Definition of open source

Alan Rihm alan at centraview.com
Sun Nov 7 23:06:41 UTC 2004


Michael,

I'll try to be clearer. Please note that my preference would be to find
an existing license strategy so as to leverage the obvious benefits.

Here are specifics:

Release a project under GPL, Mozilla, whatever. The same code base (not
forked) is what we plan to go to market with through a reseller channel.
We call the reseller and say "would you like to sell our product in a
hosted environment?". They say, sure, I'll just download the free
version and do so. They have no responsibility to pay us unless they
don't have the technical ability to work with the open project. It does
not suffice to just say that they "will pay you". We have evidence that
this is not going to happen without a license that requires it.

I hope this is enough. If you can find a current license model that
works here, that does not force us to fork the code etc.. Then please
tell me.

Thanks for trying to help.

Best,
Alan


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael R. Bernstein [mailto:webmaven at cox.net] 
Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2004 1:31 PM
To: alan at centraview.com
Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: RE: Definition of open source


On Sun, 2004-11-07 at 10:09, Alan Rihm wrote:
> Michael - We had a reputable firm in Philadelphia (PA) give us an 
> opinion, and the resulting opinion was that current OSI approved 
> licenses (single or dual strategy) do not serve our purposes "as-is".

Was this a law-firm?

You're still not answering with specifics.

Exactly *why* would a dual-license strategy not serve your purposes?
Unless you answer that, I can't tell you whether (or why) the changes
you think you require are unneccessary.

> They noted that other clients were also unable to utilize existing 
> licenses to serve their needs without certain modifications that 
> currently conflict with the OSI definition.

Again, specifics, please.

-- 
Michael R. Bernstein <webmaven at cox.net>





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