Dual-Licensing Situation

[maillistaddress at paulbanks.org]

I've been following some of the commentary on this for a while now but I've not seen mention of the entity who is offering software on these terms. It sounds to me a bit like the blurb surrounding Trolltechs QT licence where you have to pick at the outset whether it's a commercial project or not. (Although I was unable to locate the actual text of the commercial license.)

They write, "Trolltech's commercial license terms do not allow you to start developing proprietary software using the Open Source edition."

In this case, it does indeed appear to prevent you from doing what you want to do: i.e. start a commercial project based on code developed with an open source edition. But as far as I can tell, whilst that's perhaps against the spirit of free software* and of questionable morality, it's not a violation of any license. They're free to license their own stuff (or not) on whatever terms they want to.

C'est la vie.

Paul

* I'm of two minds on this though. On the one hand, the perception is that they are 'holding to ransom' the right of the copyright holder of the derived work to make money from their work. On the other hand, it's the same as if they chose not to create a commercial licence at all... which is definitely in the spirit of free software. However, they DO offer a commercial license and I have to admit this kind of restriction leaves a somewhat sour taste in the mouth and makes me much more likely to choose another vendor. In QT's case, theres plenty of other mature high-quality toolkits out there.