The license thing: Think *free*dom not *free* beer

Tetra-WebBBS Support Forum

Sorry, starting a new thread coz the license discussion got spread over several subthreads and it's a bit confusing. Don't know where to answer some assumptions which I think are false.

Speaking about free and open source software please think *freedom*. $$ (as in free beer) is totally unimportant.

Example:
Discussion is coming up who owns the code. Let's think ahead discussion will come up who contributed how much and who should get how much out of the revenue.

Example 2:
In a non free project anybody contributing will never be able to use the product he/she created as a participant on his own. Nobody can fork for whatever reason unless *all* other copyright holders agree on it.

Example 3:
If somebody leaves the project, he/she can't take anything with him/her.
Even worse: his/her copyright remains in the existing code. The project will never be able to go any other direction unless the leaving person agrees or all his/her code is removed.

These are examples for the *freedom* approach.

Now think about $$:

Yes, the code is will be free for use according to the license.

But the following might not be for free:
- any sort of support, maybe not even a *qualified* support board
- any sort of extensive docs, like well written instructions for admins
- *hands on* support for setup.
- you *may* even charge a *reasonable* fee for shipment and handling (e.g download). Not for the code, but for delivery from *your* FTP. You can't avoid others to offer this service for free, but this wouldn't hurt coz it's not our download then.

And, most important:
The released versions are free.
Now think about anybody requesting a feature which is not built in. According to the major licenses (GPL, Artistic, other) this person may get the free version an hire somebody to customize it (add a feature). This hired person must be paid. Nobody is allowed to distribute this customized version in any way, not even the authors! UNLESS they release it under the same terms than the basic version!
Now several projects offer a service of *customizing* for individual users but at the same time offer to *sponsor* a feature, which generally is less $$ than customizing. Thus the customized code will become part of the project releasable under the same license but was *sponsored* by someone who get's some credits for it.

Keeping this in mind, we may even go:

Release Tarty-moded-version (5.5) *as is* for free. - Old Berkeley DB and flatfiles.

Than start building our version (7.x) from 5.12. First adding all the features 5.12 has, but with fully templated system and CSS and MySQL or any other non-Berkeley-non-SQL backend.
Having done this, new features will be added either depending on our own priorities or on sponsoring.

All this is legal though based on free(dom) software.

Keeping all this in mind and thinking about possible dog-fights arising from the examples mentioned above anyone may decide on his/her own what is prefered individually.

Everybody is free to decide. Things then either match for a project or don't. Whatever it is - it must be clear