[Drawkit] DrawKit licensing hassles

[Graham Cox]

On 11 Sep 2008, at 5:09 am, Mr. Studiocat wrote:

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


As far as I can tell (and I'm no expert, so take this as it comes),  
the BSD license says nothing about payment or otherwise for the  
license. It only stipulates usage, copying, distribution and  
attribution terms.

> 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?

Yes, and I am one of those developers! I hate licenses too, I don't  
want to spend a lot of time worrying about the nuances of what this,  
that or the other license *means*, I just want to get on with my  
project(s). That's why the recurring issues of the DK license are as  
much a pain in the butt for me as anyone else.

It's very simple. I am happy for you to use DrawKit in any way you see  
fit provided: a) I get credit for the work I did; b) I'm  not liable  
if you use it for something that causes a nuclear explosion or some  
other terrible disaster; and c) I'm not obliged to support your  
derived products in any way.

However, there's another thing. I have spent a huge amount of time on  
this, time which not only have I not earned a penny from, but which  
actually costs me money. So if Microsoft or some other rich  
corporation wanted to use DK I don't see why they should do so for  
free when they can spend more money from petty cash in half a day than  
I could ever hope to earn in a lifetime. Does that seem fair? So what  
I'm trying to achieve is to share the wealth with other "little guys"  
like me, commercial included, but for those that can easily afford it,  
to get some return for my effort. The problem is how to tell apart one  
corporate user from another. There's no way to do so except to take  
each case on its merits - I can't say, well, if your gross income is  
this much DK costs x, if it's this, DK costs y. So if you're a  
commercial developer, all you have to do is contact me and find out  
what the "fee" is. Chances are it's zero, but if you happen to be  
Microsoft, I'll probably expect you to pay something because you can,  
and morally, you *should*, and we can negotiate what that is.

If you can think of a better way to resolve this I'd be very happy to  
hear it, I don't like the added complexity either. I guess what it  
amounts to is that there is a limit to my generosity - for over twenty  
years now I've seen numerous people get very rich indeed from software  
I've written for them, yet here I am wondering (literally) whether I  
can afford to go to the supermarket this week. I just feel it's time  
some of my efforts benefited me in a slightly more tangible way than  
having a warm fuzzy feeling. Is that wrong?


> 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.

Agreed.

I want DK to be relatively unrestricted, which is why I prefer the BSD  
over the GPL license. I dislike the viral nature of GPL and that has  
prevented me using some pretty useful GPL code myself, in DK and other  
projects. I don't think the problem is really a "legal minefield"  
though - it's straightforward. If you are using DK in any sort of  
corporate environment, all you have to do is drop me a line. Companies  
will generally do that as a matter of course as I have done countless  
times when doing commercial development for companies.

Maybe if I were earning a packet off spin-off developments (or  
anything) I'd be feeling more generous, and there are projects in the  
pipeline that may allow that in time. Right now though, that's far  
from the case. So I'm wracking my brains trying to figure out a way to  
reconcile the need to eat/pay the bills/send my daughter to school  
with a way to allow others to leverage my work.

> They're not gonna buy commercial licenses,
> especially not the countless one-man shops. No matter how cheap,

I emphasise: "cheap" includes zero. Is sending me an email to get that  
in writing really so tough?

> the added complexity and multi-level uncertainty is the real turn off.

Possibly, so please let me know if you have any better ideas.


cheers, Graham