licensing suggestion [LWN.net]

From:		(withheld)
To:		lwn-AT-lwn.net
Subject:		licensing suggestion
Date:		Tue, 23 Nov 2004 10:54:40 -0600 (CST)

In this article:
http://lwn.net/Articles/103694/

Larry McVoy wrote a comment taking suggestions for changes in licensing
his BK product:

[quote]
Rather than respond to all of your comments, which would just fan the
flames, let's try this.

It's easy for you to tell us we have done the wrong thing and perhaps
that's all you wish to do. I tend it act in good faith so I tend to
believe that some of you are genuine in your dislike for our choices. OK,
fair enough. So what should we have done? GPLing it wasn't an answer, BK
would be no better than Arch because there is no way to pay for not fun
work. Patents probably would have been a better choice for protection but
remember that I had a goal of helping Linus, and there was little chance
that he would adopt a patented technology.

I tried for years to explain our choices and it always ended up in a flame
fest just like this. So you tell me what we should have done and for that
matter what we should do today. I'm really interested in seeing what you
suggest, believe it or not, all of this fuss is because this is the best
way I could find that met all the goals, including the goal of helping
Linus.
[end quote]

I have thought about this for some time (as you can tell by the age of the
article) and I have (finally) had a thought. As it may pertain to other
potential products, I wondered about submitting it as a letter to the
editor if you believe it has some value. However, I would only wish to
do so if I may as an "anonymous coward". Anyway, here goes.

There are, of course, many issues between a proprietary license and a free
one such as the GPL. In a perfect world, Larry would of course be able to
release his product under the GPL and still charge for it as he sees fit,
but unfortunately not everyone would pay his company for usage as he would
like. While this modest proposal would not address all issues with this
conflict, it does, I believe, address two. They are:

+ What does a software user do if her proprietary software product is
no longer supported? (And what happens to her data?)

+ When does the software user gain any ownership in her purchase?

My suggestion would be to add a license clause to whatever current
proprietary license is in use. It might be something called "Dated-GPL".
One example might be 2014-GPL. By seeing this mark, the software user
would know that a complete copy of the source code for that product was on
retainer with a trusted third party (i.e. the FSF, or a bank) and that the
source code would be released under the GPL when:

+ The date for that version of the product was reached, in the above
example 01 January 2014

Or

+ The software product is no longer supported (i.e. Software product is
dropped, death of the developer)

This of course would not be a perfect balance, but perhaps a better one.
It would allow companies to license their product in such a way as to
maximize their earning potential for that software product, yet ensure
freedom for end users after a limited time or in extreme circumstances.

(Log in to post comments)

What about consulting?

Posted Nov 24, 2004 16:46 UTC (Wed) by hazelsct (subscriber, #3659) [Link]

Cyclic supported GPLed CVS by consulting contracts for a long time. Netscape made the transition from proprietary to OSS in part when they realized that their consulting revenue was outstripping licensing revenue, so to close deals, they'd often throw in the server licenses for free.

Does BK really generate enough license revenues to make it worth the various hassles of keeping it proprietary (such as endless flames, tracking down which of the free BK users is contributing to Arch/Subversion, etc.)?

What about consulting?

Posted Nov 24, 2004 20:08 UTC (Wed) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link]

Yes, BK generates enough revenue to make all of this worth it.

And no, support wouldn't work. We actually considered a GPLed BK in the
last year and were talked out of it by some of the leading open source
developers, they felt we'd go out of business and they didn't want to
lose our support.

--lm

What about consulting?

Posted Nov 25, 2004 21:54 UTC (Thu) by Vaughn (guest, #19145) [Link]

How about a stricter licence than the GPL?
Something along the lines of "free/GPL-like, but only for GPLed projects"?

What about consulting?

Posted Nov 26, 2004 19:16 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

What's the point? People who don't care about proprietary software still use it now, and people who care still wouldn't. There are only three important categories of license: non-free, free-and-GPL-incompatible, and free-and-GPL-compatible. Projects moving around within their existing category is uninteresting.

What about consulting?

Posted Nov 26, 2004 22:06 UTC (Fri) by Vaughn (guest, #19145) [Link]

For something like BK?
The point is that "GPLed BK" is unsellable, while "strict BK" can be sold
to anyone who want to manage a non-GPL-or-similar-free-license-covered
project.

licensing suggestion

Posted Nov 27, 2004 11:03 UTC (Sat) by mgh (subscriber, #5696) [Link]

has the licensing model of sql-ledger been considered? The software is released as GPL, however if you require the manual or support you need to pay for it. As a business owner I pay for support simply because its cost effective for me to do so. Disclaimer: I know close to nothing about BK as a product or market place for this tool; however I would certainly consider BK as a product because its clearly a tool valued by the people who use it.

licensing suggestion

Posted Nov 27, 2004 12:36 UTC (Sat) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]

A time-limited monopoly followed by a contribution to the public commons is an excellent hack
to balance this kind of conflict. You'll note that the Founding Fathers of the USA implemented
exactly such a hack for written works (copyright) and for inventions (patent).

I don't mean to be parochial in citing the founders of the USA. If they copied the idea from an
earlier innovator rather than inventing it themselves then I don't happen to know about the
earlier source. Ah, WikiPedia tells me that the Statute of Anne (in Britain) in 1709 contained this
same hack.

Unfortunately the modern copyright-holding corporations want to set the time-limit to infinite,
and many of the modern info activists who hang out in these fora want to set it to zero.

Creative Commons maybe?

Posted Nov 27, 2004 15:40 UTC (Sat) by X-Nc (guest, #1661) [Link]

I know that their licenses are not exactly perfect for software but the option of using one of their licenses might be more palatable for the hardcore GPL'ers. For example -

Some Rights Reserved
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

This is about as "closed" a license as I could find but it still looks good to have the CC image (which the LWN comment software won't let me link to).

Just a thought.