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On 27-02-2017 11:06, Mirko Boehm (FSFE) wrote:<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:8D1A9A1F-8C47-4980-A02D-E168F7C88068@fsfe.org"
type="cite">
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<li class="">You will need permission/license from the other
contributors to sell proprietary licenses.</li>
<li class="">You need a scheme that fairly distributes the
licensing revenue so that it motivates people to
contribute. You could pay out shares of the revenue to
them, or you could make it a public service effort by
donating a share or all of the proceeds to a organisation
with aims that benefit the general public, for example
FSFE.</li>
</ul>
<div class="">A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) can be
used to set up such a model. Usually, FSFE would not
recommend using CLAs that enable proprietary licensing.
However in your situation this is already the case, so in my
understanding it would make your software more free (because
others can contribute to it). Please be aware that this is
not an official FSFE position.</div>
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</blockquote>
My initial idea was that proprietary users would automatically get a
license by donating a certain amount of money to some organization
that supports free software, such as FSF. But I understand from this
discussion thread that the policy of FSF or FSFE does not allow such
a scheme. So I guess this will not work. I don't want to put in a
random charity organization because the contributors might have
different opinions about which organization to support.<br>
<br>
So I guess the only solution is to use a more permissive license and
let proprietary software vendors use the library for free. Right now
they are actually paying, but this becomes too complicated if there
is more than one contributor to the software library.<br>
<br>
I could still encourage commercial users to donate money to FSF or
some other organization, but I am not sure whether a voluntary
scheme would work. The commercial users want an invoice and a piece
of paper that says "license". Some even require that I register into
their database of suppliers. Donation to charity doesn't fit into
their administrative routines, I guess. Or maybe they can put it on
their PR budget or their "Corporate Social Responsibility" budget?<br>
<br>
Do you think the FSF will endorse such a scheme? (I can't get access
to their mailing list even though I am a member).<br>
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