7 ms·

I've always wondered why GPL dual licensing isn't more popular. In particular, I've always wondered why "GPL or ask me for permission" isn't being explored more

I've always wondered why GPL dual licensing isn't more popular. In particular, I've always wondered why "GPL or ask me for permission" isn't being explored more. That still allows you to be extremely permissive but you get the make the call. Eg if I were coding a database like Redis, maybe I'd be totally cool with people freely using it in their moonshot VC-funded trike sharing site, but not with cloud providers offering it as a paid service (or, at least not without paying me some royalties).

anyzen 8y ago
> In particular, I've always wondered why "GPL or ask me for permission" isn't being explored more. Maybe because then you need to have CLA's (Contributor License Agreements)? Otherwise, who is "you" that they need to ask? It's not just your code, it is based on work of many other contributers.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Not if you don't have any other contributors.
  - oliwarner 8y ago
    But you'll have an epic dilemma the day they drop the PR.
    - blattimwind 8y ago
      Only if you merge it.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  Possibly-ignorant legal question: Could the "CLA" be as simple as a checkbox on the PR submission form that says something to the effect of "You agree that your contributions to this repository, while owned by and credited to you, belong to (ownername) for the purposes of copyright and license enforcement?" Basically, making anyone who contributes aware that the contribution doesn't give them a claim in the copyright of the project. Short and simple.
  - rmc 8y ago
    A CLA is basically a simple as you describe. It's just that some people (how many?) don't want their contributions to be ever closed source and might not agree to that term. Worse case, they fork your project, applying their changes to their fork. It's the social issue, not the legal issue, that's annoying about CLAs.
    - anyzen 8y ago
      I have been currently exploring the option of open sourcing a project of mine and have researched CLAs a bit, but would love to be corrected if mistaken. It is as simple - and it is not. You need to take care of special cases, like contributions from company employees in their free time (their company could still own rights to this work), people contributing other people's code (SO answers), patents and whatnot. Fortunately there are existing CLA agreements (Apache for instance). As for this being the social issue, I don't know yet how big a problem that is. It's never bothered me before, as I recognize that maintainer might want to take the project in another direction in the future and since I don't want to maintain it, I am just happy that they are doing it for me. I will use CLA for my project and if someone doesn't like it, it's fine too - I don't mind forks (if they are well maintained, I'll just switch to them ;), and if someone doesn't want to contribute because of this, I don't want their contribution to be in my code anyway, because it limits my options in the future. There's a new post today on HN [0] that presents options pretty nicely, and it is very aligned with the conclusions I came to. [0] https://www.influxdata.com/blog/its-time-for-the-open-source-community-to-get-real/ https://www.influxdata.com/blog/its-time-for-the-open-source...
dragonwriter 8y ago
> In particular, I've always wondered why "GPL or ask me for permission" isn't being explored more. Because handling “ask me for permission” is expensive, even if you say no, and you can only do it if you sacrificing much of the main benefit to using open licensing, which getting free work from downstream, since people having to give code ownership to you makes them less likely to contribute back anything that you can use with your licensing model, even if they are doing GPL derivatives that the rest of the world can use without the “or ask me” part.
- nine_k 8y ago
  Do you posit that people are more inclined to share contributions to a codebase that does not ask them to share such contributions? Or do you posit that GPL (or another reciprocal license) prevents adoption of software where a MIT (or another permissive license) would lead to adoption of that same software?
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Do you posit that people are more inclined to share contributions to a codebase that does not ask them to share such contributions? I posit that people businesses share contributions because it brings them business value, and the business itself being able to use the code in proprietary derivatives often significantly enhances the business value from sharing contributions, which is why SQLite (available as public domain or permissive license) and PostgreSQL (permissive license) have significant upstream contributions from downstream proprietary users, and even Linux gets a fair amount from people whose main use motivating modifications is hosted use which does not require contributions (because it's GPL, not AGPL.) I further posit that, OTOH, people who don't want to control downstream use are more likely to contribute if they can do so with a license that doesn't constrain downstream use. But most critically I observe that a GPL-or-proprietary offer cannot use GPL-only contributions, it requires acquiring rights from downstream contributors to relicense code under a proprietary license. So even if people are contributing under the GPL, that isn't “giving back” to the vendor of software that is under a GPL-or-proprietary license scheme (where the value proposition is that the proprietary offers at least as much in all dimensions as the GPL version, and more in some), since by adopting that license scheme they have locked themselves out of use of community improvements that are offered only under the reciprocal provisions of the GPL, which can result in the proprietary version being supported by less aggregate development resources than a community, GPL-only fork.

