3 ms·

I've seen the same phobia to a lesser degree around the plain old GPL. Lawyers think, and not unreasonably, in terms of risk. Is there a risk you might be dragg

by api 6y ago

I've seen the same phobia to a lesser degree around the plain old GPL. Lawyers think, and not unreasonably, in terms of risk. Is there a risk you might be dragged into court? If so, that's a very expensive risk. Is the library or application worth this risk? If not, then ditch it. It's not an unreasonable fear either given past events like the SCO/Linux lawsuit. IBM had deep enough pockets to fight it and win. Anyone else would have folded or been ruined. It makes it hard to be anything but 100% "libre" (almost public domain) or commercial and closed source. Being 100% libre means someone big can (and sometimes does) just take your work and put their name on it and monetize it. This wasn't much of a problem years ago, but it's a growing issue now. Being 100% commercial is of course the opposite. We're excluding the middle, to great detriment, and we really need a workable legal solution that won't scare lawyers.

zrm 6y ago
But isn't the middle ground requiring copyright assignment and then dual licensing? Oh dear, your company's lawyers are afraid of the AGPL? Well then pay the project for a commercial license.
- nine_k 6y ago
  For that, the project should offer a commercial license in the first place.
- api 6y ago
  That can work but it has to be low friction and reasonably priced. Many people who do dual licensing charge waaaaay too much.
nine_k 6y ago
I agree with this analysis, and I think that dual licensing can help here. That is, something is free is you want to use it in a copyleft-compatible fashion, and costs serious money for a commercial license if you want to go proprietary. Even SQLite, which is public domain, offers a commercial "warranty of title" [1] if your company requires a guarantee that there can't be a lawsuit regarding the use of this software. [1]: https://www.hwaci.com/cgi-bin/license-step1 https://www.hwaci.com/cgi-bin/license-step1
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  That makes a good deal of sense, since not all countries recognize the existence of public domain as a concept or the right of authors to dedicate their work to it before copyright expiration. (These cases are both mentioned on the link you provided.)
  - ghaff 6y ago
    That's the reason why the original MIT license (X Consortium license) came into being. The developers wanted to get rid of headaches associated with the proprietary license but at least one of the companies involved wouldn't touch making the code public domain. So MIT's lawyers came up with the MIT license.
guerby 6y ago
Lawyers run businesses, and drafting custom contracts/licence are a big part of their business. GPL and standardized licences destroy this part of their business. Also who pays a lawyers to read the thousands of page of licences for say Microsoft software (all the version of all the software deployed)? Where I work no one is able to know what Microsoft licence we need to buy, even when we ask licence sellers they mostly don't answer, and it changes all the time. IIRC early Microsoft Visual C++ licences did not authorize the diffusion of debug compiled executables (don't know if it's still the case). How many violation of this?
bsder 6y ago
Embedded is generally quite serious about this. It's not even whether you comply, the issue is that if your company is getting bought you do NOT want the deal to get hung up over software licenses.

by api 6y ago

zrm 6y ago

But isn't the middle ground requiring copyright assignment and then dual licensing? Oh dear, your company's lawyers are afraid of the AGPL? Well then pay the project for a commercial license.

nine_k 6y ago
For that, the project should offer a commercial license in the first place.
api 6y ago
That can work but it has to be low friction and reasonably priced. Many people who do dual licensing charge waaaaay too much.

nine_k 6y ago

I agree with this analysis, and I think that dual licensing can help here. That is, something is free is you want to use it in a copyleft-compatible fashion, and costs serious money for a commercial license if you want to go proprietary. Even SQLite, which is public domain, offers a commercial "warranty of title" [1] if your company requires a guarantee that there can't be a lawsuit regarding the use of this software. [1]: https://www.hwaci.com/cgi-bin/license-step1 https://www.hwaci.com/cgi-bin/license-step1

jkaplowitz 6y ago
That makes a good deal of sense, since not all countries recognize the existence of public domain as a concept or the right of authors to dedicate their work to it before copyright expiration. (These cases are both mentioned on the link you provided.)
- ghaff 6y ago
  That's the reason why the original MIT license (X Consortium license) came into being. The developers wanted to get rid of headaches associated with the proprietary license but at least one of the companies involved wouldn't touch making the code public domain. So MIT's lawyers came up with the MIT license.

guerby 6y ago

Lawyers run businesses, and drafting custom contracts/licence are a big part of their business. GPL and standardized licences destroy this part of their business. Also who pays a lawyers to read the thousands of page of licences for say Microsoft software (all the version of all the software deployed)? Where I work no one is able to know what Microsoft licence we need to buy, even when we ask licence sellers they mostly don't answer, and it changes all the time. IIRC early Microsoft Visual C++ licences did not authorize the diffusion of debug compiled executables (don't know if it's still the case). How many violation of this?

bsder 6y ago

Embedded is generally quite serious about this. It's not even whether you comply, the issue is that if your company is getting bought you do NOT want the deal to get hung up over software licenses.