On Apr 6, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Kyle Cordes wrote:
>
> Luke Kanies wrote:
>
>> 2) Stick to a viral/reciprocal license (probably AGPLv3) but require
>> Sun-style copyright contribution (which provides the project a non-
>> exclusive license to the copyright). This provides a single
>> organization with a license for all copyright, and allows that
>> license
>
> I think this kind of license is eminently fair: the sponsoring
> organization, which pays for most of the development, gets the
> (essentially exclusive) right to productize it, while others can use
> the
> open product at no cost (or buy something from the company, of
> course),
> but can't productize it.
>
> However, while fair, I think this ends to lead to business models that
> are relatively unappealing to both customers and potential
> contributors.
> Contributing to projects licensed thusly feels like offering free
> labor
> to a commercial enterprise, rather than to a community.
>
> I don't have any better idea to propose, though. We all need to make a
> living.
I have the same kind of mixed feelings, and I've traditionally fallen
on the side of "give it all away with no strings attached".
Except, of course, the GPL attaches its own strings. I realized when
looking into it that I almost definitely couldn't release commercial
add-ons to my own project if I wanted to, because I don't own all of
the copyright and it's released under a reciprocal license.
At some point, everything's a compromise: Either you compromise the
amount of free, or you compromise the ability to build a company
around the produt. There aren't a lot of open source projects out
there in the infrastructure space that succeed without companies
paying for the majority of development, so it seems pretty important
to have a healthy company behind Puppet's development.
--
The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
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Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com
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