[Drawkit] DrawKit licensing hassles

[Andrew Bush]

Hi Uli,


>
> 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.

:) quite right.

> . 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.

yeah.
>
> 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.
>

heh.  you are quite right of course.  I actually prefer the idea I  
mentioned in the first instance of gpl'ing it but making it clear that  
small commercial places could almost certainly get a commercial  
license by asking for one.

The only trouble I can see is that it doesn't really help Grahams  
problem of actually making money from DrawKit, if he is giving the  
code away to small commercial shops, then his only real hope is to  
sell for a truckload of money to an existing big commercial place,  
which is unlikely to happen very often.

OTOH This is a beautifully written project that solves a heap of  
problems for a certain class of applications, so I *can* see him  
making money by charging a subscription, maybe, for continued access  
to the latest code.  I can think of a few places that do that..the  
WASTE text engine was one and there are a few others around.

The rule of thumb, AFAICS, is that the more niche the market, the more  
you need to charge to have a hope of getting a living from it.   
DrawKit isn't *that* niche, so I dont think he would need to put the  
charge very high, so long as he was charging everyone.

The GPL idea, coupled with a clearly signposted 'upgrade' path to  
ensure that a casual perusal would tell people that the GPL isn't the  
only option,  lets people like myself play with the code to assess it,  
use it in the early stages of development and then pay up once it  
becomes apparent that the project is actually going somewhere.

- Andrew