Are implicit dual-licensing agreements inherently anti-open?

[Alex Bligh]

Michael,

--On 22 July 2005 15:37 -0700 Michael Bernstein <webmaven at cox.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 2005-07-22 at 22:57 +0100, Alex Bligh wrote:
>> >
>> > But making it hard to merge or forking doesn't stop the ID from
>> > becoming a complete freeloader on the community
>>
>> What would they freeload on if code was not contributed or impossible
>> to merge?
>
> Situation 1: impossible to merge. They can make a proprietary version of
> the forked project. Forking does not allow the community to escape from
> the bad-faith ID.

Yes, but if subsequent contributions are impossible to merge (perhaps
because of the fork), then they are of no use to the ID because they are
(by assumption) impossible to merge. Thus at the point where contributions
become impossible to merge, freeloading by the ID stops. Of course in
reality this would be a gradual rather than a binary process.

Alex