IPL as a burden

[kmself at ix.netcom.com]

on Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 01:36:11PM -0500, Lou Grinzo (lgrinzo at stny.rr.com) wrote:
> What about dual-licensing?  Can a company say, "this tool is free and
> distributed under the GPL, but only for creating free software; if you want
> to sell your software you have to pay for a license and get it under our
> normal close-source license"?  Or would that violate the GPL and/or OSI
> guidelines?

Cf:  Troll Tech's Qt libraries?

OSI Certified Open Source applies to _licenses_, not _software_.  This
is slightly different from the FSF's definition of free software, which
applies to software.  The mapping of both definitions onto software is
very similar, though not identical.  What is commonly called "public
domain" (Larry tells me there's no such beast until copyright expiry)
is, for example, FSF free software, but not OSI Open Source.

The free software license, if it met the OSD, and was available without
prejudice to all comers, should satisfy the OSI's requirements.
Alternative licensing terms, applying, again, without prejudice to all
comers for other than free software use shouldn't IMO effect this.

> I'm not asking this in an attempt to be a devil's advocate.  I thought
> this was OK, but this thread now has me wondering if my assumption was
> wrong or if there's some reason why using different licenses with
> different customers isn't a viable solution for the company in
> question.

Frankly, my recommendation to them would be either to create a gated
community along the lines of Sun's Java efforts and some of the Collab
projects, forgoing the lable of OSI Certified Open Source, or work out a
dual licensing scheme as we're discussing here.  Intentions appear to be
for source distribution but not fully free terms.  Their problem appears
to be a desire for rivalrous simultaneous confectionary consumptive
activities.  Cake, have, eat, not.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>    http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?       There is no K5 cabal
  http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/         http://www.kuro5hin.org
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