What license to pick...
OK.. So we (my company) have decided to make our VR-toolkit open source! But we haven't decided which license to use for it. GPL seems the obvious choice, but we want to restrict the freedom somehow (at least in the beginning, just so we can ge more organised). We definately want to prohibit commercial use (I guess GPL covers this), but we also want to be notified of any changes made in our source (so we can review them and possibly build them in, in the 'real' version). AND we don't want other people to be able to create their own distribution of the toolkit. I guess GPL allows them to do this. I've also looked at QPL (from Qt free edition) and it might be what we're looking for. Any ideas? Lionello Lunesu Mondo Bizzarro
RE: What license to pick...
From: Lionello Lunesu [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] so we can ge more organised). We definately want to prohibit commercial use (I guess GPL covers this), but we also want to be notified of any changes The GPL encourages commercial use (I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that the OSI rules require all their licences to permit it as well). First, of course, one has to define commercial use, and this is the great problem with "no commercial use" claues. Some people mean actually selling the software. Some include giving it away as to someone with whom one has a commercial relationship (e.g. Kermit). Some mean using it internally in the course of a business (they may make a distinction between internal use and providing access to the software as a service, although the distinction may be blurred). The GPL permits all of these activities, but requires that, in the first two cases, the, possibly modified, source code be provided under the GPL, and that no licensing conflicts be created. For the third case, it permits unpublished modifications and mixing with code with conflicting licences. -- --- DISCLAIMER - Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of BTS.
Re: What license to pick...
Does the GPL allow us (the toolkit creators) to ask a fee for commercial use of our toolkit? L.
Re: What license to pick...
Lionello Lunesu wrote: Does the GPL allow us (the toolkit creators) to ask a fee for commercial use of our toolkit? You can ask what you want. :-) But because the GPL explicitly permits free redistribution, anyone could do the same, so it would be necessary to add value in return for the fee. Mark
Re: What license to pick...
It is nice to see someone ask questions before they take a license and assume it does something it does not, and mis-use it. Does the GPL allow us (the toolkit creators) to ask a fee for commercial use of our toolkit? That is a question that can be interpreted in a few different ways which change the answer. You, as the toolkit creators, can distribute the software for a fee as you choose. You can even decide to distribute by charging only certain customers, and not others. A Free software license (...Free with a capital F here refers to freedom: the abilities of anyone possessing a legal copy of the source code...) means the authors have given freedom to use and distribute the source code. That freedom includes permission to redistribute under the license, with or without charging. Each Free software license is specific on what is and is not included in the freedoms it gives. It is hard to summarize the differences, you should read the licenses. You mentioned you were inclined to use the GPL. Under the GPL, you are prohibited from making additional use restrictions. - You may not require royalty payment for commercial (or any) use. (A royalty refers to a payment to the author when a copy is used. This is different than charging for transferring a copy.) - You may not require someone pay you when they transfer or use a copy. - You may not limit the fees someone may charge for making a copy. - You may not require that modifications be sent to you. (But the GPL does require that when a derivative work is distributed, the GPL'ed source code is included.) Other Free licenses have different requirements and restrictions. But to be a Free license, they may not prohibit use in a commercial, or certain environment. (That's what the non-discrimination clause of the Open Source Definition says.) When/if you start accepting modifications from the community, then you have to be careful that the contributions can be incorporated and licensed the same way. Everyone here strongly suggests you use an existing, approved license instead of writing your own. The difficult "leap of faith" for authors is to believe that the marketplace by nature (rather than through closed-license requirements) generally preserves the value in software. As long as your software fits into one of the business cases that Eric Raymond discussed for Open Source software, then you'll probably be happy using an Free/Open Source license. And if you don't match one of those business cases, then, yes, you will be giving away value. The open source license will ensure the value is preserved or increased (more people will benefit) but if you can't stay in business, then don't do it. Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Voice 570-992-8824 http://www.rocketaware.com/ has over 30,000 links to source, libraries, functions, applications, and documentation.
RE: What license to pick...
