My Enterprise has been sold.

[Thorsten Hohage]

On 2007-12-17, at 20:59, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> And after watching the runaway success of one-unknown MySQL in its  
> market, I'm increasingly of the opinion that dual-licensing may be  
> beneficial for development tools, which would make both Andrew and  
> me very happy.


Do you really think that the mySQL way is a good way? Especially when  
being a long term user?

1. For the first years their client side libraries was LGPL so you can  
simply use them.
2. Next step they introduced much better, enhanced new client and you  
must use it for the new version above 3.
3. They changed their licence module for client side library, NOW you  
must pay or open your full app as Open Source and far more legal  
trouble around it.

When you promised a client a technology you was forced to bite the  
bullet and pay your several hundreds - 2000 bucks all together.


Oh, you say it doesn't matter, you choose the OpenSource way? Perhaps  
a good decision for scientific or pure hobby work. But what if we try  
to think Lynns sample (do one small app each year to pay your  
subscription) a step further.

Once you build ("accidently") a nice app for an innovative small Shop,  
of course w/o paying everything is free, it's OpenSource. They put all  
their business logic in the app and are quite happy to pay no licence  
fees at all. A few days later a competitor see the software and get  
knowledge about the choosen licence model and so you receive a formal  
letter requesting the source code. I guess this innovative small shop  
is not really happy to see his business logic went away ;-)

I must admit, I'm a commercial, professional software developer and  
not a hobbyist. But using many different tools, I sometimes pay an  
upgrade for a product, I didn't use for a year, so I'm in this sense  
in a similar situation like many hobbyist regarding this unused (=not  
earn money with it) tool.

But I still prefer to pay my lower subscription for e.g. Valentina  
instead of mySQL, or Rev, RB, ... instead of OpenSource version of Qt,  
I know I must pay, but I feel so much safer with it. And if you ever  
feel you need to pay "so much" simply check the current seat licence  
for an IBM WebSphere Developer or something similar.

regards

Thorsten Hohage
--
objectmanufactur.com - Hamburg,Germany