Hi Colin, I'm a huge fan of Cursive, and have heard you discuss the challenge of earning back your investment, so I'm completely on your side on that. This idea is for people who wish to dual-license their tech, but can't see a simple way to have both a GPL-based community and a revenue stream. It's certainly not for everyone, but it is another option for some.
We've already received feedback about the two years, so it'll likely be owner-selectable between 2 and 4 years. The license is transitive, so you'd actually have up to 4 (or 8) years of licensing income to plan for. The limit is to encourage projects to move on to the next major version or new projects, leaving the open source side to continue development. The "evil" reference certainly wasn't aimed at you (or Cognitect)! That idea is about encouraging small businesses to disrupt exploitative big businesses, and to spread their technology to others around the world. An example would be developing software to run a local Credit Union, helping them to combat the marketing and lobbying might of the big banks. Cheers, Fergal On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Colin Fleming <colin.mailingl...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm the author of Cursive, which I'm planning to sell and which will be > (mostly) closed source. What I don't see here is what would be the > advantage to me in using this license? I'm not releasing closed source > because I'm evil, but because I want Cursive development to be sustainable > so I can continue to develop it and my family can continue to eat and not > live in cardboard boxes. Charging for closed source software is the only > realistic model I can see that achieves this goal. > > I suspect the Datomic team's reasoning is similar - their pricing is far > from outrageous for the sort of product they're offering. What would be the > advantage to them in doing this? They would simply lose the ability to > charge in two years' time, and they would also lose the vast majority of > their clients who also wouldn't want to be bound by these restrictions. > Nobody wins, as far as I can see. > > On 5 June 2015 at 22:17, Fergal Byrne <fergalbyrnedub...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> An old-school C++ dev and I have started an initiative to combine the >> best of Open Source with a limited commercial license. It's not a new idea >> - MySQL creator Monty Widenius thought of something less viral in 2013 [1]. >> >> The Time-Bombed Open License [2] is the commercial side of a >> dual-licensed project, best paired with something strongly viral like GPL. >> Essentially, the project owner has 2 (up to 4) years to commercialise their >> product and then must go fully Open Source. The license is viral, so any >> commercial licensees must also use the TBOL and eventually open up their >> derived products. >> >> One major idea is to foster a culture of disruption of exploitative >> industries. If you can develop software to disrupt in your local market, >> your innovation can be used similarly by others elsewhere, and each new >> startup can improve on your work while earning their keep. Eventually, all >> derived products become Open Source and are free to all. >> >> We'd appreciate any comments, feedback and assistance from the wonderful >> Clojure community - we're up on twitter at @OccupyStartups. >> >> Regards, >> >> Fergal Byrne >> >> p.s. I wonder if this might be a solution to the clamour for Datomic to >> be Open Sourced (cough)? >> >> [1] >> http://monty-says.blogspot.ie/2013/06/business-source-software-license-with.html >> [2] http://occupystartups.me >> >> -- >> >> Fergal Byrne, Brenter IT >> >> http://inbits.com - Better Living through Thoughtful Technology >> http://ie.linkedin.com/in/fergbyrne/ - https://github.com/fergalbyrne >> >> Founder of Clortex: HTM in Clojure - >> https://github.com/nupic-community/clortex >> >> Author, Real Machine Intelligence with Clortex and NuPIC >> Read for free or buy the book at https://leanpub.com/realsmartmachines >> >> e:fergalbyrnedub...@gmail.com t:+353 83 4214179 >> Join the quest for Machine Intelligence at http://numenta.org >> Formerly of Adnet edi...@adnet.ie http://www.adnet.ie >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "Clojure" group. >> To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com >> Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with >> your first post. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Clojure" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with > your first post. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Clojure" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Fergal Byrne, Brenter IT http://inbits.com - Better Living through Thoughtful Technology http://ie.linkedin.com/in/fergbyrne/ - https://github.com/fergalbyrne Founder of Clortex: HTM in Clojure - https://github.com/nupic-community/clortex Author, Real Machine Intelligence with Clortex and NuPIC Read for free or buy the book at https://leanpub.com/realsmartmachines e:fergalbyrnedub...@gmail.com t:+353 83 4214179 Join the quest for Machine Intelligence at http://numenta.org Formerly of Adnet edi...@adnet.ie http://www.adnet.ie -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
