Re: Source only opensource licence.
"Franck" <franck@ipconcept.com> writes:
> Hi,
>
> We are currently working on a web-developpement tool for a private
> company.
>
> The people who fund the project are okay to give opensource a try, but
> they insist on some restrictions. (for the business model to be
> sucessful).
>
> The licence would not be so bad. The only restriction is about the
> redistribution of binaries wich would be restricted. Windows binaries
> distribution would be forbidden, but GNU/Linux (as well as GNU Hurd and
> BSDs) binary distribution would be okay without restriction.
>
> From the GNU/Linux point of view, the licence is like GPL. Only windows
> and other non free operating system would be restricted. For them, the
> licence is like QMail's licence.
Except it's not like the GPL: you can't compile a Windows binary on
the Linux platform, or incorporate code from this project in others.
I think the best choice from a Free Software point of view would be
two licenses: one that offers the no-binary-distribution license to
everyone, and a separate license to distribute binaries which run only
on GNU/Linux, GNU/Hurt, NetBSD, OpenBSD, or FreeBSD systems.
There's also a technical issue -- as Wine and similar projects
advance, the distinction of "Windows binary" and "Linux binary" gets
much more narrow. It will eventually disappear, and this copyright
and license will persist. This is why I recommend two licenses, one
of which is unambiguously free (but restrictive: the source only
license) and contains no references to particular OSs.
Good luck.
-Brian
> From what I understand, we can't do what Trolltech is doing with QT
> because :
> - This is an end user tool, not a library.
> - The codebase between GNU/Linux and Windows will be mostly the same
> since gtkmm will be used for the GUI.
>
> We would like to write the most open-source friendly licence based on
> the above terms, and we are open to any suggestion. Dual licencsing is
> an option if we find a way to make evrything working.
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