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Does dual licensing threaten free software? (Linux Journal)

Does dual licensing threaten free software? (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 27, 2006 21:44 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: Does dual licensing threaten free software? (Linux Journal) by HenrikH
Parent article: Does dual licensing threaten free software? (Linux Journal)

From my perspective (mostly being a end user) I don't see much of any difference between releasing something under a GPL/propriatory dual license vs releasing stuff under a GPL/BSD or GPL/MIT dual license, which is not uncommon.

In one setup (as a programmer) your getting paid extra by some company that wants to use your code in a propriatory manner, and in the other setup you don't get paid for using your code to sell a propriatory product. Might as well take advantage of the situation I guess.

I that is the majority of the difference.

There are some other issues, like if a third project wants to use your code in a open source but not GPL-compatable manner. One thing that I figure does NOT work is when people use GPL as a sort of shareware license. Like if they have 'community' project A, but if you want all the features then you have to pay for 'professional' project A+B.


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