Re: One unclear point in the Vim license

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

      The Vim license keeps an
    opening for a company to make a modified version of Vim and sell it, if
    he can agree with me on the conditions.

This is always true.  Regardless of what license you *state* in the
program, you always have the possibility of agreeing to some other
arrangement with some specific person or company.

So you could, if you wish, release Vim under the GPL and then make
special arrangements with a particular company.  A number of free
programs, including Qt and MySQL, are handled this way.

Branden Robinson wrote:

  You are allowed to distribute a modified version of Vim when either of
  the following conditions are met:
  1) You make your changes to the source code available to the general
     public, or to those to whom you distributed modified versions of
     Vim, with no restrictions on use, copying, modification, or
     distribution; or
  2) You make your changes to the source code available to the Vim
     maintainer at no charge, and grant him or her a perpertual license
     to use, copy, modify and distribute your changes without
     restriction.  The preferred way to do this is by e-mail or by
     uploading the files to a server and e-mailing the URL.  If the
     number of changes is small (e.g., a modified Makefile) e-mailing
     the diffs will do.  The e-mail address to be used is
     <maintainer@vim.org>.

If you can go with this solution, I think it would be a good
improvement.  Alternative 1 could be replaced by the GPL
which says similar things.