support requirement

[Seth David Schoen]

bruce at perens.com writes:

> Vendor X plans on releasing software as Open Source. X makes a number
> of very interesting and useful research-derived programs, and also runs
> an ISO-9000-certified software development shop. Their ISO certification
> requires that they run only supported programs, and thus the development
> shop is prohibited from running the output of their own research
> department. Thus, one of X's _main_goals_ in making the software Open
> Source is that commercial vendors pick it up and _provide_support_ for it.
> 
> Thus, their license requires that if you distribute a derived work of their
> program _and_ you provide support on reasonably comparable programs,
> that you provide support for their program too. The provision has no effect
> on organizations like Debian that don't provide support.
> 
> This is currently the stumbling block for X's license being Open Source.
> Any ideas, folks?

They could approach individual companies that might be interested in doing
supported derived works and try to work something out in advance.  For
instance, they could tell their favorite ISV or consulting house that they
will provide source code for something, and _promise_ to purchase a support
contract on certain terms if that firm will offer one.

Assuming that the contract is big enough, I imagine many companies could be
interested in a proposition like that.

It's still a really desirable goal to keep as much complexity as possible
out of free software licenses.  If a company has a particular business goal
in releasing free software, it's much nicer if it can get the assurances
it wants through side contracts rather than license provisions.

-- 
                    Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>
      They said look at the light we're giving you,  /  And the darkness
      that we're saving you from.   -- Dar Williams, "The Great Unknown"
  http://ishmael.geecs.org/~sigma/  (personal)  http://www.loyalty.org/  (CAF)