[GLLUG] Burnbox Licensing

Jeff Lawton jeff at idealso.com
Sat Apr 28 20:10:06 EDT 2007


IMHO, If you release this open source either license. There is plenty of 
room for paid/ransomed feature requests. as well as it is just good 
marketing of your services.  Please do give credit to the GLLUG for the 
idea, Matt for the proof of concept, and Charles for the UI stuff. Other 
that that I think it is completely your creation :-)

Jeff Lawton
Ideal Solution, LLC
517-485-2650 ext 220
jeff at idealso.com
http://www.idealso.com





Marshal Newrock wrote:
> If my understanding of the GPL and BSD licenses are correct...
>
> On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 11:48:10 -0400
> Clay Dowling <clay at lazarusid.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Wow, seem to have kicked up a bit of a shit storm about licensing.
>> That's all to the good I suppose, at least it means people care.  I
>> had been considering using the GPL, but this discussion has convinced
>> me that a BSD style license would be better.
>>
>> If somebody can figure out how to make money with this software, I
>> want to encourage that.  If they make money when I wasn't it means
>> they're smarter than I am, and it provides me with an excellent
>> opportunity to learn.  Also, I can steal their idea, implement it my
>> way, and try to make even more money than they're making.
>>     
>
> If they don't license the changes under a BSD license, you may not be
> able to steal the changes back.  If they go with a proprietary license,
> 1) you may not have access to the source code, and 2) trying to use
> their changes could be copyright infringement.  Other open-source
> licenses may have their own restrictions which make them incompatible
> with the BSD license.
>
>   
>> Second, if they're determined to make money and can't use my code
>> base, they'll just find another code base.  It's better for me and my
>> ego to have my code base used.  It makes me the one controlling the
>> ideas, or at least influencing them.  That is an excellent position
>> to be in when trying to make money.
>>     
>
> I have my doubts that someone could successfully market a proprietary
> fork of something that's freely available as open source.  In this
> case, it would be like someone were incorporating it as part of a
> larger package.  Burn Box is a complete product.
>
>   
>> Third, my obligations are less under a BSD style license.  With a GPL
>> license, where I have required them to contribute code back, it
>> follows that I have some obligation to do something with that, like
>> give the submitter access to my repository, or at least try to
>> integrate the patch into the code.  Under a BSD style license, I feel
>> less of a moral obligation to do anything with their submission if I
>> don't want to, since I wasn't compelling their submission.
>>     
>
> I don't think you have quite so much obligation as that.  The GPL
> merely specifies that the resulting product must be GPL, and the source
> code available.  You are free to use their changes, or not.  They are
> free to submit changes back to you, or to fork and create a new product
> based on your codebase.
>
>   
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