[Drawkit] CreativeCommons a permanent part of DrawKit?

[Brad Larson]

On Jun 21, 2008, at 9:14 PM, Uli Kusterer wrote:

> Am 21.06.2008 um 03:47 schrieb Graham Cox:
>> From today, DrawKit no longer uses the Creative Commons license  
>> (which was not very appropriate in any case). Instead, a BSD-style  
>> license will apply. The next Beta drop, due very soon, will include  
>> all updated headers and a new licensing text document. The CC  
>> license will probably still apply to documentation, etc where it is  
>> more appropriate.
>
>
> Graham,
>
> I would suggest you take great care whatever next license you  
> release the code under. If you really plan to charge for commercial  
> use, AFAIK BSD will be too permissive. And once you've released the  
> code as BSD, at least that version of the code will stay available  
> as BSD if anyone ever keeps a copy (at least that's what I remember  
> about the license from back when I researched those).
>
> What I generally do is mark my source code as copyrighted by me, but  
> free for non-commercial uses, and tell people to contact me for a  
> commercial use license. Then I usually give them a license valid for  
> at least one major revision, telling them up front that this is of  
> course a number I control myself, but they'll have to trust me not  
> to screw them anyway ;-)
>
> Of course, you'll have to decide if a license is per developer, per  
> product, per company or whatever.
>
> Cheers,
> -- Uli Kusterer
> "The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
> http://www.zathras.de
>

I, too, commend the use of the BSD license (it's one that I prefer for  
my own projects and what SonoPlot should be using for our drawing  
client when I finally clean up the last remaining issues and release  
it), but Uli has a good point.  The BSD license is very permissive,  
allowing things like incorporation of the library into closed source  
projects where improvements would not need to be propagated back to  
the main code base, and would legally allow others to use the library  
commercially without a license.  That said, this is the Mac  
development community we're talking about here, and projects like  
Sparkle have the same sort of permissive licenses, yet have no trouble  
in getting people to contribute their changes back.  No matter the  
license, our company has no problem with submitting all improvements  
to the framework.

Making money off of a framework, open source or not, is hard.  Most of  
the cases I've seen that have worked for the individual and the  
community are where the framework maintainers have a full-time job at  
a larger organization that is interested in sponsoring the framework  
or using it for their own projects.  Earl Miles, the maintainer of the  
Views module for the Drupal content management system, is employed by  
Sony's music division because they use Drupal and Views on their  
bands' sites.  That's just one example, but there are many others.  I  
am a full-time engineer with SonoPlot, and DrawKit solves a problem  
for our research users, so we are willing to commit time to improving  
the framework.  I have heard that Apple has been hiring folks working  
on open source frameworks (WebKit, SproutCore) that are complementary  
to its technologies.  DrawKit could be an interesting platform- 
exclusive for Apple if it enables a class of applications that can't  
be done as easily or as well on Windows or Linux (the engineers I  
talked to about it at WWDC were interested in its progress).

I don't know that you'll be able to make enough off of licensing fees  
to support yourself.  If you price the licensing too high, you drive  
people away.  If you price it too low, you don't make enough to get  
by.  Frankly, I'd focus on selling DrawKit-based applications, such as  
the mapping client you've mentioned elsewhere.  Only make the  
additions you need to the framework to get those apps out the door and  
let others make the refinements specific to their projects, like the  
filetype support I'm working on.  With tools like Wil Shipley's new  
Golden % Braeburn in-app store and the iPhone app store, there hasn't  
been an easier time to make money on selling quality Cocoa applications.

I'm sorry if the questions I've asked and the technical issues I've  
raised have helped deviate you from getting your applications out the  
door.  As I've stated, I'm willing to help with documentation and code  
as I become more familiar with the framework.

______________________
Brad Larson
SonoPlot, Inc.
3030 Laura Lane, Suite 120
Middleton, WI 53562