Dual licensing

Rick Moen rick at linuxmafia.com
Tue Jun 8 07:21:15 UTC 2004


Quoting Marius Amado Alves (amado.alves at netcabo.pt):

> BTW, that's a technicality that I believe can be solved. That is, it is 
> possible to revise the SDC Conditions, or make a new license, that does 
> not breach clause 6, and still implements the SDC philosophy--which is 
> NOT "proprietary".

We'll be glad to see that licence, when you finish it.

> One way to do it is simply to eliminate the distinction between 
> commercial and non-commercial, and charge everybody. 

Would those people then have the right to redistribute?  Be sure to
check OSD clause #1.  The "SDC Conditions v. 2" clause 6 appears to
(intentionally) violate that principle, at present -- because your
developers specifically wish to _not_ grant that right, but rather
reserve it to the copyright holder, requiring each new recipient to
likewise purchase a licence:

  6.  A copy used in a business must have a specific license for that use
  explicitly issued by SDC. Such a license is called a "commercial license"
  and is explained in the Commented Conditions.

(Your proposed change seems to amount, in essence, to removing the
phrase "in a business" from the above, extending the requirement to all
users.)

The intent of OSD (it seems to me) has always been to describe via a few
easily-grasped practical guidelines the underlying core concept of open
source -- loosely speaking, access to source code with the perpetual
right to freely use, redistribute, or fork the codebase (or create
derivative works based on it) for any purpose whatsoever.  It honestly
seems to me that that's not what you're trying to accomplish.  If so,
you're not trying to do open source.

I should hasten to add:  I'm certainly not trying to denigrate what
you're aiming for:  You might end up with very useful proprietary
licence arrangements.  I'm just saying you seem to be aiming for
something that's clearly not open source.

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