5 ms·

They should have used a viral license like GPLv3, and sold commercial license exceptions.

rmc 11y ago
Or a licence like Affero GPL, which requires you to release the source code (and changes maybe?) if you make it available online.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  AGPL requires that you release the version that you are actually running on the server.
zxv 11y ago
Yes, the GPLv3 is a powerful tool, but it doesn't completely eliminate the need to control when and how source code becomes open. In practice, GPLv3 may only offer hope that one could some day prevent violations after the time and expense of litigation. VMWare and Tivo are examples. Consider Google Android, which releases sources with binaries when the release occurs, not before. Balancing the how and when is just as important as the license. Gnu Ghostscript was an example for many years. They used a dual license and released source to the public six months after binaries.
- admax88q 11y ago
  > In practice, GPLv3 may only offer hope that one could some day prevent violations after the time and expense of litigation That's overly pessimistic. People abusing your GPLv3 licensed code would be almost the same as people pirating your proprietary software. It would still be copyright infringement and with prices already set for commerical license exceptions it would be relatively easy to sue for damages plus legal fees. It's funny in this case that the Free Software approach may actually be a more viable business model for RoboVM than the OSS approach. Many people consider Open Source to be better for business and Free Software to be a bunch of hippies. But had RoboVM used a viral license and sold commercial exceptions (a model that the FSF considers acceptable) they could be defending user's freedoms while also building a viable business.
  - bad_user 11y ago
    A successful open-source project is also about building a community of third-party contributors. Or at least the possibility of one such community happening. Dual licensing basically kills off that discussion, because in order for dual licensing to work, then contributors need to sign a contributors agreement that licenses their work for whatever purpose the parent company sees fit. And this is where I've always disagreed with FSF's stance. Many people claim that GPL is inadequate because of the "ASP loophole". But a much bigger loophole is dual licensing. This is because dual licensing happens (and is useful) only when the product is unusable as open-source. For example Gitorious is AGPL licensed and does not need dual licensing because you know, it's meant for people to have an on-premise solution for Git hosting and it's a take it or leave it thing. A Javascript library on the other hand is totally useless as AGPL. Dual licensing is also what made Qt and consequently KDE to be less popular than Gtk+ and Gnome in distributions such as Red Hat's or Ubuntu, or why popular project such as Firefox or LibreOffice are better integrated with Gtk+/Gnome, even though Qt has always been technically superior. Heck, Qt's licensing is why Gtk+/Gnome happened in the first place. You see, the biggest advantage of open-source, its raison d'être if you will, is the possibility to fork. But if a fork cannot survive because of licensing reasons, maybe because it cannot be applied to the same projects as the original, then that's not really open-source. Personally I prefer the open core. For example I currently work with Scala and the JVM and I use IntelliJ IDEA as my IDE. It has a community edition with everything I need. Yet I pay for the Ultimate edition anyway. If the community edition gets discontinued, I'll switch in a heartbeat.
    - quadrangle 11y ago
      The dual-licensing problem for software freedom is easily dealt with: just accept community contributions WITHOUT requiring a CLA. That is enough to legally guarantee the software will stay free for everyone. Dual licensing isn't otherwise a loophole since it is a decision the primary author organization makes for themselves, not something someone else can do to your copyleft code. Copyleft does protect the commons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UneYZikN85Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UneYZikN85Q
    - jordigh 11y ago
s73v3r 11y ago
The main purpose of their tool was running Java code on iOS. Using GPLv3, you couldn't do that.

rmc 11y ago

Or a licence like Affero GPL, which requires you to release the source code (and changes maybe?) if you make it available online.

quadrangle 11y ago
AGPL requires that you release the version that you are actually running on the server.

zxv 11y ago

Yes, the GPLv3 is a powerful tool, but it doesn't completely eliminate the need to control when and how source code becomes open. In practice, GPLv3 may only offer hope that one could some day prevent violations after the time and expense of litigation. VMWare and Tivo are examples. Consider Google Android, which releases sources with binaries when the release occurs, not before. Balancing the how and when is just as important as the license. Gnu Ghostscript was an example for many years. They used a dual license and released source to the public six months after binaries.

admax88q 11y ago
> In practice, GPLv3 may only offer hope that one could some day prevent violations after the time and expense of litigation That's overly pessimistic. People abusing your GPLv3 licensed code would be almost the same as people pirating your proprietary software. It would still be copyright infringement and with prices already set for commerical license exceptions it would be relatively easy to sue for damages plus legal fees. It's funny in this case that the Free Software approach may actually be a more viable business model for RoboVM than the OSS approach. Many people consider Open Source to be better for business and Free Software to be a bunch of hippies. But had RoboVM used a viral license and sold commercial exceptions (a model that the FSF considers acceptable) they could be defending user's freedoms while also building a viable business.
- bad_user 11y ago
  A successful open-source project is also about building a community of third-party contributors. Or at least the possibility of one such community happening. Dual licensing basically kills off that discussion, because in order for dual licensing to work, then contributors need to sign a contributors agreement that licenses their work for whatever purpose the parent company sees fit. And this is where I've always disagreed with FSF's stance. Many people claim that GPL is inadequate because of the "ASP loophole". But a much bigger loophole is dual licensing. This is because dual licensing happens (and is useful) only when the product is unusable as open-source. For example Gitorious is AGPL licensed and does not need dual licensing because you know, it's meant for people to have an on-premise solution for Git hosting and it's a take it or leave it thing. A Javascript library on the other hand is totally useless as AGPL. Dual licensing is also what made Qt and consequently KDE to be less popular than Gtk+ and Gnome in distributions such as Red Hat's or Ubuntu, or why popular project such as Firefox or LibreOffice are better integrated with Gtk+/Gnome, even though Qt has always been technically superior. Heck, Qt's licensing is why Gtk+/Gnome happened in the first place. You see, the biggest advantage of open-source, its raison d'être if you will, is the possibility to fork. But if a fork cannot survive because of licensing reasons, maybe because it cannot be applied to the same projects as the original, then that's not really open-source. Personally I prefer the open core. For example I currently work with Scala and the JVM and I use IntelliJ IDEA as my IDE. It has a community edition with everything I need. Yet I pay for the Ultimate edition anyway. If the community edition gets discontinued, I'll switch in a heartbeat.
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    The dual-licensing problem for software freedom is easily dealt with: just accept community contributions WITHOUT requiring a CLA. That is enough to legally guarantee the software will stay free for everyone. Dual licensing isn't otherwise a loophole since it is a decision the primary author organization makes for themselves, not something someone else can do to your copyleft code. Copyleft does protect the commons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UneYZikN85Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UneYZikN85Q
  - jordigh 11y ago

s73v3r 11y ago

The main purpose of their tool was running Java code on iOS. Using GPLv3, you couldn't do that.