer while you may
check presentations at RacketConf where there are comercial usages of
Racket.

Take my answer with a large pinch of salt but here is gist:
The DrRacket distribution is LGPL3 - you may use it, change it, distribute
it and distibute changes to it under LGPL i.e. every time you distribute it
you will have to provide the source (under same licence). You cannot impose
more obligations or weave obligations stemming from that.

Since Racket licence is LGPL you may distibute your modules that link to it
and there are basically no obligations for those modules. Those additional
modules may impose whatever conditions you want. Thus you might distribute
them in the binary format of Racket, you may distribute in source form -
and no matter what way you do the distribution you may demand payment for
whatever usage - commercial or not. You may prevent changes or distribution
of changes.

"enforcing" would have to be done via the court system - for example when
someone uses your modules in a way different from your license.

Now - what comprises linking (as different to 'derivative work') is a
convoluted matter. FSF site will be helpful in that yet the legal practice
may be different in different countries.

The sentence "the Racket license does not restrict you at all" means it
does not restrict your modules.
In a wider sense it also means that your usage of Racket is not restricted,
but distribution of Racket (AKA conveying) is a different matter (and there
are conditions on that)

Kind regards:
al_shopov

На пт, 23.08.2019 г. в 17:02 ч. Stephen De Gabrielle <
spdegabrie...@gmail.com> написа:

> Hi Sig,
>
> GNU provides they reason why not to use LGPL:
> https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
>
> Location licence in racket repository:
> https://github.com/racket/racket/blob/master/racket/src/COPYING_LESSER.txt
>
> - Github has a summary of what they think the meaning of LGPL is
> https://choosealicense.com/licenses/
>
> GNU also provides this; https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-java.html which
> I *believe* mirrors what is written at
> https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Stephen
>
>
> On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 10:25:02 PM UTC+9, sage wrote:
>>
>> --I believe this email was lost due to me not being subscribed to the
>> list last time I sent it. Sorry if this is a duplicate.
>>
>> Has someone tried to release an *open source* Racket project under a
>> license that enforces paid commercial use of that project? Light Googling
>> suggests this would be antithetical to the LGPL if not open source in
>> general, but https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html says "the
>> Racket license does not restrict you at all."
>>
>> I understand no replies here or any web page constitutes legal advice, so
>> please take my question in the spirit of respecting the LGPL's sublicensing
>> restrictions and learning what other people are doing to earn money
>> independently using Racket.
>>
>> *~slg*
>>
>>
>> --
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> 
> .
>

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Re: [racket-users] Re: Is it possible to sell commercial use rights to an open source Racket package?

2019-08-23 Thread Philip McGrath 
One issue you would encounter is that deciding what is a "commercial" use
can be difficult. This comes up with Creative Commons licenses (
https://creativecommons.org/faq/#does-my-use-violate-the-noncommercial-clause-of-the-licenses
):

> … there will always be uses that are challenging to categorize as
> commercial or noncommercial. CC cannot advise you on what is and is not
> commercial use.
>

CC has a 255-page study titled "Defining 'Noncommercial'" which they
clarify does not, in fact, define "noncommercial."

However, regardless of whether you *should* do this, I believe you can. The
LGPL governs your use of Racket itself in your product: it does not dictate
the terms of the license you use for your code (except that people must be
allowed to re-link your code with new/modified versions of Racket). I can
write programs in Racket and release them under the AGPL; someone else can
release their Racket programs under an entirely non-free proprietary
license. If you want to use a license to charge money only to "commercial"
users, you can find or create a license that (hopefully)  expresses your
intent. However, such a license would not meet the definition of "open
source" or free/libre software, due to "discrimination against fields of
endeavor" (https://opensource.org/osd).

(I am not a lawyer; this is just my understanding as a creator and user of
software.)

-Philip


On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 10:02 AM Stephen De Gabrielle <
spdegabrie...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Sig,
>
> GNU provides they reason why not to use LGPL:
> https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
>
> Location licence in racket repository:
> https://github.com/racket/racket/blob/master/racket/src/COPYING_LESSER.txt
>
> - Github has a summary of what they think the meaning of LGPL is
> https://choosealicense.com/licenses/
>
> GNU also provides this; https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-java.html which
> I *believe* mirrors what is written at
> https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Stephen
>
>
> On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 10:25:02 PM UTC+9, sage wrote:
>>
>> --I believe this email was lost due to me not being subscribed to the
>> list last time I sent it. Sorry if this is a duplicate.
>>
>> Has someone tried to release an *open source* Racket project under a
>> license that enforces paid commercial use of that project? Light Googling
>> suggests this would be antithetical to the LGPL if not open source in
>> general, but https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html says "the
>> Racket license does not restrict you at all."
>>
>> I understand no replies here or any web page constitutes legal advice, so
>> please take my question in the spirit of respecting the LGPL's sublicensing
>> restrictions and learning what other people are doing to earn money
>> independently using Racket.
>>
>> *~slg*
>>
>>
>> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Racket Users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
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> 
> .
>

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[racket-users] Re: Is it possible to sell commercial use rights to an open source Racket package?

2019-08-23 Thread Stephen De Gabrielle 
Hi Sig,

GNU provides they reason why not to use LGPL: 
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

Location licence in racket repository: 
https://github.com/racket/racket/blob/master/racket/src/COPYING_LESSER.txt

- Github has a summary of what they think the meaning of LGPL is 
https://choosealicense.com/licenses/ 

GNU also provides this; https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-java.html which I 
*believe* mirrors what is written at 
https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html
 
I hope this helps. 

Kind regards, 

Stephen


On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 10:25:02 PM UTC+9, sage wrote:
>
> --I believe this email was lost due to me not being subscribed to the list 
> last time I sent it. Sorry if this is a duplicate.
>
> Has someone tried to release an *open source* Racket project under a 
> license that enforces paid commercial use of that project? Light Googling 
> suggests this would be antithetical to the LGPL if not open source in 
> general, but https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html says "the 
> Racket license does not restrict you at all."
>
> I understand no replies here or any web page constitutes legal advice, so 
> please take my question in the spirit of respecting the LGPL's sublicensing 
> restrictions and learning what other people are doing to earn money 
> independently using Racket.
>
> *~slg*
>
>
>

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