Which DUAL Licence should I choose.

[Chris Travers]

Here's my take on it.

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 6:59 AM, Tzeng, Nigel H. <Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu> wrote:
> Non-commercial open source licenses predate or coincide with the
> development of what we now call Open Source licenses (mostly, I presume in
> academia).  They may not be Open Source but they are still open source (as
> in code is available).

No concern there.  These are forms of shareware licenses.  However, as
soon as you go into dual-licensing approaches or non-commercial
shareware licenses, you lose a major advantage that open source has to
offer.  As with all software, making money depends on the community,
and open source isn't unique here.  Where open source is unique is in
how it attempts to address how money can be made by ensuring that the
means of production are in fact distributed to everyone.

>
> As far as whether this actually meets the OP's desires, my impression was
> that he didn't much care if individuals used his code for private projects
> but if companies wanted to use his code he'd like them to pay for a
> license.
>
> That strikes me as a common theme among many independent software
> developers that make up the bulk of non-corporate open source
> contributors.  This is also why CC contains a non-commercial option for
> content creators: Fairness.

Basically this gets you onto two sides of a division:  On one side are
the Capitalists* who say "I produced this, and it is used to produce
other things.  I want to control it and you have to pay me."  On the
other side are the Distributists** who say "Here take the means of
production and built YOUR business with it.  My business will prosper
more by seeing yours do well."

* in the sense of means of production owned by a very few, with others
employed by the owners
** in the sense of means of production owned widely, and thus
encouraging more, smaller businesses

So the question is who owns* the means of production, no more and no
less.  Is it just the original author (the license fee model) or is it
every Tom Dick, and Harry that wants to build a business further
developing and implementing the software (the F/OSS model)?  The
desire for license fees is certainly understandable but I don't think
it works as well.  I don't think there is a fairness issue, really.
The issues are always matters of how to compete and cooperate within a
decentralized development community.

* Not referring here to strictly copyright ownership but rather the
right to take something and utilize it or not in production without
incurring additional upstream obligations-- even the GPL doesn't force
upstream obligations.

Economically, the forces are stacked against the developer who wants
to do a non-commercial shareware release (overhead due to marketing,
etc plays a big role here, and these licenses are good ways NOT to get
community assistance in development, which means development costs are
also higher).  It is not at all clear to me that one can get enough
from license fees to sustain development, and so the fact remains that
to do a truly Capitalist release, you really have to get venture
funding, while to do a Distributist release, you can get started on
your own and build a business much more easily.

The Distributist model works better in this way because it distributes
out the costs of development particularly in the beginning of a
project among more businesses, and therefore distributes out the costs
of getting started as well.  This means that in practice revenue can
take longer to get going and the business can remain profitable.  It
also distributes major overhead items like promotion and advertising.
>
> 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.
>
I agree with Tim O'Reilly that software developers have a moral right
to choose whatever licenses suit them.  (Of course that means avoiding
using GPL code if you don't want to use that license).  However I
would agree that the original request is not in line with what we are
doing.

Maybe there is a model where non-commercial-use shareware licenses
work.  I don't know.  I do know that it is unlikely that anybody here
is able to help point the way.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers