A dual license system for code libraries?

Mirko Boehm - FSFE mirko at fsfe.org
Mon Feb 27 14:51:47 UTC 2017


Hi!

> On 27 Feb 2017, at 14:40, Agner Fog <agner at agner.org> wrote:
> 
> On 27-02-2017 11:06, Mirko Boehm (FSFE) wrote:
>> You will need permission/license from the other contributors to sell proprietary licenses.
>> 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.
>> 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.
> 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.

I cannot speak for FSFE, but I think the setup can be made simpler: Anybody can donate to FSFE. Just ask them to provide proof of the donation, and then you give them a license. This way you don’t need any kind of organisation, and no arrangement for handling money.

> 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.
> 
> 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?
> 
> 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).


As suggested, I would make the scheme consist of two mainly independent parts, where you don’t need approval between the two. 

Best,

Mirko.
-- 
Mirko Boehm | mirko at kde.org | KDE e.V.
FSFE Fellow, FSFE Team Germany
Qt Certified Specialist
Request a meeting: https://doodle.com/mirkoboehm





-- 
Mirko Boehm | mirko at kde.org | KDE e.V.
FSFE Fellow, FSFE Team Germany
Qt Certified Specialist
Request a meeting: https://doodle.com/mirkoboehm



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20170227/ec26f2f6/attachment.html>


More information about the Discussion mailing list