Dual licensing

No Spam nospam at pixelglow.com
Mon Jun 14 02:57:58 UTC 2004


All, esp. Sam:

It irks me that some companies or individuals could use open-source software for profit under "internal use", and not pay the original author. Under open source, I then have two choices:

1. Offer the software for free under GPL. Then if no-one redistributes it but uses it internally, I lose the revenue stream from the proprietary license.

2. Offer the software for a price (Ian's model) under BSD. The high price keeps the recipients honest and helps ameliorate the dilution of income due to any redstribution. However, I lose the try-before-you-buy and open-sharing aspects of the open source development model, and would probably be difficult to make competitive, price-wise, in non-niche markets.

Cheers,
Glen Low, Pixelglow Software
www.pixelglow.com

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