Choosing the right license

[Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.]

On selling software, From section 1 of the GNU GPL:

"1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code
as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and
disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this
License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of
the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you
may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee."

----- Original Message -----
From: "Philipp Guehring" <p.guehring at futureware.at>
To: <license-discuss at opensource.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2000 5:25 PM
Subject: Re: Choosing the right license


> Am Don, 02 Nov 2000 schrieben Sie:
> > On Thu, Nov 02, 2000 at 11:02:59AM +0000, David Johnson wrote:
> > >
> > > If the license forbids charging customers for any service that is
theirs to
> > > provide then it will have a very tough time being approped as either
OSS or
> > > FS. To translate your wishes another way, you want "to make it
difficult for
> > > Redhat to include your software on its distribution".
> >
> > That's not the goal. What I want to do is to make it unpalatable for
> [...]
>
> > Any ideas?
>
> I would go it another way.
> Do not make it difficult to want money for a service. Make it difficult to
take
> the users their rights to the data away.
>
> I would put it under the GPL, and include as many possibilities for the
users
> to get their data out of the system if they want it. Create the interfaces
for
> the user that they can download all the data, and use it on their own
computer.
> Please do not forbid the hosting of it on an ASP, because I think ASP´s
are
> somehow the future for several kinds of applications. And I do not think
that
> you have the environment to be the ASP for all those people. Well, just as
> Redhat is currently providing the things on media and for download, I
guess
> that there will be companies who will provide ASPs, on a similar open
strategy.
> But they will just use your component, and so I guess that it´s on you to
> include the interfaces for the customer to download the data, because the
ASP
> will not do it in a special way. On the other side, I guess that all the
> different applications will have different file formats (XML based, or
not), so
> it will be on every application on its own to provide those data
interfaces.
>
> I think selling software is not necessarily evil, so do not forbid
selling.
> The GPL for instance explicitly says that anyone can sell GPL software,
and it
> is a GOOD thing to do that. Simply because having it under the GPL somehow
> automatically creates a somehow fair market, I guess. (Simply because
everyone
> can have it for free, so you really have to deliver something worth the
price)
>
>
> --
> ~ Philipp Gühring              p.guehring at poboxes.com
> ~ http://www.futureware.at/       ICQ UIN: 6588261
> ~ "Hat du Abkürzungen, mut du *Quick nehmen!"
>