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cc-bizcom - [Cc-bizcom] Dual Licensing

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Subject: A discussion of hybrid open source and proprietary licensing models.

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  • From: Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>
  • To: cc-bizcom AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Cc-bizcom] Dual Licensing
  • Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 22:57:42 +0100

There was an interesting article on Slashdot recently that accused MySQL of backing away from the GPL:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/17/ 0020237&tid=221&tid=117&tid=1&tid=218

In the ensuing Slashdot discussion, I found the following post the most interesting:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=118195&cid=9987606

"... Dual licensing is a bad idea. The only way you sell the commercial version is to make the GPL version unfriendly to business. Since the GPL was intended as a business friendly license, you're forced to misrepresent the GPL to sell licenses. If you want a dual-licensing business, don't use the GPL as the free license. Pick something that lets everyone know, from the get-go, that you're a commercial house intent on selling commercial software."

I'm not sure that a company would need to make the GPL look bad to make their proprietary offering look good to a proprietary developer. The factor that the poster (and many people) miss is that it doesn't matter whether the GPL version is free when you don't want to open your own code. If you don't want to contribute your work for free, the GPL looks like a bad move. You need a proprietary license in this situation.

To dual-licence code you have to own the copyright. To own the copyright you have to have written the code or had the copyright assigned to you. The FSF get copyrights assigned to them on projects to better defend their code against GPL infractions. So requiring copyright isn't sinister, and is probably the way most projects will go in the long term as more and more SCOs turn up.

But for a dual-licensed project, requiring copyright transfer from Open Source contributors is asking for free work-for-hire. It's not a particularly enticing proposition. And IIRC projects like MySQL re-write received patches to allow them to own copyright on the code. This inefficiency and value fire-walling prevents the Open Source project from reaching critical mass, and makes the Open Source project a drain on the proprietary one rather than an asset for the company.

This, IMHO, is the disadvantage of dual licensing for many current projects.

Next up I'll discuss the OGL and how a hybrid license can be a firewall and still build a critical mass.

- Rob.





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