Licensing Model: open downstream apps or proprietary license

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Mitchell Baker <Mitchell at osafoundation.org> writes:

> The Open Source Applications Foundation (http://www.osafoundation.org)
> is planning the 0.1 release of Chandler (a personal information
> manager) shortly, hopefully by the end of April.  OSAF's plan of
> record for licensing is to follow the model used by MySQL:  recipients
> must either (a) make their entire application available under the GPL
> or other approved open source license, or (b) get a commercial license
> from OSAF.  I'm very interested in the thinking of this group about
> this model.  The plan is reasonably firm but not set in stone, so I'd
> appreciate hearing about potential pitfalls as well as benefits.

I think the discussion might be more focused if you say what your
goals are.  Then we can compare the licensing plan to those goals.

If your goal is to be the dominant PIM on free software platforms,
then copying MySQL's licensing seems reasonable.

It's worth noting that MySQL is only mildly useful by itself, and is
normally part of a larger application.  I would have thought that a
PIM would be quite useful by itself, and would not normally be part of
a larger application.  So focusing on forcing people to release their
entire application may miss the point.  Or, more likely, I have missed
the point.

Ian
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3