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I have decided to release my software with two licenses. At the same time I want this to be open-source. So how would I dual license? Which licenses do I pick?
I want one license to be very similar to GPL as long as the user uses it for non-commercial projects. The other license would be a commercial license (the user has to pay) so that the user can use it in commercial projects (doesn't matter whether it is proprietary or not for the commercial license).
Sencha provides a good example of the dual licensing model in practice. It sounds like your goals are similar theirs. They have options of GPL and a proprietary Commercial License. It seems like a pretty good setup really. If folks want to use your product as a competitive advantage in their business they have to pay for it.
Licensing Overview
Dual Licensing Model
Sencha Commercial Software License Agreement
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I want to start making apps for Android and I want to know if I can start safely with free license and see if I can make some money with advertisements inside my apps. So my question is can I do that?
The Community License is free. It does not permit any form of
commercial use. Furthermore, the Community License allows you to
publish free apps on a public market place such as (but not limited
to) Google Play or SlideME.
It seems like kind of commercial use, but then again, the application would be free...
If the answer is no, would you recommend some other way of making apps that would be free? HTML5? Java with Eclipse?
Thanks in advance!
Ads inside your app is considered commercial so you would need the Pro license. You may start without ads with the community license. See how your audience grows and then move to the Pro license when you feel it pays off.
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I am trying to figure this out since a few days now and find no way to do this:
I have a software I want to release under the AGPL so the base system "is open-source", but my software has a plugin interface, where external plugins can be loaded at runtime (so no separation which the GPL would allow).
I now what to make it possible to others to develop non-GPL plugins, as I do not like "this part" of the GPL.
Is there a ways to somehow allow this as an exception to the GPL or in any other way?
Or is there a license which has the same copyleft for the code itself but permits linked software to be under a different license?
I already though of releasing the plugin interface under a different license (like LGPL), but to quote a well know CEO: "The GPL is like cancer". This is not possible, as the plugin interface must be GPL, because it is also linked into the (A)GPL'ed main project.
Could I solve this with some kind of "weird" dual-licensing of the plugin interface?
P.S.: My software is developed using .net 4.5 and C# if that matters anyhow.
You may wish to release the API libraries/assemblies as LGPL, which allows the user to link those in without "tainting" their software, thus the plugins are taint-free, but still requires enhancements to the API libraries to be released.
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We will develop one commercial software for one company, and this software will be sold to customers of the company. This software contains font-end JS/HTML based codes and back-end C++ codes. We want to use ExtJS4.2 to develop font-end module.
We will not modify ExtJS code itself and just use it for the library, but I don't know if extending ExtJS type/class will be treated as "modifying ExtJS".
If we do not want to make back-end codes open source, which license do we need?
If we have to use Commercial License, Could we first use GPLv3 to try the ExtJS for learning and training privately in company, and use Commercial license when we decide to release software and begin to charge?
If we have to use Commercial License, which kind of Commercial License do we need to buy? We have one team containing several people to develop font-end module.
"Could we first use GPLv3 to try the ExtJS for learning and training privately in company, and use Commercial license when we decide to release software and begin to charge?"
Not according to Sencha's own commercial license. See this section of http://www.sencha.com/legal/sencha-sdk-software-license-agreement
"The Open Source version of the Software (“GPL Version”) is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License versions 3.0 (“GPL”) and not under this Agreement. If You, or another third party, has, at any time, developed all (or any portions of) the Application(s) using the GPL Version, You may not combine such development work with the Software and must license such Application(s) (or any portions derived there from) under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3, a copy of which is located at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html."
I think all your questions are answered here.
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I am starting an opensource project.
I want to allow the following:
Free for noncommercial use, bins and source mods, like with the GPL, but I would like to retain commercial rights for myself, and provide another license for commercial use for customers who prefer that option.
The number of licensing options seem a bit overwhelming. So my question is:
Which opensource license should I
use?
Which commercial license should I
use, if there are any standard ones
available? Or should I come up with
my own one here?
There is no problem with dual-licensing. GPL is fine for the noncommercial variant, and is widely accepted.
With the commercial one, I do not know of any standard ones. I would recommend you write one, that really suits your needs.
There is Hanselminutes Podcast on licenses here: Open Source Software Licensing with Jonathan Zuck of ACT Online. Towards the end they talk about the dual licensing of the MySQL database.
There is also a transscript of the podcast as PDF, have a look at the end of the first column on page 7.
No open source license (as defined by the Open Source Initiative) will forbid commercial use of software. You can use a version of the GPL to disallow taking your software proprietary; companies could still use it internally, or distribute it for their own purposes, but they couldn't package it up and sell it as normal shrinkwrap software. Don't use a license like Boost or BSD, as they allow unlimited commercial usage with no restrictions.
You should decide what commercial use you want to allow, and that will depend heavily on the software and what people might want to use it for.
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What are my obigations if used by commercial software ?
Is it GPLish or closer to ASL 2 ?
IANAL, but the FSF has stated that the CDDL is incompatible with the GPL. In terms of linking, it seems to have some features of the LGPL (linking from code with a different licence is allowed).
I'd read the legal text very carefully and check with your company's lawyer. Any changes you make to the code itself will have to be CDDL'd as well.
I came to this page via a person asking about the dual licensing of Sun (now Oracle) software under both GPL and CDDL. What this means is that you are free to use the software under the terms of one license or the other, or (as what most people seem to be doing) carry on the dual licensing for downstream users.