Which DUAL Licence should I choose.

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

It is interesting the assumption that even mild disagreement with F/LOSS
concepts is a result of lack of understanding and thinking.  As opposed to
understanding and deciding that not all use cases are a good fit for FLOSS
licensing...or unethical for being so.

While charging for software products may not be the only way to make money
on software, it is a/the dominant one and highly effective.  There is also
middle ground between proprietary and F/LOSS.  OSI can concede that
territory or not but CC has elected to embrace it and I think to good
benefit to their commons even with some legal nebulosity of the NC clause.

I would disagree with your assertion that nearly all software is source
available and presumably that you think that source available under
non-commercial terms has no merit.  Perhaps because I'm in a more academic
environment that I view this differently.  As we are a non-profit lab that
does research there's more code out there for us to leverage than for most
corporate developers.

You might note that the NC clause doesn't cause much conceptual confusion
in the CC world. Creations are shared on a spectrum of rights to both
sides of the OSI domain (more "free" given that they have a public domain
dedication and I don't recall that we do and less "free" with the NC
clause).

It's highly amusing to me that discussing licenses of even near peers
(academic/non-commercial open/shared source) is considered off topic by
some members.  That said, I'm not all that huge on advocacy and I'm not a
big proponent of using CC for software anyway.  So I'm more than willing
to drop CC and NC licenses as a topic.

I do wish we could as easily choose from a full spectrum of licenses as
they do and have plain english explanations of our rights and
responsibilities under those terms.  As another benefit the CC doesn't
have a problem with license proliferation that we do and their license
interaction complexities appear no worse than ours.

Regards,

Nigel

On 8/8/11 12:28 PM, "Russell McOrmond" <russellmcormond at gmail.com> wrote:

>On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Tzeng, Nigel H. <Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu>
>wrote:
>> Is it really so hard for us to be mildly inclusive?  As I stated in my
>> original post, once you step outside accepted Open Source dogma you're
>>on
>> your own...you two guys don't even want to point folks in the right
>> direction.
>
>  Those of us that have spent the time to think about and understand
>the benefits of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) don't
>consider this a matter of being "inclusive".  I would consider it bad
>advise to have something where the source code is available for some
>people to look at and use for some restricted purposes (Which is true
>of most software, including Microsoft Windows, by the way), but that
>doesn't offer any of the freedoms that make the free/libre market of
>FLOSS work.   It only confuses an already complex relationship between
>community, law and commerce to be unclear about what it is we are and
>are not talking about.
>
>  I would also consider it bad advise to suggest that the only way one
>can make money from software is to restrict the freedoms of the users
>of the software and/or charge monopoly rents (royalties).  Recognizing
>this is an important step to understanding how FLOSS works and is
>thriving.   Some suggest that restrictions on software freedom is
>solely a matter of ethics, but there are many like myself that
>consider it to be bad for business as well.
>
>  It is unhelpful to call something where the source is available
>(which is true for nearly all software) "open source" and that
>software using licensing that adheres to the OSI principles as "Open
>Source".   It only serves to confuse people who need help in
>understanding these complexities, not a hindrance.
>
>  I don't think it is a matter of "dogma" to suggest that a long
>discussion of non-FLOSS licensing is off topic for a forum called
>"License Discuss @ OpenSource.org".  I believe as a matter of being
>polite to those who wish to be at least close to on topic for this
>thread to no longer be copied to this list.  Those wishing to discuss
>non-FLOSS licensing know the email addresses of the other
>participants, and can do so in a Cc: list that doesn't copy this list.
>
>-- 
>Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
>Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property
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>
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