Just a few badly organized comments that came into my mind follow: > but I am very reluctant to create a Bacula entity in the US > > In addition, some Europeans may object to the US government > having information on funds transfers to them. > > As a consequence, I would like to exhaust the possibilities in some other > English speaking countries before going to the US -- e.g. England, Malta, > Belize, Ireland, Isle of Mann, Gibraltar, ... > With Bacula's roots in Switzerland, and taking into consideration the arguments cited above, how about running the foundation and setting the license fees in some other currency but USD? Switzerland doesn't use Euros, but maybe it could be one choice, if you wish to highlight the non-US status of the foundation.
> By the way, I have added a tier fee structure as suggested by one user > to the OpenSourceFunding document. The fees step from $100 to $500 > depending on the gross revenues. > Since there are licences, and upgrade licenses, what is the difference between them? Would a upgrade license be required when a) new version of Bacula is released b) user needs a new package of the same version of Bacula for a new version of eg. Red Hat? Or both a) and b) ? Would a license fee for a binary package also mean an unwritten promise that the licensee can expect also the next releases of Bacula be packaged for the same architecture/distribution, although no support is promised? How about the next release of the same op-sys distribution, is it then reasonable for the licensee to expect that there also will be a working packaged version of Bacula? I think they are cases that should be thought of in advance, and included in the licensing terms. Couple of ideas about the tier structure: - maybe there could be a low-end free-of-charge license class, say for companies below 0.1 million? This would make more easy to find the limit between home user and business user. This way a home user that occasionally does some part-time work with his/her home gear, would not feel quilty for not paying a license. - the suggested tier system climbs rather quicly to $500, but makes no difference between 5-million company and billion-class company running business in several countries. Maybe a site license per a single georaphical address, or a tier system based on the number of client computers backed up (maybe independent of architecture) could be another way? How about a tier system of eg. 1-3 computers (typically, a desktop, a laptop, and a server ) for free, and the next tiers eg. 4-10, 11-20, 21-50, 51-100, 101-200, 200+ clients per site. Number of client computers reflects the revenue of the company anyway, and it is more common licensing scheme than asking for revenue info. http://www.bacula.org/OpenSourceFunding.html says about non-profit entities: "---- Any of these exempt entities would lose their exemption if they pay in any way for installation of Bacula (this probably needs a lawyer to define correctly...) ----" Yes, it would require a lawyer. The entity is paying for installation also in the cases when there is an in-house person who is getting his monthly paycheck for miscellaneous IT support, whether part-time or full-time. Out-of-house consultants or pre-installed system suppliers are sometimes very similar to in-house staff, things may chance overnight when some operations are outsourced. How about research departments within universities, that are doing research work ordered by commercial entities? It's still under the name of the university, but the whole research team for a certain project may get all the funds from a strictly commercial company. Actually, universities seem to traditionally have special rules for licenses, but if a license may be paid by contributing, that's often what universities may do. So, is there really a reason to specifically mention universities in license terms? Regards, Timo ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
