Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

I wasn't just talking about 6c, but also about 3b:

      When modifications to the Software are released under this
      license, a non-exclusive royalty-free right is granted to the
      initial developer of the Software to distribute your
      modification in future versions of the Software provided such
      versions remain available under these terms in addition to any
      other license(s) of the initial developer.

That means that if you and I are working on a small project together
-- say you've hired me to write you some code -- and I do so by
modifying a QPL'd work, when I give you the code I automatically also
give upstream a license.

I think the initial author's intentions are to *mostly* remain free.
They probably want something a lot like Best Practical -- they just
want to be able to sell a proprietary product, and have a free
version, and put things from the proprietary product into the free
product or not as they please, and also go in the other direction as they
please.

It's that last bit which is non-free.  If they did something like the
FSF, and asked for copyright assignment, that would be free.

If they did something like best practical, and warned that they would
consider anything submitted to them by its author to include an
implied BSD-ish license, that would be free.

But when they make it a condition of the license, a fee I must pay in
order to distribute modifications, then it is no longer free software.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu