On Thursday 02 June 2005 01:42 am, poisondart wrote: > If this thread has shown anything it is I'm a bit green with respect to > software licenses,
Yep. We've all been there at some time, though. ;-) > but the other thing is that I consider myself as an > isolated case and I wanted to know if there were others who wanted the > same thing as me. I think the real problem is that you *think* you want something which is not what you *really* want. For example, I think you don't really get the full range of implications of a "non-commercial" clause, nor do you fully appreciate its chilling effects on development. > I'm curious to know what the money that open source or GPL'd projects > get and what this money means to these people's overall income. Free-licensed projects get almost no direct money for development in probably 99% of cases. On the other hand, people make billions of dollars every year off of the *use* of free-licensed software (consider Apache, for example). Quite a few of the people making the money are naturally part of the developer community for their particular gravy-train. That's because they generally have specific needs they want to see the software address, and it's worth the effort to contribute the necessary changes. The community benefits from the changes (which is why "copyleft" is good), and they benefit (a lot!) from not having to maintain a separate patched version of the code. > I am > sure that any amount would motivate somebody to continue their work on > a project, but myself in particular, I consider my project to be a tool > for teaching and I view teaching as helping others...which I would > gladly offer without price. So you're unpaid teacher? What do you do for a living, then? ;-) > I wanted to see if there were others who > shared my view of helping others freely with their knowledge. Actually, you see, as I've already tried to point out to you, using software to teach *is* COMMERCIAL USE of the software. At least it is, if you draw a salary for teaching. Yes, I know that teaching is a public benefit and a joy, and I do occasionally teach for free, but most of the time, even teachers need to make a living, right? Is it right to restrict use of the software only to those who teach without pay? > Yes, what I ask may seem ridiculous, but I don't view it that way. > Instead, I find that it is the implication of using a restrictive > license such as I described to be ridiculous: if there is no monetary > gain option in the license, then this implies that nobody (or very few) > will be willing to do any work or "asking for something for nothing". > It isn't for nothing if you value knowledge and learning. It took me awhile to parse that: You are saying that the implication that the lack of a "monetary gain option" will chill development is ridiculous. Sorry, but history disagrees with you: projects with restrictions on sale prices for copies of the software have much reduced distribution and development interest, because it prevents distribution. Note that prices will be driven down by natural market forces anyway --- just because source A can sell a copy of free software doesn't prevent source B from giving it away, and this is in practice what happens. But it does allow source A to bundle copies and cover CD-ROM distribution and printing expenses, pay for web and FTP servers, etc. Even if they only capture a small "pay for convenience" market, they may be able to do this, thus providing an important resource for users of free software. When you put in a clause to restrict such sales you are attacking a friendly: somebody who the community values as a service provider. It may well be that 9/10ths of my free software is downloaded directly from developer sites or from free download sites, but even many of those sites are supported by advertising, and I want the OPTION to buy copies on a CD if I need or want to. That's not at all the same as buying proprietary software, where I would be FORCED to make such a purchase, and then at an artificially inflated price. Finally, you are wrongly conflating a "restriction against selling copies" with a "restriction against all commercial use of the software". The latter includes virtually EVERY use of the software if interpreted broadly enough. You yourself appear to take a very broad view of this --- with one exception: you paradoxically do not regard drawing a salary as a teacher as "commercial". But a salary supported partly by the use of software is one of the more clearcut ways to commercially benefit --- much more direct than supporting advertising revenues, which you *do* regard as commercial. This is a contradiction, which just goes to show how poorly defined the idea of "commercial use" is, and therefore why it is a bad thing to try to control in a license. > I admit that my view is a bit idealistic which leads me to believe that > maybe I should reconsider the whole decision altogether. Actually, I think you're being hypocritical in thinking that it is idealistic to regard your salary as a teacher as somehow "non-commercial". You have succombed to the "higher profession" delusion. Sure, you might love your work, but do you really want someone to *force* you to do it for free? How are you going to pay for your supper, then? Do you feel that you should have to take up another job to support your teaching habit? Do you think that society would benefit from forcing teachers to do that? I certainly don't. That's what I think you should be reconsidering. You have somehow tricked yourself into thinking that you are not an economic being just because you work in academia, and then you are going on to scoff at other people for being economic --- putting you into the realm of hypocrisy. Now, it might be perfectly realistic (and indeed, idealistic) to imagine that such commercial concerns should not effect what you teach, or how you teach it. But that *can* be true in any form of human endeavor --- teaching is not unique in this respect. Even a farmer may farm more out of love of the vocation than because it is particularly profitable (which, as with teaching, it often is not). Should a farmer be regarded as some dirty capitalist because he uses Gnumeric to tally his accounts? That is commercial use of the software. I think you will actually get what you want by just using a copyleft free-license like the GPL. This will prevent the software from being absorbed into a commercial proprietary product, which is what I consider the reasonable part of what you are asking for. -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list