A discussion of hybrid open source and proprietary licensing models.

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On Tuesday, August 24, 2004, at 03:53PM, Marshall Van Alstyne 
<marshall AT MIT.EDU> wrote:

>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).

For the FSF it's so they can more efficiently defend the code under the GPL, 
which uses copyright law. It's less efficient that a simple CVS commit, I 
agree, but more efficient than waiting for a frivolous lawsuit or a major 
license infraction to require that the copyrights be identified and defended. 
The FSF can get away with this becasue they are a nonprofit and becasue the 
GPL keeps the code and its derivatives available for everyone to use anyway.

The FSF announced a little while ago that they would release their (legal) 
tools for supporting this process, and Linux now requires a better audit 
trail IIRC. Compared to the amount of time it takes to write code, getting a 
release from your employer and signing a declaration are relatively trivial. 
Tiny patches don't need transfer anyway (unless they eventually add up to a 
substantial contribution).

For a corporate project the same considerations apply. If the project is 
dual-licensed, an additional concern is being able to sell proprietary 
licenses for the code. If the project were only Open Source and the company 
derived revenue from the project in ways other than simple proprietary 
licenses, this wouldn't be a problem. Or the company could go BSD, but then 
there is no point to commercial licenses anyway.

>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.'  "

IMHO MySQL need process engineering, not license engineering. Distributing 
your software under an Open Source license whilst not taking advantage of the 
Open Source development process is bad business sense. Even Trolltech have 
split their Free and proprietary operations with Qt into a nonprofit 
foundation and the core business.

- Rob.