From: Lionello Lunesu [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Does the GPL allow us (the toolkit creators) to ask a fee for commercial use of our toolkit? [DJW:] No. You can ask a fee for the supply of the recorded media and for support, but you cannot charge for the licence itself. You can even charge for the process of creating the binary (although anyone with the source can create their own binary without paying you). You could charge a huge fee, and in some markets that might work, because the market is small or technically unsophisticated. People like Red Hat are charging you for the media and the pressing of the Linux CD image onto that media, packaging, support and printed documentation++, not for the copy of the code and the licence to use it. I think RH may make documentation available on a GPL type basis, but I believe one of the FSF's concerns is the number of free packages that really need commercial documentation before you can use them. -- --- DISCLAIMER - Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of BTS.
RE: simpleLinux Open Documentation License (sLODL)
From: SamBC [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] http://www.simplelinux.org/legal/sLODL.html Opinions on OS-ness and legality, and general good/badness, pls [DJW:] The HTML is invalid, although it makes an exceptionally good attempt to use elements for their intended purpose (possibly top 2 percentile in that respect!). "Transparent Media/Format" - Any format/media of storage in which the text and graphics are machine-readable and editable, using programs which are available both free of charge and free from restrictions of use (eg HTML, plain ASCII text, XML where the document data type is 'free'). You mean document type defintion, not document data type. A "free" DTD is not sufficient as DTDs only define the mechanically checkable syntax rules not the semantics. There is an alternative, called schemas, that goes a lot more towards semantics, but I've still to read up on them. With a DTD, it might be possible to make Word 2000 "HTML" comply with this example. HTML is too loose. Often people mean a combination of the tags from published HTML DTDs with proprietory tags (often in an order that cannot possibly be described by a DTD or is not descibed by the one they claim), with GIFs, JPEGs, Javascript and styles sheets. Many may even include Flash and other ActiveX components. People may consider Word 2000 "HTML" (even though it is really XML and requires Word to edit sensibly) as HTML. Particularly if you include proprietory elements, you need commercial browsers, which have export restrictions with respect to about half a dozen countries. The HTML document may well be auto-generated and not the true revisable form document. The examples exclude much more open SGML document types than HTML, like docbook. The images associated with HTML may well not be the revisable form (as well as the GIF patent problem). The revisable form may contain layers or may be in a vector drawing format. -- --- DISCLAIMER - Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of BTS.
Re: simpleLinux Open Documentation License (sLODL)
Only one I saw was GNU FDL which was even less simple, and had some clauses I disliked. sLODL was as simple as I could make it while making it legally watertight (AFAIK, as IANAL). I did research, and the subsectioning is to make it easier, and definitions are a legal requirement in many jusirsdictions. What else was so complex? Long yes, in order to be clear and not confusing. The only way to make it shorter I could see was to make it clearer. Any other OS-(or Free-)style licenses you know of, do tell. FDL is absolutely horrible, but others may be good. (oh, and while I hope the license is 'simple' that isn't what the name signifies, it signifies it is originated by the Movement for simpleLinux, which aims to simplify Linux usage, but the license is a legal document so can't be that simple) SamBC - Original Message - From: "David Johnson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "SamBC" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 29, 2000 3:09 AM Subject: Re: simpleLinux Open Documentation License (sLODL) On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, SamBC wrote: Okay, this license is in the queue to be dealt with by the OSI board, but I would like to start using it meantime without certification, and would appreciate opinions... It's way too long and complicated to deserve the name "simple". Far from it! There are other OSS-like licenses for documentation that should fit your needs. Anything wrong with them that you want to use this one instead? -- David Johnson ___ http://www.usermode.org
Re: simpleLinux Open Documentation License (sLODL)
- Original Message - From: "SamBC" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Only one I saw was GNU FDL which was even less simple, and had some clauses I disliked. sLODL was as simple as I could make it while making it legally watertight (AFAIK, as IANAL). I did research, and the subsectioning is to make it easier, and definitions are a legal requirement in many jusirsdictions. What else was so complex? Long yes, in order to be clear and not confusing. The only way to make it shorter I could see was to make it clearer. Sorry, I mean less clear... (bad slip) Any other OS-(or Free-)style licenses you know of, do tell. FDL is absolutely horrible, but others may be good. (oh, and while I hope the license is 'simple' that isn't what the name signifies, it signifies it is originated by the Movement for simpleLinux, which aims to simplify Linux usage, but the license is a legal document so can't be that simple) SamBC - Original Message - From: "David Johnson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "SamBC" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 29, 2000 3:09 AM Subject: Re: simpleLinux Open Documentation License (sLODL) On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, SamBC wrote: Okay, this license is in the queue to be dealt with by the OSI board, but I would like to start using it meantime without certification, and would appreciate opinions... It's way too long and complicated to deserve the name "simple". Far from it! There are other OSS-like licenses for documentation that should fit your needs. Anything wrong with them that you want to use this one instead? -- David Johnson ___ http://www.usermode.org
Re: What license to pick...
