[lug] GPL/Open Source License Questions

[Peter Hutnick]

Glenn Murray said:

> GPL pro:
>
> The GPL protects me as a developer as it makes it tough for some
> corporation to take my open code and then compete in the marketplace
> with me when I try to sell it under a different license.  I must
> acknowledge risk of this if I think there is a market for it in the
> first place.

I'm not completely convinced of this.  Let's say you release your
framework under the GPL.  I fork it and create a GPL to non-GPL plugin
interface.

I then compete with you in the plugins market for your framework, but I
have the advantage of being able to roll GPL fixes and improvements into
my fork of the framework.

I think that dual-licensing for market protection is a losing game.  Look
at Mozilla and Galleon.

> GPL con:
>
> I understand that few developers would want to contribute to
> GPL-licensed code if I am going to make money off of it (unless,
> perhaps, they assigned the copyright to their contributions to me and I
> paid them for their contributions out of my profits; JBoss does
> something like this).

I don't think that many people care if you dual license.  But you can't
distribute their code under any license other than the GPL without
permission.

The BSD license, OTOH, does allow this.  (But you lose (the possible
illusory) protection you mentioned above.)  (That's right, I make
parenthetical statements within my parenthetical statements, then make
parenthetical statements about them!)

> Scott Herod's "layered" licensing suggestion is intriguing: say in a
> classic three tier architecture have the gui/client layer be GPL and
> have the middle layer and database schema be a less restrictive
> GPL-compatible license.  There may be some mixed license headaches? Is
> this too nuanced?

Should be headache free as long as you only link GPLed code with code that
is under a GPL compatible license.

-Peter