[ardour-dev] ardour-dev Digest, Vol 25, Issue 5

[Paul Davis]

On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 20:59 +0000, Rick wrote:
> Perfect timing this discussion.
> 
> I don't actually know anything about dual licensing, but it sounds,
> from this discussion, that it might not be the absolute best of all
> possible worlds (which is free shelter, unlimited pizzas, and ipods
> for all) but it's pretty good/fair.
> 
> Does this mean that Ardour code as GPL would more-or-less "freeze" at
> some point, and that the code as written would move over into
> commercial hands AND continue to be usable in the open source
> environment? Then the ¢ompany develops it its own way with all the
> copyrights that commerce requires, and the opensource version goes
> (forks) off on it's own way. (presumably without the main coders that
> organized it in the first place)

1) please don't quote an entire digest message

2) the above scenario is accurate but the textual emphasis is not what i
would choose.

if we ever adopted dual licensing, the GPL version would continue on,
unaffected by the decision. 

the recipient(s) of the non-GPL license would receive a license to use a
specific version of Ardour, possibly with some agreement to be able to
use updates from the GPL tree for a given period of time (or perhaps
not). the non-GPL version goes its own way as you describe, except that
we would ask that the licensee(s) consider folding some of their changes
back into the GPL'ed one if it seemed appropriate at some point in time.
nobody gets a non-GPL license for free. what it would cost is impossible
to determine at this time.

there would be very difficult IP issues if people who worked on the GPL
version also worked on 1 or more non-GPLed versions. i very much hope
never to run into this issue.

--p