3 ms·

Smart guy. Copyleft for the open source crowd to use freely, commercial license for businesses who want to keep their own source closed. I wonder where you get

by danjoc 10y ago

Smart guy. Copyleft for the open source crowd to use freely, commercial license for businesses who want to keep their own source closed. I wonder where you get a good commercial license to use like this. Is it always a custom thing requiring expensive lawyers or is there some repo of commercial licenses one can use?

jrpt 10y ago
You can use Supported Source: https://supportedsource.org/ https://supportedsource.org/ It's not copyleft, but if you ask you might be able to use it that way.
- jordigh 10y ago
  Supported Source is more or less shareware with visible source code. It's not free software or open source. Selling copyleft exceptions works fine with existing free and open source licenses.
- davexunit 10y ago
  Not only is it not copyleft, it's not free software nor open source software. It's proprietary software by another name.
makomk 10y ago
Open source software developers probably won't want to touch this with a bargepole. Oddball copyleft licenses are a pain in the ass to deal with an invariably incompatible with every other copyleft license including the GPL.
- shortstuffsushi 10y ago
  Came here to say much the same. GPL / non-MIT generally = avoid, because IANAL and don't want to figure out if I'm in the right or wrong.
- badsectoracula 10y ago
  Note that EUPL is explicitly compatible with GPL and a few other licenses in that it allows you to license a derivative work under GPL (or the other license) instead of EUPL.
mikekchar 10y ago
The downside to this approach is that you need to get copyright attributions for anyone who submits code to the project. This is often a fairly large barrier to entry for contributors and I suspect that the author will continue to have poor engagement for outside contributions. Now, from a practical point of view, that may be perfectly fine for him. If he's not getting many contributions anyway and doesn't really care about it, funding the project through license sales can make sense. Sometimes I think people don't think about the trade off that's required, though. I've seen people get frustrated with the lack of outside participation. However, I agree with you. In this case, it seems like a smart move.
- andris9 10y ago
  Yeah, you're right, I don't care about external contributions. I never wanted this to be a "community" thing. It started as I got interested in the quirks of email and wanted to mess around with the topic. Trying to find consensus etc. just makes it harder, not easier.

by danjoc 10y ago

jrpt 10y ago

You can use Supported Source: https://supportedsource.org/ https://supportedsource.org/ It's not copyleft, but if you ask you might be able to use it that way.

jordigh 10y ago
Supported Source is more or less shareware with visible source code. It's not free software or open source. Selling copyleft exceptions works fine with existing free and open source licenses.
davexunit 10y ago
Not only is it not copyleft, it's not free software nor open source software. It's proprietary software by another name.

makomk 10y ago

Open source software developers probably won't want to touch this with a bargepole. Oddball copyleft licenses are a pain in the ass to deal with an invariably incompatible with every other copyleft license including the GPL.

shortstuffsushi 10y ago
Came here to say much the same. GPL / non-MIT generally = avoid, because IANAL and don't want to figure out if I'm in the right or wrong.
badsectoracula 10y ago
Note that EUPL is explicitly compatible with GPL and a few other licenses in that it allows you to license a derivative work under GPL (or the other license) instead of EUPL.

mikekchar 10y ago

The downside to this approach is that you need to get copyright attributions for anyone who submits code to the project. This is often a fairly large barrier to entry for contributors and I suspect that the author will continue to have poor engagement for outside contributions. Now, from a practical point of view, that may be perfectly fine for him. If he's not getting many contributions anyway and doesn't really care about it, funding the project through license sales can make sense. Sometimes I think people don't think about the trade off that's required, though. I've seen people get frustrated with the lack of outside participation. However, I agree with you. In this case, it seems like a smart move.

andris9 10y ago
Yeah, you're right, I don't care about external contributions. I never wanted this to be a "community" thing. It started as I got interested in the quirks of email and wanted to mess around with the topic. Trying to find consensus etc. just makes it harder, not easier.