6 ms·

Very cool! "DonglePi is released under a dual license. It is GPL for educational and personal use. It is under a commercial license if you want to produce it

by ashark 12y ago

Very cool! "DonglePi is released under a dual license. It is GPL for educational and personal use. It is under a commercial license if you want to produce it and sell it." Hm. Am I right in thinking that it doesn't work like this? You can dual license, but you can't say "only some people using it certain (educational, noncommercial) ways may choose the GPL version". I'm also not sure how good a fit the GPL is for hardware designs. Seems like it might be better to GPL the software, then CC-noncommercial the hardware side, with an option to pay for a commercial license. (but of course IANAL) Anyway, this is such a good idea and such an obvious candidate for Kickstarter that I'm surprised to see it on Github first. [EDIT] grammar

MarcScott 12y ago
Working in CS and Systems & Control education, this is something I'd back if it were on kickstarter.
gbin 12y ago
I tried to follow the Qt licensing model (commercial vs non-commercial use) but IANAL either. Honestly, the goal here is more about investing in the next design like a low latency USB3 version if somebody decides to produce this one. As for github vs kickstarter first: I would love to bring more expertise on the project as I am more a software guy than an hardware guy. So if anybody is interested in improving the HW design and make a kickstarter out of it, feel free to contact me !
- nadams 12y ago
  The Qt model is basically so that people can pay a license fee and not have to follow the terms of GPL and have to make their source available.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  The issue is your wording. Qt's model says it's licensed under the GPL/LGPL for anyone who wants to use it under the terms of the GPL/LGPL, whether for commercial or non-commercial use - or you can contact them for a license to get out of that. The issue is that if you say "it's GPL so long as you don't use it commercially", that's not actually the GPL (which never mentions the commercial/non-commercial distinction), and users/developers can't combine your work with GPLed work.
mmagin 12y ago
I've seen dual licensing of software lots of times before. Though most of the ones that come to mind are "GPL, but if you don't want to have to GPL the code you're linking to it, you'll have to buy a commercial license for this", not "GPL only under these conditions."
- technomancy 12y ago
  I think this is the intent of the linked project. The wording is wrong; you can't say "GPL except for commercial products" but I think he intends to use the word "commercial" to mean "proprietary", in which case it works. It's unfortunate because there are tons of commercial products that use the GPL (including my own product), and this perpetuates the old tired trope that libre licenses don't work on products you pay for. But my suspicion is that it's just sloppy wording rather than attempting to add an invalid clause to the GPL.
  - belorn 12y ago
    GPLv3 has a interesting hack in which it says you can ignore additional restrictions. DonglePi was gplv2, so it is sadly not applicable in this case but it would had made things interesting.
nadams 12y ago
IANAL either - but I believe if the author wants those restrictions they would have to modify and include a custom version of the GPL. If they did this I would stay far away as any project that included his library would automatically be licensed under his custom GPL. I would suggest to the author to just license it under the GPL if they want it restrictive - and offer a commercial license for people who don't want to give up custom code. I don't think a lot of people realize that a condition of the GPL is that if you distribute it in compiled form you must make available the source (exception would be server type applications like wordpress which Affero GPL was supposed to close that "loophole"). You may sell GPL software, but once someone buys it they may give it away for free[1]. [1] - http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAvailabilityToPublic http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAv...
- TheDong 12y ago
  He could very well write a custom GPL that is compatible with regular GPL, thus allowing any project to include his project to be GPL or his custom GPL, not only his GPL variant.
  - nsgi 12y ago
    The project would have to allow commercial use, which would contradict his custom GPL.
  - NotEMoose 12y ago
    Except the GPL is actually non-free: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Derivations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Der... However you could make a derivative, but it's of little value.
    - belorn 12y ago
      The preamble text of the GPL is non-free, as is the usage of the name GPL and GNU in it. I could not find if GPL and GNU is trademarked, as that would serve a similar purpose.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Am I right in thinking that it doesn't work like this? Yeah, it doesn't work that way, though IIRC MySQL AB originally, and for quite a while, did the same thing.
duskwuff 12y ago
Licensing hardware under the GPL doesn't make any sense. The GPL was written to be applied to software written in compiled languages; it refers to its subject as "the Program", and places requirements on how you may "copy and redistribute" it, or make use of its "source code". It's not clear how this even applies to some types of computer applications (e.g, interpreted scripts), let alone to physical artifacts like a circuit board.
- technomancy 12y ago
  Most hardware these days has schematics and designs consisting of software. It's a fairly clear mapping between the source files and the compiled files (usually gerber files for circuit boards, EPS or DXF files for case designs, etc) that the terms of the GPL can still apply to.

