Real-World Copyright Assignment

Greg Herlein gherlein at herlein.com
Wed Jun 20 15:44:49 UTC 2001


> > you are free, my code is free; if you are commercial, my code is
> > commercial?"
> 	[DJW:]  I believe that this would violate the definition
> 	of "open source" used on this mailing list, but the Kermit
> 	licence might be an example of such a (non-open source)
> 	licence.

OK, maybe I need some education on the current definitions in
vogue.  However, from my perspective, if a body of code is
licensed in such a way that it can be linked to other open source
code freely provided that all that code is also released, then
that's still open source.  Requiring altrernative licensing
arrangements if my code is to be linked to code that is not open
- that does not seem like a violation of "open source" at all to
me.

The goal, as I have defined it for my project, is that if you
want to use my libraries in your project and your project is open
source code - ie, the code is available for inspection and
derivation, and no commercial fees are charged for derivative
works - then I want my code to be free for your use - ie, the
code is available for inspection and derivation, and no
commercial fees are charged for derivative works.  However, if
you want to keep your code closed - for whatever reason - or
charge for the right to derive from your code, then you must make
alternative (commercial) arrangments with me.

Surely I cannot be the only person wanting to thread this needle.

My questions relate to the PRACTICAL way to go about doing
this.  It's all well and good to talk about it and have these
goals, but how does one actually translate that to the real
world?

Greg




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