[Drawkit] DrawKit licensing hassles

[Mr. Studiocat]

There is no such a thing as "BSD for non-commercial use only".
That's an oxymoron!

As anyone should've learned from the history, flip-flopping around
licensing issues is a sure way to kill public interest in an open
source project. With all due respect, Graham, I really appreciate
the gigantic work you have put into the DrawKit. But please,
make up your mind.  Do you want the DrawKit to be widely adopted
or not?

Licensing is a bit like cryptography - invent a new algorithm and
be sure to be cracked by a coffee break. Developers hate licenses.
Why make things harder than they need to be?

The whole point of the BSD license is to allow any kind of development,
including commercial development.  Creating ambiguous license benefits
no one. It pushes everybody away, both commercial and free. Why would
anybody want to enter such a legal minefield?

On another note, I think that DrawKit would be usable in countless
projects that are not about drawing per se. Projects that would
use maybe 10-20% of DK's capabilities, just to conveniently add some
drawing features.  They're not gonna buy commercial licenses,
especially not the countless one-man shops. No matter how cheap,
the added complexity and multi-level uncertainty is the real turn off.
They end up implementing their own poor&ugly drawing features instead
which will suck.  And that's a big audience lost there.

Personally, I'd like to hear that DrawKit beta5 ends up being free
for any use and DK grows to be an industry standard it deserves
to be - just like it seems you originally intended. Don't let the years
go to waste. Oh and btw, I love the DrawKit, it's fantastic! Thanks for reading.