by ashark 12y ago

MarcScott 12y ago

Working in CS and Systems & Control education, this is something I'd back if it were on kickstarter.

gbin 12y ago

I tried to follow the Qt licensing model (commercial vs non-commercial use) but IANAL either. Honestly, the goal here is more about investing in the next design like a low latency USB3 version if somebody decides to produce this one. As for github vs kickstarter first: I would love to bring more expertise on the project as I am more a software guy than an hardware guy. So if anybody is interested in improving the HW design and make a kickstarter out of it, feel free to contact me !

nadams 12y ago
The Qt model is basically so that people can pay a license fee and not have to follow the terms of GPL and have to make their source available.
vertex-four 12y ago
The issue is your wording. Qt's model says it's licensed under the GPL/LGPL for anyone who wants to use it under the terms of the GPL/LGPL, whether for commercial or non-commercial use - or you can contact them for a license to get out of that. The issue is that if you say "it's GPL so long as you don't use it commercially", that's not actually the GPL (which never mentions the commercial/non-commercial distinction), and users/developers can't combine your work with GPLed work.

mmagin 12y ago

I've seen dual licensing of software lots of times before. Though most of the ones that come to mind are "GPL, but if you don't want to have to GPL the code you're linking to it, you'll have to buy a commercial license for this", not "GPL only under these conditions."

technomancy 12y ago
I think this is the intent of the linked project. The wording is wrong; you can't say "GPL except for commercial products" but I think he intends to use the word "commercial" to mean "proprietary", in which case it works. It's unfortunate because there are tons of commercial products that use the GPL (including my own product), and this perpetuates the old tired trope that libre licenses don't work on products you pay for. But my suspicion is that it's just sloppy wording rather than attempting to add an invalid clause to the GPL.
- belorn 12y ago
  GPLv3 has a interesting hack in which it says you can ignore additional restrictions. DonglePi was gplv2, so it is sadly not applicable in this case but it would had made things interesting.

nadams 12y ago

IANAL either - but I believe if the author wants those restrictions they would have to modify and include a custom version of the GPL. If they did this I would stay far away as any project that included his library would automatically be licensed under his custom GPL. I would suggest to the author to just license it under the GPL if they want it restrictive - and offer a commercial license for people who don't want to give up custom code. I don't think a lot of people realize that a condition of the GPL is that if you distribute it in compiled form you must make available the source (exception would be server type applications like wordpress which Affero GPL was supposed to close that "loophole"). You may sell GPL software, but once someone buys it they may give it away for free[1]. [1] - http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAvailabilityToPublic http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAv...

TheDong 12y ago
He could very well write a custom GPL that is compatible with regular GPL, thus allowing any project to include his project to be GPL or his custom GPL, not only his GPL variant.
- nsgi 12y ago
  The project would have to allow commercial use, which would contradict his custom GPL.
- NotEMoose 12y ago
  Except the GPL is actually non-free: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Derivations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Der... However you could make a derivative, but it's of little value.
  - belorn 12y ago
    The preamble text of the GPL is non-free, as is the usage of the name GPL and GNU in it. I could not find if GPL and GNU is trademarked, as that would serve a similar purpose.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> Am I right in thinking that it doesn't work like this? Yeah, it doesn't work that way, though IIRC MySQL AB originally, and for quite a while, did the same thing.

duskwuff 12y ago

Licensing hardware under the GPL doesn't make any sense. The GPL was written to be applied to software written in compiled languages; it refers to its subject as "the Program", and places requirements on how you may "copy and redistribute" it, or make use of its "source code". It's not clear how this even applies to some types of computer applications (e.g, interpreted scripts), let alone to physical artifacts like a circuit board.

technomancy 12y ago
Most hardware these days has schematics and designs consisting of software. It's a fairly clear mapping between the source files and the compiled files (usually gerber files for circuit boards, EPS or DXF files for case designs, etc) that the terms of the GPL can still apply to.