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)

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)

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

I've just been through this thread again and I am quite heartened by the fact that more DC members appear to support the theory that software should be paid for in some way and by some means. Cranioscopical, I don't know who you are, but I do know you are a highly respected member and I hope you don't mind me revealing the fact that you have supported Circle Dock with more donations and kind words than anyone else. Thank you, sir!

What none of you perhaps realise - although mouser, the Sarge and I know only too well - is that since I released version 1 in January, downloads of Circle Dock have soared beyond our wildest dreams. Just prior to the release, mouser provided me with space on the sister dcmembers.com to host the downloads. In our naivety we thought that we'd only be supplying product to a couple of dozen or so users per day judging from hits to the wikidot site and here. The size of that release was around 15MB but the download volumes quickly rose from a few megabytes per day to several Gigabytes per day. Circle Dock's Google Ranking went from nothing to #5 almost overnight; I'm told it has recently gone up to #4.

We are averaging just over 1 Terabyte of downloads per month and here are the figures to date:

February: 1,047.16 GB
March: 1239.35 GB
April: 998.50 GB **
May: 1358.43 GB
June: 1058.25 GB
July: 1007.0 GB
August (1st-4th): 140.31 GB - projected: 1087.40 GB

** April's volume is slightly reduced as we redirected the download link posted here and on the wikidot site to another ISP as we wanted to establish if the statistics obtained from dcmembers was accurate. When the volumes from that secondary site are added to that for dcmembers, there's a close correlation with other months - ie: downloads well in excess of 1 Terabyte/month.

Over the last few weeks, mouser, the Sarge and I have been in discussions as to the future of Circle Dock's distribution. It is quite clear - and accepted by the Sarge and myself - that the bandwidth Circle Dock requires of the dcmembers server is not sustainable and poses a real threat to that server's reliability. However there are now more than one hundred direct links to the downloads posted on sites around the world so removing all traces of Circle Dock from dcmembers is not an option. In an attempt to alleviate the situation, I have split the installation into a number of "modules" and all except the core installer will be hosted elsewhere. The core installer simply contains the executable and a rather complex install script which downloads the required modules according to the type of installation being performed (ie: new user or update) and the user options selected. It is similar in nature to a "web installer".

I have investigated an number of alternative sites where we could host Circle Dock's downloads including SourceForge (where Eric Wong did open a Circle Dock Project), Mediafire, and CNet. They all have serious disadvantages and none is really geared up for multi-part distribution - which given the size of Circle Dock v2, is the only way forward. Therefore a dedicated site seems inevitable.

But here's the rub: who is to pay for that? Are you seriously suggesting that I should pay for hosting when I'm not receiving one brass penny in revenue? Well, it should come as no big surprise to you that I'm not about to do that. Isn't it enough that I devote my time, knowledge and resources to maintaining this product and incorporate new features requested by users, that I have already commissioned and paid for a new web site to be designed? I may have been born on a Sunday but it wasn't last Sunday!

To those of you who feel that they are automatically entitled to up to date source code, I will say this. Go to SourceForge and spend some time - as I have very recently - and take a look at the Projects there which are supposed to have GPL (or similar) licenses. Most of the projects are abandoned or haven't been worked-on for more than 6 months and of those that aren't, very few have source code available for download. I would suggest that it is because you and those who think and act like you aren't prepared to support such projects financially that the authors either give-up on good, worthwhile projects, or simply refuse to make their work publicly available free-of-charge.

It is highly doubtful that changing the licensing mechanism would have adversely affected the majority of users and almost certainly no one who reads these words. My IPR lawyer believes the GPL License to be unenforceable under English Law from both the Licensor's and Licensee's viewpoints and it certainly does not protect the author's intellectual property rights.

For my part, I will be removing all remaining GPL'd code from the program and will be relaunching it under a different name and Logo later this year. It will, alas, no longer be free beyond a free trial period but will be priced attractively and competitively and I will extend a free lifetime licence to all those who have donated to either myself or to the Sarge up to this point in time. If, however, you insist on a free, GPL'd version, you are welcome to download the source to Eric Wong's last public release and spend the next few months removing all the bugs - or simply use it as-is. A word of warning though: if you intend to distribute any copies of Circle Dock, you will have to compile using the paid-for version of Visual Studio as per Microsoft's licence. I will continue to answer questions posted on this Forum regarding Circle Dock's usage but there will be no further development of that program.




Mark

Take a step back and take some time off and give yourself time to process everything.

You have a world of possibilities that you could consider AFTER you get some perspective and distance:

• You could decide to just stop all involvement in circledock and related projects, for the sake of your sanity.
• You could decide to embrace open source, release all your source code, and do improvements on your own time scale and when you feel like it
• You could decide that it's worth spending a few weeks rewriting the core code from scratch, cleaning up the code in the process, and re-launch a similar commercial product with a new name and new license and without any of the original code.
• etc.

Look, we are all learning how to survive and make our way in this world.  Think of this as a learning experience.  If all your learning experiences are this cheap in terms of blood, stress, and treasure, you should consider yourself a lucky man.

-mouser (August 04, 2010, 12:39 PM)

I'm taking the first option and reserve the right to take the third as, in fact, there'd not be much to do to remove all GPL'd code from what I'm currently working with. However, there are other considerations to take into account - I've already PM'd about them.



Mark