Re: Free Software Guidelines Question
On Thu, Apr 4, 2019 at 2:15 PM Wade Pinkston wrote:
> My company manufactures high-end IR sensors, IR Quadrant detectors, IR PSDs, and associated electronics.
...
> Is there a way to release a free software package for Debian, but maintain IP rights to it?
>From the perspective of your end users, I expect the best option would
be a standard interface that works with all the hardware of this kind
made by your company and its competitors and a library of FLOSS code
that supports that interface. Failing that, a library of FLOSS code
that abstracts all the vendor-specific interfaces would be acceptable
but more effort to maintain. New entrants would likely have to either
copy one of the other existing interfaces or add their own interface
to the library.
That perspective leads to an ecosystem of vendors focussing on various
niches based on price, quality etc rather than one vendor monopolising
most of the market through lock-in. That might not be desirable to
your company, but if it makes things easier for your potential end
users, it might end up growing the market.
At some point you might find that your end users will, since they are
technical folks, reverse engineer your code and that of your
competitors and write the second solution I suggested above. Then you
might end up spending time and money maintaining code that none of
your end users are using.
--
bye,
pabs
https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
Reply to: