[Design] Current Thinking on Chandler Licensing

[Bill Seitz]

http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/OSAF

Weird thought: what if the code were completely PublicDomain (or some 
other structure) and thus any developer could build his own 
commercial/proprietary apps on top of it without paying a license?

This would probably increase the use of OSAF 
<http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/OSAF>. (By coincidence, here's 
something 
<http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2001/04/15#letAThousandFlowersBloom> 
DaveWiner <http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/DaveWiner> wrote 2 years ago.)

What would be the downside?

    *

      that licensing revenue stream lost, reduces viability of OSAF
      <http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/OSAF> long-term existence (given
      that Mitch probably doesn't want to play GoldOwner forever).

          o

            another potential revenue stream: OSAF
            <http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/OSAF> team would be
            considered the world experts on the platform, so they'd
            probably be getting requests for custom development all the
            time, so they could spend part of their time on
            revenue-generating contract work. The ZoPe
            <http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/ZoPe> team does this -
            that custom code doesn't go back into the platform, though a
            lot of it tends to result eventually in development of
            generalized platform-level code (e.g. ZopeCMF
            <http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/ZopeCMF>) which they
            /then/ put into the base product. It's also not clear to me
            whether ZoPe
            <http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/ZoPe>'slicense
            <http://www.zope.org/Resources/License> requires changes to
            be delivered back to them.

    *

      many improvements to underlying platform would be hidden in
      proprietary implementations, so platform would not improve as much
      - which might also keep underlying platform from reaching
      community CriticalMass.

          o

            maybe there's some sort of CompatibilityTest that could be
            defined, which a proprietary app would have to pass in order
            to be "OSAF
            <http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/OSAF>-Compliant", which
            might add marketing value to such products. Thus any
            low-level changes which would break compatibility would
            negate this compliance - so such a developer would have an
            incentive to donate back platform-level stuff, while keeping
            app-level stuff to himself.

....(want to think about this more...)



Mitchell Baker wrote:

> I've outline current thinking at 
> http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Main/LicensingPlan
>
> For those who aren't drawn to wikis, I've also included in below.  
> Comments welcome.
>