4 ms·

Conflict may have been too strong a word. In argument maybe? From what I understood, GNU was/is kind of a big deal, and OSI didn't have a monopoly on OS, or oth

Conflict may have been too strong a word. In argument maybe? From what I understood, GNU was/is kind of a big deal, and OSI didn't have a monopoly on OS, or otherwise they would have on GNU also. > if a project is licensed under an open source license, you can dual license it Confirming this is all I am after. I wasn't talking about carving anything up, though that sounds fun.

ghaff 3y ago
>Conflict may have been too strong a word. In argument maybe? The FSF (including GNU) and OSI have their own histories, missions, and philosophies (to some degree although there's no real conflict about what open source/free software are). Yes, there are politics around both organizations but that's mostly inside baseball from the perspective of the average software consumer. There are any number of other non-profits in the open source space that also do their own various things. And, yes, you can dual license. But understand that if one of the licenses is, say, MIT, a commercial entity can still use the software without paying no matter what the other license says. i.e. you can't use the second license to take away rights from the first license.
- pickingdinner 3y ago
  Then dual licensing is not possible? It's a simple IF statement. IF commercial then $cash, else $mit. A dual license doesn't mean they can choose if they already are what they are, ie for profit.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    No, dual licensing simply means something different from what you think it does. Doing your IF statement violates the terms of the MIT license (assuming the same public codebase.). A dual license is not IF/THEN/ELSE, it's pick $mit or $commercial--your call. If I pick $mit, no obligation to pay. You can not use $mit at all. But if you use it whether as part of a dual license model or otherwise, you don't get to rewrite it. Of course, you don't need to be open source at all which is what I usually tell clients who want their software to be "open source" for marketing purposes but get around some of the business model challenges. Here's the fairly canonical MySQL example of a dual license: "Oracle uses a dual licensing model for MySQL to meet the needs of its consumers. Oracle offers MySQL under a proprietary (OEM style) license for licensees who want to create and commercially distribute proprietary derivative works incorporating MySQL without revealing the underlying source code and do not wish to be subject to other restrictions and obligations of the GPL. Additionally, Oracle licenses MySQL under the GPL for licensees who simply want to use the software or who want to incorporate MySQL into a product to be later distributed likewise under the GPL." (Note that Oracle owns the MySQL copyrights. They perhaps couldn't otherwise do this unless subject to some restrictions. You can also just use MySQL without contacting Oracle.) But what you're proposing, the software doesn't have an MIT license. It has MIT license verbiage coupled to other license language that forbids free commercial use. It's not a dual license. It's a new, different, and non-open source license. (Which is fine but your software isn't then open source.) So from the IF/THEN/ELSE perspective your variety of dual licensing is not possible in the sense of a rider on an approved open source software license. (Of course, that assuming you can even define much less enforce "commercial." Creative Commons basically gave up.)
    - pickingdinner 3y ago
      > A dual license is not IF/THEN/ELSE, it's pick $mit or $commercial--your call. No, it can be both. As the originator of the work, you are free to grant licenses based on qualifications. It's done all the time. I can't choose Adobe's student licence because I'm not a student. So is this what's held back dual licensing and OS authors profiting? If the buyer could just freely choose of course it's broken. (edit) Just to add, even Oracle's license isn't completely free for the user to choose. Depending on the plans or policies of the buyer, they are restricted to their choices. So an IF statement exists.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - ghaff 3y ago
        If you release something under an open source license, of course I get to choose to use it under the terms of that license. That's the whole point. If that's not acceptable, don't release it under an open source license. Like Adobe's proprietary software, you can release it as free for educational or non-profit use only under your own license. Can be hard to define and hard to enforce but that's your problem. Do open source or don't do open source. I don't care. But it's tiresome to have people who want the "open source brand" but don't actually want to release open source software. Most of the actual advantages of open source don't accrue to tightly controlled products anyway. And, yes, I don't consider it a problem but dual licensing, at least outside of open core (which has its own problems), is fairly useless in the general case. So in that sense it's broken. But that is open source working as intended.
        pickingdinner 3y ago
        > of course I get to choose No, you are wrong here. Maybe it's semantics or whatever but a rights owner can impose restrictions based on conditions.
        ghaff 3y ago

