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FOSDEM: Richard Fontana on copyleft-nextFOSDEM: Richard Fontana on copyleft-nextPosted Feb 14, 2013 16:24 UTC (Thu) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677)In reply to: FOSDEM: Richard Fontana on copyleft-next by dashesy Parent article: FOSDEM: Richard Fontana on copyleft-next
I haven't seen too many cases, or possibly any case, where there wasn't an obvious pecuniary motive (to the point where I think it might be okay to limit the poison pill to commercial contexts).
If a developer or company has no pecuniary motive for proprietary relicensing, why would it bother to use copyleft for the project to begin with? Better to allow noncopyleft use by all; what is socially gained by permitting occasional discrimination (particularly where, as your comment might imply, the discrimination is always in favor of a commercial entity)?
If there were no discrimination, then any arbitrary user could get a noncopyleft license free of charge on simple request. At that point, the original decision to use a copyleft license has no rational justification.
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FOSDEM: Richard Fontana on copyleft-next Posted Feb 14, 2013 17:27 UTC (Thu) by dashesy (subscriber, #74652) [Link] Sorry for my ignorance, IANAL but it seems in this business everyone needs to self-educate on the subject. So in a sense it is better to have one noncopyleft(free-to-all) license, than a copyleft+noncopyleft(free-to-all) dual license. I guess some of the potential use-cases for dual licensing can be achieved by LGPL, where the code improvements are integrated for all, but commercial entities need to also avoid static linkage (discrimination against the commercial usage). Also noncopyleft(free-to-all) means every user needs to get the software license separately, yes it is a simple request (but no request is too simple IMO), and it cannot be as easily bundled with other copyleft software. I guess part of the copyleft beauty is the ease to give software to others, and not just using it. Another use-case (which is actually what I had in mind originally) is to have the noncopyleft license available to commercial entities but only for the final official binaries, at the same time have the source available under copyleft, with the hope that they return back the improvements to be incorporated in the future binaries for them.
FOSDEM: Richard Fontana on copyleft-next Posted Feb 14, 2013 18:23 UTC (Thu) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link]
> So in a sense it is better to have one noncopyleft(free-to-all) license, than a copyleft+noncopyleft(free-to-all) dual license.
I don't see any point to a copyleft/noncopyleft dual license except in some odd case of perceived or actual license incompatibility.
> Also noncopyleft(free-to-all) means every user needs to get the software license separately,
I don't understand this point. A (typical) feature of both copyleft and noncopyleft FLOSS licenses is that you get the license without any particular ceremonial overhead (this is also true of many proprietary licenses).
> Another use-case (which is actually what I had in mind originally) is to have the noncopyleft license available to commercial entities but only for the final official binaries, at the same time have the source available under copyleft, with the hope that they return back the improvements to be incorporated in the future binaries for them.
Ah, if I understand you correctly that is a whole nother issue, and one I've been thinking about recently. Some weak copyleft licenses explicitly allow non-FLOSS licensing of binaries by licensees, but the source code can only be distributed under the copyleft license.
FOSDEM: Richard Fontana on copyleft-next Posted Feb 14, 2013 22:40 UTC (Thu) by nmav (subscriber, #34036) [Link]
> If a developer or company has no pecuniary motive for proprietary relicensing, why would it bother to use copyleft for the project to begin with? Better to allow noncopyleft use by all; what is socially gained by permitting occasional discrimination (particularly where, as your comment might imply, the discrimination is always in favor of a commercial entity)?
It is true that several companies use copyleft (mostly GPLv2) in order to attract more attention and developers on their software and sell proprietary licenses with other terms to people who pay. I don't see any harm on that, but even if you think there is harm by someone being treated differently, I don't see why punish this company at all. They released their code as free software anyway (assuming they play fair).
What the license looks to me, is that it says, that if you have a business model that allows you to develop and release free software then we take it from you. It doesn't sound about code being free to see and modify.
You may have a point on companies abusing the copyleft terms. In that case you have to be explicit and justify those clauses, because their reasons are not apparent.
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