Re: [tlug] Timed licenses? (and escrow/smart contracts)

[Darren Cook <darren@example.com>]

> escrow

Doh! I always forget this word, so had actually googled for it. Maybe
now I'll both remember it and remember how to spell it :-)

>> Has anyone heard of a license that is commercial for X amount of 
>> time, and then becomes an open source license?

Thanks Stephen, Edmund. This was mainly curiosity about what options
there are. It has been something going through my mind recently (new
approaches when you meet business people who still see open source as
giving away company value), then something similar got mentioned in
passing in a meeting the other day.

And if there were existing licenses, I wanted to see how they phrased
the clause. Or if they used two licenses, one forward-dated.

> I don't know anybody who's done this on a strict calendar basis; I'm 
> not sure why that's a great idea versus the release cycle or a 
> financial goal.

It is easy to understand, and it is 100% certain. I can motivate
developers with: your hard work will not be trapped, it
will be free to show to the world, in exactly 18 months (for instance).
Whatever happens. Financial goals and release cycles can't offer that
guarantee.

> Be aware that if you use such a license, Stallman (and others) will

And worse I've been actively derogatory about the GPL virus, over the
past 15 years.

He must hate the fact that the main reason companies release under GPL
is because they want to sell customers a commercial closed-source
license, so that the customer is not forced to reveal their small bit of
valuable proprietary code.

But, unusually for TLUG, we digress :-)

Edmund Edgar wrote:

> You *could* have legal contract that delegated control to a smart
> contract that then did the transfer at the right time, and Ethereum
> would almost definitely [1] enforce the time correctly,

Ah! It has never occurred to me that blockchain would have a timestamp,
and therefore time is forced to move forward and stay close to "real"
time. That is very interesting, thanks! I really must find time to sit
down and read an Ethereum book and write a DApp.

Thanks,
Darren