Using the GPL’s leverage for money or freedom?
This interview with Richard Stallman talks about the proprietary-free “dual licensing” business model, where the leverage of the GPL is used for money instead of freedom; I often suggest that CC BY-SA is enough leverage for earning money instead of a CC NC license.
What about a software package that comes under both a proprietary and Free Software license; take TrollTech’s Qt or Sun’s StarOffice/OpenOffice. Do you see this as an acceptable model of Free Software support?
RMS: The cases of Qt and OpenOffice are not the same. With Qt, as I understand it, the same code is available under the GNU GPL to the public, and under a more permissive license to those who pay. So all the software is free.
This is an acceptable model, and I’ve suggested it occasionally to various developers, including (I believe) TrollTech. However, I would not do this myself. Copyleft gives the developer a certain amount of leverage which she can use in various ways. Qt uses this leverage to get money. The FSF uses this leverage to get others to make free improvements—which serves the goal we are working for more than the money would.
The case of OpenOffice is fundamentally different, because StarOffice has features not in OpenOffice. Not all the code is free. OpenOffice is an important contribution to our community, but its developers are not cooperating fully with our community.
The Using the GPL’s leverage for money or freedom? by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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