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Hi David,
You will note that all stacks in the education gallery (<http://
revolution.lexicall.org/stacks_education.php>) are licensed under a
similar share-alike license.
I attended a workshop on digital rights management a few months ago.
Interestingly, it was there recommended to drop the non commercial
unless you have good reasons to do so. Under a share alike commercial
license, any person who makes use of your code in a commercial
application is expected to make its source code available to the
community. That's all benefits for the community at large, commercial
and noncommercial.
Currently, the discussion is centered on an opposition between free
and commercial. That's not the point. You can make you application
open source and still require the payment of a license for the use of
the compiled application. Nothing prevents you from make a very
comfortable living out of your participation in open source projects.
The point of open source is about allowing others to re-use your
code. Some commercial users may see it as a threat for their
business. This is an error, I believe. By re-using some code rather
than write an application from scratch, commercial developers can
lower their license fees. In a sense, a move to open licenses could
bring similar benefits than apple's move with iTune. Rather than ask
customers to pay £20 for a full album, you propose them to pay £1 for
the song you really want... and people all around the world spend
more money buying songs one by one than they would have when having
to pay £20 for an album with many tracks (features) they didn't
really want (apparently even more money is spent on cheap ringtones
than on music).
Open Source is not necessarily a threat to commercial developers.
There will always be users who don't have the skills, desire or time
to hack open source code. I liked Dan's answer to "why are we always
creating another version of the same thing"... like we are always
creating another version of the same sentence or the another version
of the same painting. Phrases and paintings have been produced for
centuries. Yet, people still make a living from being a writer or an
artist. Yet, though pencils and papers are about free and easy to
reuse and many many books exist to teach me how to paint, I am
completely crap at it and will never be able to make a living out of
any artwork I may produce. When I want to decorate my home, I don't
go and buy brushes and canvas... I go and buy a nice painting
produced by some skilled artist.
I don't believe the open source movement will kill the market. It
will probably create new needs rather than answer all the ones
computer users may have. Amateurs and Hobbyists will never be able to
answer these needs as well as gifted programmers.
Likewise, I don't believe commercial developers are a threat to the
open source movement. So why not change the license to Share alike
rather than Share alike-Non commercial?
Marielle
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Marielle Lange (PhD), Psycholinguist
Alternative emails: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Homepage
http://homepages.lexicall.org/mlange/
Easy access to lexical databases http://lexicall.org
Supporting Education Technologists http://
revolution.lexicall.org
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