[Drawkit] DrawKit licensing hassles

[M. Uli Kusterer]

2008/9/15 Andrew Bush <andrew at bushsoftware.com>

> 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.
>

Just one note, because it's a common misconception: GPL allows for
commercial distribution. You are free to sell GPLed code and binaries for as
much money as you like. The reason this doesn't happen that much is that,
once you've sold one copy, whoever bought it is free to take the source code
and sell it themselves, or distribute it for free.


> *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.
>

OTOH there are companies who want to pay their licenses, but like to avoid
having to constantly keep in mind which seat limits they're exceeding with
what code snippet. If you use a lot of third-party code, it's just too
complicated to manage that. Those companies prefer one-time-flat fees, even
if they're paying more, because at least they know that now they've
fulfilled their requirements and can concentrate on developing, marketing,
support etc. again.


> IMO it is best to be clear about things up front, make a decision what you
> want from it and license it accordingly.
>

 So far I agree.


> if you want to make money, license it for a fee to everyone, if not, dont.
>

 Well, that's one approach. OTOH, a license that is free for non-commercial
projects is kinda nice. When I started out learning to program, it helped me
a lot that a bunch of source code was available for free and showed me how
things are done. Code that cost money simply wasn't an option for me at that
stage.

Cheers,
M. Uli Kusterer
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"The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
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