license idea

Ryo Chijiiwa ryo at ilohamail.org
Wed Jul 16 08:12:41 UTC 2003




On 7/16/2003, "Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate at pixelized.ch> wrote:

>> 2)  For-profit organizations may re-distribute the software, however if
>> they charge more than a reasonable "distribution" fee, they must pay
>> royalties to the project.
>
>free as in speech? Not only individual are free to speech. Why you discriminate
>organizations?
>Surely not free (5: No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups)

Isn't that a lot like saying income taxes are descriminatory because it
only applies to a particular group of people (i.e. people with a certain
amount of income)?

>2. Not effective. profit organization A has the option: pay a license
>    or contribute. It chooses to send you a minimal patch (e.g. style),
>    thus now A is free to use you code and You will flooded by unimportant
>    patched.

I wouldn't mind being flooded with patches, if indeed that were to
happen.  I probably wouldn't use most of them, but maybe someone else
will.  Either way, more code will be available to anyone who wants it.

>I have questions:
>If I contribute to your code [1) or 2)], then you share with me the gain
>of selling licenses?

No.  Your contribution is in return for using my software.  So you
contribute, and we're even.

>And if I made big modifications (with a lot of added value)?

If you don't want to give up your code, you can just pay the license
fee.  If you don't like the license fee, then you use some other
package.  Personally, if I do charge a license fee, it won't be much at
all.  Consider this: $50 for a corporation is nothing, but for me,
that's 1-2 weeks' worth of food.  At the end of the day, if they
don't think the software's even worth that much, they really
shouldn't be using it anyway.

>So: don't use such license. Try to check the various licenses of
>the QT and MYSQL (but warning, normal user patches should be considered GPL,
>you cannot relicense or sell modified version, without consensus from author)

Thanks, I'll take a look at those.

Ryo
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