OS License

[pcmattman]

I am going to shoot you.

You would shoot the forum admin, the guy who made OSDev.org?

[chase]

I am going to shoot you.

You would shoot the forum admin, the guy who made OSDev.org?

I think (hope) he was just kidding. We are having a discussion about commercial vs non-commercial licenses in another thread. My ideas on commercial licenses goes something like this: For most software projects to be really popular they have to get used commercially. If a project is going to accept contributions then you have to have absolute faith in the maintainer and transfer your rights to them (FSF gnu copyright software is the best example). If the project is maintained by someone that you can't trust (Sveasoft is a good example) then do NOT assign them rights, just give them your contributions under an open source licence. If that license is commercial then that's even better because you can start drastically undercutting their pricing if they ever decide to do something evil without having to be in the wrong yourself. I don't find anything wrong in a license just because it's commercial. If fact I think the real intent of most (not all) non-commercial licensed projects is to sell commercial licenses to big companies. In general I think a non-commercial license limits the growth potential of software (if that's it's only license) too much. I don't exactly feel the same about wiki or book content. There only publishing and training courses would be limited by a non-commercial clause, I don't think there is a commercial way to read a book so it doesn't really impact derivative electronic versions or the end users.

[pcmattman]

Of course he was kidding, as was I . And I have read (and enjoyed) the other thread.

IMHO open source operating systems may not be a source of cash (but you can setup advertising and all sorts of fun things on the system site for income) but without them, where would we be?

The one thing that is frustrating is creating the operating system as open source and then realizing you've got something big but are unable to sell it because doing so would violate the license and you'd have heaps of contributors running after you with forks wanting to be paid...

[chase]

But if they have forks then why don't they just sell there own versions?

[pcmattman]

Well, that's the other problem with changing from open source to commercial. Of course, if you, in changing to a commercial licence, choose to remove the rights that they have (it's your code anyway), and they go make millions of your code and you have proof that it's yours, you just sue them for millions and then you don't even need to make your OS commercial because you're already worth millions because you sued the people who stole the code that was meant to be open source but you changed.


Woah. That's one heck of a description .

[chase]

Open source doesn't exclude commercial. Take the GPL for instance and how RedHat does RedHat Enterprise Linux. Also some of the open source licenses prohibit you from ever revoking peoples rights once you release it (why it's so easy fork a project). See section 7 b of the CC attribution license for an example:

Subject to the above terms and conditions, the license granted here is perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright in the Work). Notwithstanding the above, Licensor reserves the right to release the Work under different license terms or to stop distributing the Work at any time; provided, however that any such election will not serve to withdraw this License (or any other license that has been, or is required to be, granted under the terms of this License), and this License will continue in full force and effect unless terminated as stated above.

So if it's only your code you can switch the license but you have to hope that someone didn't save a copy of it under the old license.

[mystran]

Take the GPL for instance and how RedHat does RedHat Enterprise Linux.

That's just fake. They don't really have any customers. There's no money involved, and it's automatic non-sense generators that sends me mail because we run a distribution that Redhat stole from Fedora (and packaged with ugly red hat logo) on a couple of servers. There's also some flower powered support non-sense I hear. Not that I've ever tried calling them, it's more often hardware that breaks, which is another good indicator that it simply can't be commercial.

edit: yes, the above post is an attempt at humor

[Kevin McGuire]

Well, that's the other problem with changing from open source to commercial. Of course, if you, in changing to a commercial licence, choose to remove the rights that they have (it's your code anyway), and they go make millions of your code and you have proof that it's yours, you just sue them for millions and then you don't even need to make your OS commercial because you're already worth millions because you sued the people who stole the code that was meant to be open source but you changed.

In that moment that they accept the license it continues onward forever, unless you specified a certain duration or a common man using some common sense would interpret the license as having a set duration (A judge).

When you go to court the judge IMHO will try to interpret the contract, license, or document as how it was intended to be interpreted. So any sort of smart schemes you come up with will not hold over to well when you have to look at that judge and tell them why you think you are right.

Never the less I still think you can get you're self into trouble by being ignorant of something and the judge will most likely make it a lesson taught, instead of twisting the law just in favor of some dumb mistake.

Like in the CC license I use:

Subject to the above terms and conditions, the license granted here is perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright in the Work). Notwithstanding the above, Licensor reserves the right to release the Work under different license terms or to stop distributing the Work at any time; provided, however that any such election will not serve to withdraw this License (or any other license that has been, or is required to be, granted under the terms of this License), and this License will continue in full force and effect unless terminated as stated above.

It says that if I decide to change the license on the work I may do so. If you are currently holding a license I may not make a change that would somehow serve to withdraw the current license you hold. It says it will continue in full force and effect unless terminated as stated above which it means another clause before this one that I did not include.

However, if anyone uses my copy since I am the original author then they would be forced to abide by the new license unless they got it someone who held a copy with the older license you which is all something really specific to the creative common license.

Or which I am not sure of the potential of when the new license went into effect instead of who holds what copy...

I was wondering what license you were talking about pcmattman?

[chase]

edit: yes, the above post is an attempt at humor

You forgot the to add a smiley face. Without a smiley face someone is guaranteed to take you serious (see my fork joke as an example good joking style) <-

[pcmattman]

I was wondering what license you were talking about pcmattman?

It's not a license. It was wishful thinking ... I would like to have a license where I can choose to go commercial at any time, but still (for the time being) be open source.

Worst-case scenario: accept donations on sourceforge

[frank]

See, here's the thing, I am not in this to make money. I do not expect to make money. I want my code to be open and for the most part usable by anyone. I do not want people to be able to take all of my code and make a fork of it. I also do not want M$soft to be able to take one of ideas and put it in their next OS and make millions off of an idea that was mine. I am not worried about the common person taking my code, copy and paste for all I care, I just don't want you to make money off of something that is my work. I guess that's what I am trying to say.

[Kevin McGuire]

http://kmcguire.jouleos.galekus.com/dok ... nt_license

[frank]

Thanks for that link, i just have one question about the license that i don't get: can someone make a fork of my project under a different name?

[Kevin McGuire]

Yes, but with all of the restrictions of the original license unless you waive them the right to do so.

If it is enough to consider a derivative of you're work then: Sure.

But: They are bond by the license clause "ShareAlike"

So that when they create the derivative they will not be the sole copyright holder and be unable to change the license so they will continue to have to provide the same license due to the ShareAlike clause.

If they remove the portion, which is yours, from the derivative then it is no longer a derivative and they should be the sole copyright holder.

So you get a nice protection from someone trying to fork it off somewhere and forget about you while they make money from it commercially.

Unless:

You decide to allow them to do so, and both of you agree on a contract or many other numerous and wonderful things in the world of business that helps to keep everyone's intentions intact.


Trademarks are for names.

[chase]

There is a No Derivative Works version, check out http://creativecommons.org/license/