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cc-bizcom - Re: [Cc-bizcom] Dual Licensing

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

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  • From: Marshall Van Alstyne <marshall AT MIT.EDU>
  • To: cc-bizcom AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Cc-bizcom] Dual Licensing
  • Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 10:52:01 -0400

Rob, this is helpful thinking on dual licensing. Thx. In particular, the issue about requiring transfer of ownership of contributed code (or rewrite) is troubling (or inefficient).

In tracing through these Slashdot links, I also found a great discussion of the current MySQL license in an interview conducted by Open for Business.

From that interview, the VP, Zack Urlocker of MySQL "thinks 'the GPL is the best license there is' and that MySQL AB works 'closely with the Free Software Foundation.' On the flip side, Urlocker said the company would consider a different license in the future, if a better one became available. 'The GPL is not a perfect license ... but it is the best that is available.' "

It's my hope that using theory, open discussion, and great tool building that we can try to figure out what such a license might look like.

MVA

At 05:57 PM 8/23/2004, Rob Myers wrote:
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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