Software licenses

Lynn Fredricks lfredricks at proactive-intl.com
Tue Oct 28 13:22:55 EDT 2008


> I was wondering. We can release a compiled version of a 
> program written with RunRev and Valentina database as 
> "freeware" with the "share alike license"
> but what about opening up the code under a license that 
> allows improvements and asks for those improvements back?
> All this would take is distributing an unlocked RunRev stack 
> and a Valentina database and then telling the downloaders 
> they have to go buy their copy of RunRev and their own copy 
> of Valentina to use it?
> 
> I guess this would be exactly like someone doing a similar 
> thing with a C+ program?
> 
> What is the best license to use in this case?
> 
> The GNU public license is the one I like where anyone can 
> make changes in the software as long as they make those 
> changes freely available.
> 
> Perhaps I should release a free compiled version for each 
> platform and then also the source code with the GNU license 
> and as well links to RunRev and Valentina so potential 
> software-improvers can easily come up to speed?

Rev lends itself nicely to having opened sources, but with Valentina, you
couldn't expose your developer code/serial number to others. If you want to
distribute unserialized Valentina components and you are serious about the
project, you should contact me off list. 

If I were you, Id also carefully evaluate each license. There's even a world
of difference between the various "greater" GPLs, 1,2,3, and then all the
other open source licenses that exist.

We use and support open source too, but anything that goes into Valentina
gets careful investigation first so we don't compromise ourselves or our
customers.

What really creeps me out are the extremely viral licenses. We've
contributed to some open source projects where the changes themselves need
to be shared, but not the rest of our source code.

> I haven't seen any RunRev projects released like this but in 
> my industry the software costs millions of dollars (shipping 
> - manifest generation stuff ) and I'd like to see what 
> happens when a similar product is released for free.

There are a lot of free projects out there, but a lot of them are under
either no licence, non-commercial only or under licenses which arent all
that business friendly.

Something Ive encouraged is using a single, commercial friendly license for
any free code offered through RevOnline, no matter what the source is.
Uniformity makes making decisions so much easier.

Best regards,

Lynn Fredricks
President
Paradigma Software
http://www.paradigmasoft.com

Valentina SQL Server: The Ultra-fast, Royalty Free Database Server 




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