[Drawkit] DrawKit licensing hassles

[Andrew Bush]

Hi all,

It is perfectly possible for Graham, as the copyright owner, to  
license it under a fairly tight license...say gpl, but make it clear  
that his feelings about commercial licensing are extremely benevolent  
towards small one-man shops and the like.  Put the 'Benevolent' bit  
above the license proper and just tell them to email him specifically  
if they want some licensing other than the GPL.

On another note it may not actually help, a very possible scenario  
over time is for a small shop with whom he has negotiated a commercial  
license to sell the resulting product to a larger shop...adobe,  
microsoft, apple etc....and its not clear what would happen in that  
scenario.

*OR* licensing could go on a per-seat scenario.  100USD for everyone  
10000 licenses sold, with a $35USD fee up front.  that (possibly) wont  
stop the mildly serious smaller developers, but if someone does strike  
it big and sell a million copies, you will do pretty well out of it.

IMO it is best to be clear about things up front, make a decision what  
you want from it and license it accordingly.  if you want to make  
money, license it for a fee to everyone, if not, dont.

I agree with the warnings about the BSD license though, that is gonna  
lead to some confusion.  if it is being used for non-commercial use,  
then I think the GPL is pretty lenient anyway, since nobody is going  
to mind distributing the source in that scenario.

- Andrew


On Sep 14, 2008, at 8:34 PM, M. Uli Kusterer wrote:

> Just to add a voice here:
>
> I think that it's OK to ask money for commercial use. Graham  
> deserves it, and everyone who's looked at this code will be aware of  
> that. This code is worth it. If it's a one-time fee or, per full  
> version, it's generally a good compromise between compensation for  
> work and not having to pay 'rent' or having to pay for each bugfix  
> separately.
>
> The SQLite approach works for some, I've heard, but that's a  
> decision I'd leave to Graham. Personally, I'd not do something like  
> that right now. But maybe that's just due to the kinds of code I  
> have, which don't really lend themselves to an approach like that.
>
> BUT: I think it's a bad idea to call this a 'BSD license'. BSD has a  
> fixed meaning (free for use and sub-licensing, but need to give  
> credit, + the usual CYA clauses). Give it your own name, at least.  
> Have you checked Opensource.org if there's a better license? http://opensource.org/licenses/category 
>  It doesn't contain all licenses, but it has a good selection of  
> existing licenses out there.
>
> Cheers,
> M. Uli Kusterer
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>       "The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
>                   http://www.zathras.de
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Andrew Bush
andrew at bushsoftware.com
http://www.bushsoftware.com

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