From: Kevin G. <ke...@co...> - 2009-07-06 22:49:44
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In general I think the main way to grab company endorsement is for them to adopt your project to such an extent that adding features and fixing bugs for you is in their interest. At which point the investment you get is in time/labour from their workers. However, I do see your point. Maybe there's some other middle ground we could find. For instance, I'm a single developer (I work on several open source Java projects related to gaming), however I'd like to publish games to the iPhone market and sell them on. I'd love to fund you guys but I don't imagine I'd ever make enough money from iPhone games to make it worth any of our times. I'm more than happy to spend my time adding/contributing to XMLVM (see my other email). One thing to note I suppose for anyone commercially interested is that under GPL only the code linked to the GPL code needs to be released. So, only the generated ObjC assuming it's linked to the compatibility library needs to be made available. Unfortunately if people are reluctant to pick XMLVM because they can't sell their applications into the iPhone market - then it's unlikely to gather enough momentum to get large scale company buy in. Maybe some sort of indie development license that gets people to pay back a proportion of any sales to the project in exchange the rights to distribute it? In a perfect world if you use it, you'd contribute but I've also experienced the direct opposite. The last thing I think anyone would want to see is a bunch of projects attempting to do the exact same thing simply for licensing purposes. So I guess: Could we come up with some sort of commercial license that would make it possible for indies like myself to make some money while still contributing some cash back to the project? Or maybe the license for the distributable part of the library (the compatibility library) could be lessoned, or commercially licensed in some indie friendly way? Could you also clear up whether your intention is make generated source code covered by the GPL? I don't think that's actually legal use of the license (since the output isn't derivative work) but if it's your intention I surely don't want to break it. I actually have some stuff that's close to ready to go so I'd be really interested in what you'd like to do here. I can make the objc source available to the game (and just not supply art resources etc) but I'd really rather not :) Kev PS. Sorry for the long mail, quite a complicated subject. > > I understand that this is a touchy issue and there are arguments for and > against either way. In my earlier days I began an Open Source CORBA > implementation called MICO (mico.org). Very early on there was a similar > request to change the license for MICO from GPL to LGPL. Since we > complied, that surely spurred commercial usage. What made me a little > bit sad is that we never received anything in return from those > companies. When we asked them for a simple endorsement (we didn't even > ask for funding back then), we got no reply. The only company ever to > acknowledge that they used MICO was the Weather Channel. > > Quite frankly, if you plan to use XMLVM in a purely Open Source project, > why is the type of Open Source license important? Inder mentioned that > he just wants to tinker with the project and he is basically by himself. > I wonder why GPL isn't good enough for this. > > Don't get me wrong. I certainly would like to see XMLVM grow and thrive. > But at the same time I don't want to give in as easily as I did with > MICO. I still believe it is only fair to give something in return. Open > Source developers do (through their work) but companies often only take > but never give back (never mind the handful of high-profile Open Source > projects). > > What is a good way to 'encourage' a company to return to the Open Source > community? > > Arno > > > Kevin Glass wrote: >> That's a real shame, it essentially limits your user base substantially >> since the majority of users are likely to be wanting to port existing >> android applications to iphone. >> >> Couple of questions around this: >> >> 1) The tool itself is GPL, but does that license cover the output? GCC >> for >> instance might be GPL but that doesn't make the object code it produces >> GPL. >> >> 2) Presumably the objective C compatibility library is also licensed >> under >> GPL. Is there any chance you'd consider licensing just that part under a >> more permissive license. This way no one could resell XMLVM but the >> output >> would be usable in a commercial sense. >> >> 3) If a user were to develop a new compatibility library (say me) and >> use >> this instead of the existing GPL one, would you consider that library >> linked with the output of the tool to be free of GPL? >> >> Unfortunately it's just going to drive a bunch of copy cat projects as >> described below if there's isn't some mutually beneficial solution. This >> would be negative for both sides, no open source contributions for the >> project and duplicated effort all round. >> >> Kev >> >>> Hi Arno, >>> >>> I would love to support your project but I am an individual with >>> limited means who is trying to convert one of my Android applications >>> into an iPhone app. This is more as a hobby so I am not expecting to >>> make much money here. >>> >>> Your choice of GPL (not LGPL) probably hinders the broader use of your >>> technologies. I have created a bunch of open-source projects and >>> always chose BSD or Apache-style licensing. I humbly recommend that >>> you reconsider your choice of license. >>> >>> In any case, since I did not hear back from you in time, I went ahead >>> and created another open-source project that provides a Java to >>> Objective C code-converter. See http://code.google.com/p/java2objc/ >>> for my project. My goal here is somewhat different from yours. I >>> intend to generate Objective C source-code as if a competent >>> programmer would have written it. This is at the expense of providing >>> complete and accurate transformation which (I think) xmlvm strives to >>> provide. >>> >>> Thanks >>> Inder >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Arno Puder<ar...@pu...> wrote: >>>> Inderjeet, >>>> >>>> both GPL and L-GPL require you to submit any >>>> modifications/enhancements/fixes you make to XMLVM back to us. Both >>>> licenses >>>> allow you to use XMLVM in a commercial product. However, the GPL also >>>> requires you to make your own application available under the GPL >>>> license if >>>> you link the XMLVM libraries to your application. Most likely this is >>>> not >>>> what you had in mind if you want to use XMLVM for a commercial product >>>> (this >>>> requirement basically limits your business model to services around >>>> your >>>> product). >>>> >>>> We put a lot of efforts in making XMLVM. May I suggest an alternative: >>>> we >>>> are willing to grant you a commercial license for XMLVM that would >>>> allow >>>> you >>>> to use XMLVM in a commercial product. This commercial license would >>>> not >>>> require you to publish your own source code under an Open Source >>>> license. In >>>> return for the commercial license, you give us some funding to enhance >>>> XMLVM. This is the essence of dual-licensing (releasing source code >>>> under >>>> two different licenses: an Open Source as well as a commercial >>>> license). >>>> Considering all the work that already went into XMLVM, I think this is >>>> a >>>> fair trade. What do you think? >>>> >>>> Arno >>>> >>>> >>>> Inderjeet Singh wrote: >>>>> Thank you for writing the xmlvm tool: it seems like an awesome way to >>>>> write Java code that is usable in Android applications as well as >>>>> iPhone ones. >>>>> >>>>> I noted that you picked GPL as the license. Is your intention that >>>>> xmlvm be used only for open-source projects? Would you consider >>>>> making >>>>> it available under LGPL so that we can contribute back modifications >>>>> to xmlvm but at least be able to use it in commercial apps? >>>>> >>>>> Thanks >>>>> Inderjeet >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> xmlvm-users mailing list >>>>> xml...@li... >>>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>> _______________________________________________ >>> xmlvm-users mailing list >>> xml...@li... >>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users >>> >> >> > -- --- http://www.tiltilation.com - ball rolling fun http://www.cokeandcode.com - games, code, tutorials and other great stuff. |