Dual licensing

[Sam Barnett-Cormack]

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

> Ian, you've been most helpful, and it's a pity you thing I'm trolling
> now. My point was: provide, license, seem to equate in practice (in the
> case of open source). You have not contested this. But it's ok. I'm not
> trolling, but I'm not making a big issue of it either. Let it be.

He has contested it - they mean entirely different things. Let me
illustrate.

The author gives me a copy of the software. He has *provided* it - I may
or may not have paid. At this point, I have a legally optained copy of
the software, and may use it.

Then I want to give someone else a copy. I have no legal right to do
this, so I implicitly accept the offered terms of the GPL (for example)
when I do so. The product is then licensed. The important part is that
it is *licensed* (this point) at no cost.

That is to say, it costs me no more to be able to
distribute/modify/whatever than it does to just get it. And that when I
do distribute/modify/whatever, I determine the cost to the person I give
it to, and keep any money I receive. If I had to give a share of this
money to an upstream licensor, this would actually be, effectively, a
license fee - in order to be licensed to distribute my modified copy, I
have to pay a per-copy fee.

-- 

Sam Barnett-Cormack
--
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