At 10:09 AM 9/29/00 +0200, Lionello Lunesu wrote: OK.. So we (my company) have decided to make our VR-toolkit open source! But we haven't decided which license to use for it. GPL seems the obvious choice, but we want to restrict the freedom somehow (at least in the beginning, just so we can ge more organised). We definately want to prohibit commercial use (I guess GPL covers this), GPL does not prohibit commercialization, it protects it. Personally I think that is a major flaw in the GNU/GPL concept of 'freeware' - I think the term 'freeware' should be reserved for software that is both free of restrictions on modifications and use AND free of charge/cost [except for nominal media and copy costs]. GPL should better be referred to as 'full use' software, in contrast to the typical commercial 'limited fair use' copyright restrictions. As is, GPL allows people to commercialize/capitalize something in they had no creative input. Mere merchants can in effect render it property by requiring payment for the software above the cost of media and reproduction, which in this day and age is virtually nil. The social exchange should be, what you receive freely, you shall give freely. To me it is tantamont to fraud to charge for software [except for minimal media and copy costs] for which you hold no legal rights. Any charges above such minimal related costs would have to be seen as a de facto exchange for the software code itself, in which a mere merchant/seller has no rights. Were I to release code for the public good and access, I would resent it highly if someone assimilated it, packaged it and marketed it, and making thousands or even millions in the process. And if that were to happen, I think I would be reluctant to be altruistic and release more code pro bono. but we also want to be notified of any changes made in our source (so we can review them and possibly build them in, in the 'real' version). AND we don't want other people to be able to create their own distribution of the toolkit. So what you want is to make the source available, so others can enhance it, critique it, fix it and you have full rights to all their effort but they cannot release their work? definitely not GPL afaik and certainly not what I would call full-use freeware.
Re: What license to pick...
On Fri, 29 Sep 2000, flash gordon wrote: GPL does not prohibit commercialization, it protects it. Personally I think that is a major flaw in the GNU/GPL concept of 'freeware' - I think the term 'freeware' should be reserved for software that is both free of restrictions on modifications and use AND free of charge/cost [except for nominal media and copy costs]. GPL should better be referred to as 'full use' software, in contrast to the typical commercial 'limited fair use' copyright restrictions. Although all GPL software is indeed "freeware", it doesn't explicitely have that concept. In fact, GNU greatly prefers that people don't refer to their products as freeware, partially because of the potential commercializatin, and partly to disassociate itself with proprietary freeware (internet explorer, etc). Were I to release code for the public good and access, I would resent it highly if someone assimilated it, packaged it and marketed it, and making thousands or even millions in the process. And if that were to happen, I think I would be reluctant to be altruistic and release more code pro bono. As one who uses even less restrictive licenses than the GPL, let me come to their defense :-) You are not sharing if you deny people the ability to profit off of what you have given them. If I give someone a sandwich, I certainly expect them to profit nutritionally. If the user does not profit is some way from my software, than I can only consider my software a failure. To take a concrete example, if I share a financial planning software package, and the user proceeds to make $100,000 through its use, why should I quibble over the fact that he sold a copy for $50? One of the reasons I hear against commercialization of free software is exploitation: the user has profited without giving anything back to the author. But what about the case where I give a case of fine wine to a friend, and he proceeds to through a wonderful and joyous party, to which I was not invited? Have I been exploited because he did not offer to me a part of the enjoyment (profit) he received from my wine? I can certainly understand you not wanting others to profit off of your work. GNU has other concerns which is why they use the GPL to restrict how people may redistribute their software. I am concerned neither way and impose minimal restrictions on my software. Neither of these viewpoints are correct for everyone. -- David Johnson ___ http://www.usermode.org
