[License-discuss] Query on "delayed open source" licensing

[lrosen at rosenlaw.com]

The quotation from my 2005 Open Source Licensing book drew an update from
Peter Deutsch. He asked that I update the history. Here it is:

 

While your account was accurate for quite a few years, Artifex eventually
abandoned the AFPL / GPL division, I believe because they found that it was
a bit of complexity that didn't affect their revenue from commercial
licensing.  Instead, they simply offered the choice of either GPL or a
straight commercial license.  In addition, I believe they offered
performance-enhancing replacements for certain modules that were only
available to commercial licensees.  (The ones I remember hearing about were
things like halftoning or shading code that used processor-specific SIMD
capabilities.)  At the same time, they put quite a bit of energy into
identifying and taking legal action against commercial users who were
violating the GPL, of which there were an astoundingly large number.  For
the last several years this actually resulted in substantial revenue, from
retroactive commercial license payments and from new commercial license
agreements: some offenders started complying with the GPL, some obtained
commercial licenses, and some stopped using the code altogether.

 

This email from Peter is a reminder that open source is an evolving
ecosystem.

 

/Larry

 

BCC: 

 

Lawrence Rosen

707-478-8932

3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482

lrosen at rosenlaw.com <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com> 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20231026/8e431e38/attachment.html>