An interesting blog entry as to the beginnings of the HPL and what the main distinction is between it and the GPL.
http://www.funambol.com/blog/capo/2006/08/honest-public-license.html --- Si Chen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Since this turned into a discussion about opentaps, I'd like to > explain > the opentaps licensing and business model a little better, for the > benefit of everybody in the OFBIZ community. > > The opentaps licensing model is a way we thought of to increase the > total body of openly available software, hopefully to the benefit of > everybody. Our goal is not to exclude anybody, whether you are a > user, > a service provider, or a vertical market ISV, from using our > software. > Rather, it is to create a fair mechanism for encouraging > contributions > back to the open source community and supporting open source > development. (It is actually a more sophisticated form of some early > > cost-sharing models we tried two years ago but simply didn't work.) > > If you are thinking of creating a commercial product which falls out > of > the scope of our open source license, we have a couple of options: > > (a) We offer a commercial license which is a small fraction of the > cost > for you to create these applications yourself or hiring a consultant > to > do it for you. With this license, you do not have any obligations to > > publish your proprietary code. All our commercial licensing > revenues, > in turn, help support ongoing development and support for open source > > software, to the benefit of everybody. > > (b) Alternatively, you could contribute features back to us in > exchange > for commercial licenses, and we offer very generous terms of exchange > > which will give you a good return on your investment in those > features > and save you from "reinventing the wheel" first. In effect, you'll > be > joining us in the development of opentaps. > > Of course, please do not mistake any of this for trying to dissuade > anybody from contributing back to OFBIZ. I've spent three plus years > > trying to get more contributions to OFBIZ, and, obviously, the better > > OFBIZ is, the better off we are. However, if you want to use > opentaps > but don't want to create an open source product based on it yourself, > I > do not want you to feel that we are trying to exclude you either. > > Si Chen > > Scott A wrote: > > Here is a question. If I decide to modify my business model and go > for a > > franchise type business where I sell the entire package which > includes > > website, admin (ofbiz) and product to a company from what I > understand I can > > do so freely with the Apache's License but I could not do it with a > HPL. Is > > this a correct assumption? > > > > > > > > > > Christian Geisert wrote: > > > >> Florin Jurcovici schrieb: > >> > >>> Hello. > >>> > >>> To see if I really got it wrong, I did a bit of research on the > various > >>> licenses. I think it is useful to restate briefly what I > understand from > >>> each license. (I surely would like to see a lawyer comment on > these > >>> licensing issues.) > >>> > >> [..] > >> > >> > >>> Apache license: as far as I can understand it, it allows you to > >>> commercially license only stuff which is only coupled on > interfaces > >>> exposed by an app, such as plugins, but not stuff which replaces > parts > >>> of an app and/or implements various things differently, and which > uses > >>> code in the app to build and run - like for instance licensing > ofbiz > >>> with a module which not only provides additional financial > services but > >>> also changes whatever there already is in ofbiz. > >>> > >> I don't know where you got this information from but it is clearly > >> wrong, see > >> http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html#WhatDoesItMEAN > >> for details. > >> Short: You are allowed to distribute/sell your software which is > based > >> on code licensed under the Apache License and you are not required > to > >> publish your modified code. All you need to do is to include the > license > >> and give an attribution notice. > >> Big difference to the GPL (whatever version) > >> > >> -- > >> Christian > >> > >> > >> > >> > > > > >
