4 ms·

Thanks for the answer. In practice, the "MIT" option sounds very similar to the much more standard "buy a license to integrate the code into proprietary softwar

Thanks for the answer. In practice, the "MIT" option sounds very similar to the much more standard "buy a license to integrate the code into proprietary software." As I'm sure you're aware, that's the model that Ghostscript has used for 30 years or whatnot. Is there a particular reason you're risking your customer doing a source release instead of taking this avenue? My (incorrect) understanding of your MIT option is that it would essentially be a buyout, in other words compensating you for the lost revenue from a public release. I've seen that happen as well.

dalke 6y ago
To date me, I learned about the Ghostscript model from Michael Tiemann in late 1996, when it used a delayed release model - GNU Ghostscript versions were released approximately a year after the corresponding Aladdin Ghostscript version. That model influenced my early thinking for chemfp. I thought there would be enough commercial interest to pay to develop the leading edge (and get a copy under an open source license), with a, say, 2-year delay for the no-cost open source version. There wasn't. But unlike the Ghostscript of 30 years ago, I wanted chemfp to be a fully open source project. That is, checking now, https://web.archive.org/web/20070614092626/http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/gnu/4.03/new-user.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20070614092626/http://pages.cs.w... says "[Artifex Software Inc. is] the only entity legally authorized to distribute Ghostscript per se on any terms other than the GNU or Aladdin" - that doesn't sound like an OEM could re-sell the source code under the same terms as received by the OEM, since only Artifex was authorized to allow that distribution. "Is there a particular reason .." My general support for FOSS? My willingness to try an experiment, see how it turns out, and report the results, in order to further the discussion about open source software in my field and how to fund it? My understanding that my pharma clients, almost as a rule, don't do software releases? My expectation that I can always fall back to consulting? My annoyance that published papers on fast similarity search almost invariably showed an amazing performance boost compared to a slow reference baseline, so even if there was a buyout this way, it would still result in reaching my main goals of promoting my FPS format and setting a more honest baseline? So no, no particular reason, but rather many reasons.

dalke 6y ago

To date me, I learned about the Ghostscript model from Michael Tiemann in late 1996, when it used a delayed release model - GNU Ghostscript versions were released approximately a year after the corresponding Aladdin Ghostscript version. That model influenced my early thinking for chemfp. I thought there would be enough commercial interest to pay to develop the leading edge (and get a copy under an open source license), with a, say, 2-year delay for the no-cost open source version. There wasn't. But unlike the Ghostscript of 30 years ago, I wanted chemfp to be a fully open source project. That is, checking now, https://web.archive.org/web/20070614092626/http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/gnu/4.03/new-user.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20070614092626/http://pages.cs.w... says "[Artifex Software Inc. is] the only entity legally authorized to distribute Ghostscript per se on any terms other than the GNU or Aladdin" - that doesn't sound like an OEM could re-sell the source code under the same terms as received by the OEM, since only Artifex was authorized to allow that distribution. "Is there a particular reason .." My general support for FOSS? My willingness to try an experiment, see how it turns out, and report the results, in order to further the discussion about open source software in my field and how to fund it? My understanding that my pharma clients, almost as a rule, don't do software releases? My expectation that I can always fall back to consulting? My annoyance that published papers on fast similarity search almost invariably showed an amazing performance boost compared to a slow reference baseline, so even if there was a buyout this way, it would still result in reaching my main goals of promoting my FPS format and setting a more honest baseline? So no, no particular reason, but rather many reasons.