Dual licensing

[Sam Barnett-Cormack]

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Marius Amado Alves wrote:

> The SDC Conditions v. 2 breach exactly clause 6 of the OSD (*). If
> "proprietary" is the right term to describe (informally) a 9/10 open
> source license, then OK, the SDC Conditions v. 2 are proprietary.
>
> BTW, that's a technicality that I believe can be solved. That is, it is
> possible to revise the SDC Conditions, or make a new license, that does
> not breach clause 6, and still implements the SDC philosophy--which is
> NOT "proprietary".
>
> One way to do it is simply to elliminate the distinction between
> commercial and non-commercial, and charge everybody. The reason I don't
> want do go that way, is because I want to offer the software gratis to
> certain uses, e.g. academic. In my opinion this scenario clearly reveals
> a drawback of (the strong interpretation of) OSD clause 6--but please
> this is just a fool's opinion, don't pay any attention :-)
> ______
> (*) And this only under a certain 'strong' interpretation of clause 6,
> namely one whereby "restrict" includes "requiring a fee".

Requiring a fee for use is certainly a restriction. It's open source if
you charge someone a fee, but they can pass it on without anyone having
to pay anyone anything - but if such second-hand recipients have to pay
the original licensor money, it's not Open Source - by the letter and
spirit of the definition.

-- 

Sam Barnett-Cormack
--
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