ghaff 3y ago

>Conflict may have been too strong a word. In argument maybe? The FSF (including GNU) and OSI have their own histories, missions, and philosophies (to some degree although there's no real conflict about what open source/free software are). Yes, there are politics around both organizations but that's mostly inside baseball from the perspective of the average software consumer. There are any number of other non-profits in the open source space that also do their own various things. And, yes, you can dual license. But understand that if one of the licenses is, say, MIT, a commercial entity can still use the software without paying no matter what the other license says. i.e. you can't use the second license to take away rights from the first license.

pickingdinner 3y ago
Then dual licensing is not possible? It's a simple IF statement. IF commercial then $cash, else $mit. A dual license doesn't mean they can choose if they already are what they are, ie for profit.
- ghaff 3y ago
  No, dual licensing simply means something different from what you think it does. Doing your IF statement violates the terms of the MIT license (assuming the same public codebase.). A dual license is not IF/THEN/ELSE, it's pick $mit or $commercial--your call. If I pick $mit, no obligation to pay. You can not use $mit at all. But if you use it whether as part of a dual license model or otherwise, you don't get to rewrite it. Of course, you don't need to be open source at all which is what I usually tell clients who want their software to be "open source" for marketing purposes but get around some of the business model challenges. Here's the fairly canonical MySQL example of a dual license: "Oracle uses a dual licensing model for MySQL to meet the needs of its consumers. Oracle offers MySQL under a proprietary (OEM style) license for licensees who want to create and commercially distribute proprietary derivative works incorporating MySQL without revealing the underlying source code and do not wish to be subject to other restrictions and obligations of the GPL. Additionally, Oracle licenses MySQL under the GPL for licensees who simply want to use the software or who want to incorporate MySQL into a product to be later distributed likewise under the GPL." (Note that Oracle owns the MySQL copyrights. They perhaps couldn't otherwise do this unless subject to some restrictions. You can also just use MySQL without contacting Oracle.) But what you're proposing, the software doesn't have an MIT license. It has MIT license verbiage coupled to other license language that forbids free commercial use. It's not a dual license. It's a new, different, and non-open source license. (Which is fine but your software isn't then open source.) So from the IF/THEN/ELSE perspective your variety of dual licensing is not possible in the sense of a rider on an approved open source software license. (Of course, that assuming you can even define much less enforce "commercial." Creative Commons basically gave up.)
  - pickingdinner 3y ago
    > A dual license is not IF/THEN/ELSE, it's pick $mit or $commercial--your call. No, it can be both. As the originator of the work, you are free to grant licenses based on qualifications. It's done all the time. I can't choose Adobe's student licence because I'm not a student. So is this what's held back dual licensing and OS authors profiting? If the buyer could just freely choose of course it's broken. (edit) Just to add, even Oracle's license isn't completely free for the user to choose. Depending on the plans or policies of the buyer, they are restricted to their choices. So an IF statement exists.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ghaff 3y ago
      If you release something under an open source license, of course I get to choose to use it under the terms of that license. That's the whole point. If that's not acceptable, don't release it under an open source license. Like Adobe's proprietary software, you can release it as free for educational or non-profit use only under your own license. Can be hard to define and hard to enforce but that's your problem. Do open source or don't do open source. I don't care. But it's tiresome to have people who want the "open source brand" but don't actually want to release open source software. Most of the actual advantages of open source don't accrue to tightly controlled products anyway. And, yes, I don't consider it a problem but dual licensing, at least outside of open core (which has its own problems), is fairly useless in the general case. So in that sense it's broken. But that is open source working as intended.
      - pickingdinner 3y ago
        > of course I get to choose No, you are wrong here. Maybe it's semantics or whatever but a rights owner can impose restrictions based on conditions.
        ghaff 3y ago