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The issue in this arrangement is with contributors. Why would contributors want to actually contribute. With AGPL one of two things happen: 1) The contributors

The issue in this arrangement is with contributors. Why would contributors want to actually contribute. With AGPL one of two things happen: 1) The contributors give you the right to license the software how you see fit. Thus, they are not able to get commercial benefit from the software, but you are. 2) The contributors don't give you the right to re-license the software. When this happens, you can't sell a commercial license. The final issue is that a lot of the contributors to open source actually are doing so on the behalf of their companies. Many companies would like to contribute some feature to the open source project that they find useful so they don't have to constantly patch upstream before using a project. With AGPL, you won't get those contributors.

phour 8y ago
With 1), if the company is clearly turning a profit from a dual licensing scheme, the contributors can ask for payment structure in their CLAs. This isn't an unreasonable request if the contributions are valuable. With 2), you may just not be able to accept the contributions upstream. This is fine though, people can still fork the project, which is better than them not being able to do anything at all if it was proprietary.
flukus 8y ago
> The contributors give you the right to license the software how you see fit. Thus, they are not able to get commercial benefit from the software, but you are. I'm not sure how common dual licensing is these days, but Trolltech used to use to dual license and use contributions to Qt (and KDE) as a recruiting mechanism. So there was no direct commercial gain but for many it resulted in getting something out of the exchange. There's also the resume padding and other indirect gains from contributing. I'd be more worried that the company could go completely closed source at any point.
- slavik81 8y ago
  For example, the contributors to Qt have varied over time, but in past years major contributors have included Digia, KDAB and Blackberry. The first two did so mostly to sell consulting services, and Blackberry did so because it was a major part of their OS. That said, Qt is a bit of a special case. It has a unique history and The Qt Company has an agreement with KDE that there will be ongoing open source releases. https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation....
- jancsika 8y ago
  > I'd be more worried that the company could go completely closed source at any point. Which company? I'm talking about developers who default to some license and then continue dev'ing. Those devs can just as easily go closed source at any point with a 3-clause BSD license. In fact that is more likely as anybody can take 3-clause BSD licensed software and make it proprietary.
jancsika 8y ago
> 1) The contributors give you the right to license the software how you see fit. Thus, they are not able to get commercial benefit from the software, but you are. Sure. But that's compared to the 3-clause BSD situation currently where no one at all is getting the commercial benefit in the majority of cases. And developers are already used to deferring to the main developer-- who is quite often the original author. In the rare case of Paul Davis subsisting on monthly donations in a free software project (Ardour), I have a hard time believing that people aren't submitting patches because he gets money.

phour 8y ago

With 1), if the company is clearly turning a profit from a dual licensing scheme, the contributors can ask for payment structure in their CLAs. This isn't an unreasonable request if the contributions are valuable. With 2), you may just not be able to accept the contributions upstream. This is fine though, people can still fork the project, which is better than them not being able to do anything at all if it was proprietary.

flukus 8y ago

> The contributors give you the right to license the software how you see fit. Thus, they are not able to get commercial benefit from the software, but you are. I'm not sure how common dual licensing is these days, but Trolltech used to use to dual license and use contributions to Qt (and KDE) as a recruiting mechanism. So there was no direct commercial gain but for many it resulted in getting something out of the exchange. There's also the resume padding and other indirect gains from contributing. I'd be more worried that the company could go completely closed source at any point.

slavik81 8y ago
For example, the contributors to Qt have varied over time, but in past years major contributors have included Digia, KDAB and Blackberry. The first two did so mostly to sell consulting services, and Blackberry did so because it was a major part of their OS. That said, Qt is a bit of a special case. It has a unique history and The Qt Company has an agreement with KDE that there will be ongoing open source releases. https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation....
jancsika 8y ago
> I'd be more worried that the company could go completely closed source at any point. Which company? I'm talking about developers who default to some license and then continue dev'ing. Those devs can just as easily go closed source at any point with a 3-clause BSD license. In fact that is more likely as anybody can take 3-clause BSD licensed software and make it proprietary.

jancsika 8y ago

> 1) The contributors give you the right to license the software how you see fit. Thus, they are not able to get commercial benefit from the software, but you are. Sure. But that's compared to the 3-clause BSD situation currently where no one at all is getting the commercial benefit in the majority of cases. And developers are already used to deferring to the main developer-- who is quite often the original author. In the rare case of Paul Davis subsisting on monthly donations in a free software project (Ardour), I have a hard time believing that people aren't submitting patches because he gets money.