Re: [tlug] GPL vs. paid version and ethics

[Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>]

On Sun, 05 Aug 2012 12:07:01 +0900
Darren Cook <darren@example.com> wrote:

> Thoughts? Pointers to intelligent previous discussions on this topic?

Others have already written that any company who does open source
their code has to be prepared that someone else (even a competitor)
forks their code and implements the features they are selling.
Thus, i will not linger on that but point into a few directions:

The most widespread place where GPL code and comercial use is
coexisting is probably the linux kernel. Thus there are some
documents that deal with that, [1] might give you a start for this.
I'm quite sure i've seen such discussions on LWN in the past, but
i dont remember what the exact topic was.

The next project that comes to mind is mysql. It has long been
a GPL/Comercial dual licensed project and, interestingly, has not
been forked (successfully) until Oracle bought Sun.

Interestingly, OpenSolaris, which was a project that had been
opensourced, died down pretty fast, when Oracle withdrew its support.
Although it had quite a bit of a community around it. There is
still a fork being worked on (Illumos/OpenIndiana/..) but i have
not heard anything from them since the initial anoucement in 2010,
hence cannot comment on their activity. But i think this might be
the best example on what happens if a company that open sourced
its code goes against its own community.


			Attila Kinali

[1] http://www.linaro.org/engineering/getting-started/making-a-positive-difference-in-a-foss-project 
-- 
Why does it take years to find the answers to
the questions one should have asked long ago?