DonationCoder.com Software > Circle Dock

Change of Licensing from Version 2 (Cancelled)

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mouser:
I am going to take up mouser's suggestion and take some time away.
--- End quote ---

just to clarify -- my suggestion was to take a break from stressing over and going 100mph on this CircleDock stuff, and just to try clear your mind and get some perspective on it.  we all need to do that every once in a while.

[don't want it to sound like im trying to telling you to take a break from participating on DC and the forum (though if that's what it takes to clear your mind that's ok too)].

Josh:
Everyone needs a break from mouser, take it from me and my fellow IRC addicts.

40hz:
+1 w/Mouser

I don't think the GPL issue was brought up to criticize or condemn anything you or Mack are doing. I think it was more motivated by concern some had for the hassles you've let youself in for by adopting a GPL'd project.

I'm a big advocate for FOSS. But I have no quarrel with your feelings about this situation nor do I have any issues with your looking for a way to recoup something for your involvement with CD.

I'm sure there's a fairly simple solution. I think I have one. I just need to vet it with some people that know more about the legal niceties of GPL than I do.

Stay tuned. :Thmbsup:

ps: pls 'scuze any typos.  Frighin' iPhone and it's braindead autocomplete/spellcheck.  :down:    

wraith808:
Heh. I feel you :). Whoever coded this @&$!& spellcheck belongs in the same hell as the person who coded the windows recycle bin defaults and uac!

Markham:
Actaully the GPL model is so restrictive and, in many ways, unrealistic that unless you have a large programmer team and a larger support and testing team, that Using this license and intending to charge for services is pointless!-sgtevmckay (August 05, 2010, 11:20 AM)
--- End quote ---

This is exactly why I use the GPL license. If I'm going to code something and give it away free than I want to prevent someonme else from taking my free code, extending it, and selling the end result (profiting from labor without paying me for it). The GPL prevents this -- which is exactly what I want. If someone wants to use my code as the basis for their closed source for-profit product, they'll have to come to me and work out a different license acceptable to both of us and pay me what I want for the right to use my code in their product under that license. Meanwhile, people who want to use the code in their own GPL product are free to do so without having to get permission from me.

In other words the GPL does exactly what I want it to do. It lets me release the code for my free product so that others can use it in their open source products while making it hard for someone else to use my code in their closed source commercial extension of my product without paying me whatever price I set for the use of my code in their extended version.
-rssapphire (August 05, 2010, 12:55 PM)
--- End quote ---
GPL type and derivative licenses offer no real protection to the author unless the author is prepared and can afford to enforce it. Let me illustrate that with a hypothetical example. Suppose I take the source to one of your programs, tinker with it slightly, possibly change its name and then start to sell it on a UK-hosted site. As I live in the UK and therefore outside the jurisdiction of an American Court of Law, your only option is to sue me in an English High Court. For that you'd need two quite separate types of lawyer: a Solicitor who'd prepare all the groundwork and at least one Barrister who'd present your case in Court. High Court cases are notoriously expensive to mount and those involving IPR particularly so. Your upfront legal fees would not be less than $25,000 and, should it go to trial, you can bank on at least a further $10,000 per day. My legal fees, by comparison, would be far more modest since I'd simply let you take me to trial - so maybe $100-250. Assuming you were to win - by no means a certainty - it would be a Pyrrhic victory as I could argue - with a better than 50% chance of success - that your losses are zero, since by releasing your stuff as GPL, you're not expecting any financial return. Would you spend around $40,000-50,000 just to prove a point? Now that was an easy example, it would be far more difficult (and expensive) to mount a similar case in (say) China, the Ukraine or Iran.



Mark

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