[LAU] licensing fun

[drew Roberts]

On Thursday 18 September 2008 11:00:41 James Stone wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Roberto Gordo Saez
>
> <roberto.gordo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 03:29:38PM +0100, James Stone wrote:
> >> What I don't quite understand is that Qt has a free/commercial
> >> separate licensing, but no-one has the same kind of problem with qt
> >> that they have with LS? Would someone care to explain?
> >
> > Well, the Qt toolkit is dual licensed. If you choose to use the GPL
> > version, it is completely GPL and no exceptions are attached.
> > Notice that it is not LGPL, it is GPL only, So if you want to develop
> > a proprietary application with Qt, you'll need to get the proprietary
> > license from Qt. I have absolutely no problem with this scheme, the GPL
> > version is as free (or as restrictive, depending on your point of view)
> > as the other GPL libraries that are normally installed in a GNU/Linux
> > distribution.
>
> Yes I realised this as soon as I posted it.
>
> However, it really achieves the same ends.. Trolltech gets paid for
> commercial implementations of Qt.
>
> The trouble with using a similar license for LS is a major potential
> commercial implementation (including it in hardware) would not have to
> pay anything for using LS code..

And how much code are they depending on that they are not paying for?

> so the developers end out with 
> nothing. I can see why they did it, but it is annoying that there
> couldn't be a more open-source way of licensing it and protecting
> their IP... I guess it is still more Free than most closed source
> "freeware" though..

The biggest problem is in "pretending" to use the GPL and the confusion that 
can / will result. Make up a new license and go to town. See what kind of 
traction you get without using the GPL for your code.
>
> James

all the best,

drew