2009/10/20 Richard Gaskin <ambassa...@fourthworld.com> > > How viable is a dual license scheme if one hopes to derive revenue from > licensees? And how exactly does one go about it? >
That's exactly what I've proposed Richard! It's fairly straight forwards, I've checked it with the FOSS people in Europe, but have a few twists to make it work a little simpler and more flexibly. Simply put the GPL license a sused on an interpreted language virally affects the openness of the script, and does not have implications for the engine. What this means in practice is that GPL licensed Rev code can be used freely by anyone, but not compiled into a protected stack. As such all RevTalk scripts distributed as part of an app should be made publicly available, including any libraries or code supplied by the developer - this encourages the feedback to the community. However, a developer wishing to have full access to the code and to release protected applications, can do so by taking out a commercial (dual license). The business model I am proposing, is that the collectively owned organisation would license this code for an annual fee entitling access to all the communities code in closed commericial applications. This money woud go into a central bank account, and be redistributed to developers working on open source project deemed to be of importance to the community. It is important that this is a legal entity, not just for fund raising issues, but also for licensing reasons. In order to release all code dual licensed it helps if there is one copyright holder, and this copyright holder should be collectively owned and empowered to create commercial licenses to the benefit of the community. The Parnership structure I am proposing protects this as it is based on Partnership law of one partner one vote, and allows informal agreements (such as those signed off on the web site) to be taken into account by the judge - thus offering a more flexible and lower cost option as compared to traditional contract based licensing. Happy now Richmond :) _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution