Hi! > On 27 Feb 2017, at 14:40, Agner Fog <ag...@agner.org> wrote: > > On 27-02-2017 11:06, Mirko Boehm (FSFE) wrote: >> You will need permission/license from the other contributors to sell >> proprietary licenses. >> You need a scheme that fairly distributes the licensing revenue so that it >> motivates people to contribute. You could pay out shares of the revenue to >> them, or you could make it a public service effort by donating a share or >> all of the proceeds to a organisation with aims that benefit the general >> public, for example FSFE. >> A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) can be used to set up such a model. >> Usually, FSFE would not recommend using CLAs that enable proprietary >> licensing. However in your situation this is already the case, so in my >> understanding it would make your software more free (because others can >> contribute to it). Please be aware that this is not an official FSFE >> position. > My initial idea was that proprietary users would automatically get a license > by donating a certain amount of money to some organization that supports free > software, such as FSF. But I understand from this discussion thread that the > policy of FSF or FSFE does not allow such a scheme. So I guess this will not > work. I don't want to put in a random charity organization because the > contributors might have different opinions about which organization to > support.
I cannot speak for FSFE, but I think the setup can be made simpler: Anybody can donate to FSFE. Just ask them to provide proof of the donation, and then you give them a license. This way you don’t need any kind of organisation, and no arrangement for handling money. > So I guess the only solution is to use a more permissive license and let > proprietary software vendors use the library for free. Right now they are > actually paying, but this becomes too complicated if there is more than one > contributor to the software library. > > I could still encourage commercial users to donate money to FSF or some other > organization, but I am not sure whether a voluntary scheme would work. The > commercial users want an invoice and a piece of paper that says "license". > Some even require that I register into their database of suppliers. Donation > to charity doesn't fit into their administrative routines, I guess. Or maybe > they can put it on their PR budget or their "Corporate Social Responsibility" > budget? > > Do you think the FSF will endorse such a scheme? (I can't get access to their > mailing list even though I am a member). As suggested, I would make the scheme consist of two mainly independent parts, where you don’t need approval between the two. Best, Mirko. -- Mirko Boehm | mi...@kde.org | KDE e.V. FSFE Fellow, FSFE Team Germany Qt Certified Specialist Request a meeting: https://doodle.com/mirkoboehm -- Mirko Boehm | mi...@kde.org | KDE e.V. FSFE Fellow, FSFE Team Germany Qt Certified Specialist Request a meeting: https://doodle.com/mirkoboehm
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