anyzen 8y ago

> In particular, I've always wondered why "GPL or ask me for permission" isn't being explored more. Maybe because then you need to have CLA's (Contributor License Agreements)? Otherwise, who is "you" that they need to ask? It's not just your code, it is based on work of many other contributers.

blattimwind 8y ago
Not if you don't have any other contributors.
- oliwarner 8y ago
  But you'll have an epic dilemma the day they drop the PR.
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    Only if you merge it.
Karunamon 8y ago
Possibly-ignorant legal question: Could the "CLA" be as simple as a checkbox on the PR submission form that says something to the effect of "You agree that your contributions to this repository, while owned by and credited to you, belong to (ownername) for the purposes of copyright and license enforcement?" Basically, making anyone who contributes aware that the contribution doesn't give them a claim in the copyright of the project. Short and simple.
- rmc 8y ago
  A CLA is basically a simple as you describe. It's just that some people (how many?) don't want their contributions to be ever closed source and might not agree to that term. Worse case, they fork your project, applying their changes to their fork. It's the social issue, not the legal issue, that's annoying about CLAs.
  - anyzen 8y ago
    I have been currently exploring the option of open sourcing a project of mine and have researched CLAs a bit, but would love to be corrected if mistaken. It is as simple - and it is not. You need to take care of special cases, like contributions from company employees in their free time (their company could still own rights to this work), people contributing other people's code (SO answers), patents and whatnot. Fortunately there are existing CLA agreements (Apache for instance). As for this being the social issue, I don't know yet how big a problem that is. It's never bothered me before, as I recognize that maintainer might want to take the project in another direction in the future and since I don't want to maintain it, I am just happy that they are doing it for me. I will use CLA for my project and if someone doesn't like it, it's fine too - I don't mind forks (if they are well maintained, I'll just switch to them ;), and if someone doesn't want to contribute because of this, I don't want their contribution to be in my code anyway, because it limits my options in the future. There's a new post today on HN [0] that presents options pretty nicely, and it is very aligned with the conclusions I came to. [0] https://www.influxdata.com/blog/its-time-for-the-open-source-community-to-get-real/ https://www.influxdata.com/blog/its-time-for-the-open-source...

dragonwriter 8y ago

> In particular, I've always wondered why "GPL or ask me for permission" isn't being explored more. Because handling “ask me for permission” is expensive, even if you say no, and you can only do it if you sacrificing much of the main benefit to using open licensing, which getting free work from downstream, since people having to give code ownership to you makes them less likely to contribute back anything that you can use with your licensing model, even if they are doing GPL derivatives that the rest of the world can use without the “or ask me” part.

nine_k 8y ago
Do you posit that people are more inclined to share contributions to a codebase that does not ask them to share such contributions? Or do you posit that GPL (or another reciprocal license) prevents adoption of software where a MIT (or another permissive license) would lead to adoption of that same software?
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Do you posit that people are more inclined to share contributions to a codebase that does not ask them to share such contributions? I posit that people businesses share contributions because it brings them business value, and the business itself being able to use the code in proprietary derivatives often significantly enhances the business value from sharing contributions, which is why SQLite (available as public domain or permissive license) and PostgreSQL (permissive license) have significant upstream contributions from downstream proprietary users, and even Linux gets a fair amount from people whose main use motivating modifications is hosted use which does not require contributions (because it's GPL, not AGPL.) I further posit that, OTOH, people who don't want to control downstream use are more likely to contribute if they can do so with a license that doesn't constrain downstream use. But most critically I observe that a GPL-or-proprietary offer cannot use GPL-only contributions, it requires acquiring rights from downstream contributors to relicense code under a proprietary license. So even if people are contributing under the GPL, that isn't “giving back” to the vendor of software that is under a GPL-or-proprietary license scheme (where the value proposition is that the proprietary offers at least as much in all dimensions as the GPL version, and more in some), since by adopting that license scheme they have locked themselves out of use of community improvements that are offered only under the reciprocal provisions of the GPL, which can result in the proprietary version being supported by less aggregate development resources than a community, GPL-only fork.