Dual licensing

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

I am a little puzzled as to the controversy.  I attended a law conference
recently where a Microsoft attorney spoke on a panel identified as "open
source software." As odd as that was since there were no members of the open
source community on the panel, Microsoft's long list of legal risks warning
others away from developing open source software did not include the FUD
that the software cannot be sold. In fact on that point I thought Microsoft
accurately acknowledged that open source software can be sold successfully
through a dual licensing model. Is there really any genuine doubt that this
is occurring?

- Rod


: Marius Amado Alves <amado.alves at netcabo.pt> writes:
:
: > For the 100000th time someone is trying to say that you can sell open
: > source software. Some people including myself sustain that you can't,
: > in practice. (That is, you can charge, and even sell a couple of
: > copies, but you'll be out of business the next day, when someone
: > starts giving copies for peanuts.) I asked the questions I did for two
: > possibilities:
:
: That is a convincing reason why there is a cap on profits you can make
: by selling open source software.  If your profits get too high,
: somebody will undercut you on price.  However, it is not a reason for
: why you can not sell open source software at all.
:
:
: Again, this is beside the point of whether you can reasonably describe
: non-open-source software as "commercial open source."  I maintain that
: you can not.
:
: Ian
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:

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