Monte Goulding wrote: > Did you expect to be able to deploy commercial HTML5 apps with > community?
It's a minor point but perhaps worth offering a reminder that the distinction isn't about commercial, but about *proprietary*.
The GPL doesn't in any way restrict commercial activities with software. Its requirements focus on sharing source code.
For those who derive revenue solely from per-user licenses this distinction may not be all that important, since of course if the source is freely available everyone is one Standalone Builder moment away from having the finished app.
But over the last decade many business models have evolved with revenue streams beyond per-use licenses for software. SaaS, PaaS, and other service-oriented models are increasingly popular, and indeed many of the tech industry's hottest startups are based around open source technology.
It's been estimated that as much as 90% of software is written "for use rather than for sale", and for those projects sharing the source means additional features, maintenance, and support from the community at no cost to the originator, so the software grows to accommodate an ever-large variety of use cases for a win-win for all.
Even though my proprietary LC licenses are prepaid many years in advance, right now the majority of projects I'm working on are for in-house workgroup support tools where the GPL-governed version would work equally well. In fact, once they get mature enough portions of those projects may be released under GPL for the reasons I've noted above, to get more eyeballs on the code and new enhancements beyond my own limited current needs.
That said, even when using open source software I often contribute back to the core team. It's in the interest of my business, my clients' businesses, and our end-users to make sure the stewards of the technologies we rely on are well taken care of.
I contribute to the Ubuntu project and others, and maintain an individual membership with the Linux Foundation for these reasons. I have no obligation to do so, but there's nothing altruistic in my support, rather it's purely selfish: I recognize that the value I derive from these projects is more than strong enough to warrant supporting them to make sure they keep doing the great work they've been doing.
By the same token, in addition to my prepaid LC licenses for the proprietary edition I also devote time contributing to the project in support of the GPL-governed Community Edition.
Whether through cash, code, or evangelism, all useful open source projects can benefit from community contributions.
But none of that is an obligation, nor inhibits even substantial commercial activity, provide I adhere to the terms of the license I'm using: deploying proprietary apps only with a proprietary-licensed edition, and sharing code when made with the sharing-focused GPL-governed edition.
-- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web ____________________________________________________________________ ambassa...@fourthworld.com http://www.FourthWorld.com _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
