[Namaste-dev] Re: Weekly Plan June 2 - June 6

[Bruce Perens]

Paul Williamson wrote:
> An open-source policy will be a show stopper for people who can't stand to see others profit from their work.
This isn't necessarily true. I run a dual-licensing system for my own 
business. There is a strong reciprocal license (Affero GPL3) and a 
commercial license. You can use the Open Source license at the cost of 
surrendering any improvements you make with the same rights that you've 
gotten from me, or you can pay for the commercial license. It handily 
sorts out users into those who wish to collaborate and those who just 
want good software and can pay for that. This is certainly possible for 
a project like Namaste, but you'd have to sort out who gets paid for 
what, and that sorting process and the inevitable misallocation would 
likely cause more bad feeling than a "gift" style license. If there were 
commercial potentials and we wanted to avoid the strife, it would be 
better to put funds in a foundation and have the foundation give them 
back to AMSAT.

    Thanks

    Bruce