Dual-Licensing Situation

[Joshua J. Kugler]

On Tuesday 10 June 2008, AR said something like:
> maillistaddress at paulbanks.org wrote:
> > 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.)
>
> Paulbanks gets the prize.  :-)  As I said before, I didn't mention
> the name of the licensor to avoid smearing, and I believe there is
> enough good discussion here that has avoided that.
>
> If you install Ubuntu 7.10, you get installations of qt3 and qt4. 
> For both of those, there is this file:
>
> /usr/share/doc/libqt4-gui/copyright
> or
> /usr/share/doc/libqt3-headers/copyright
>
> Both of these refer to /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL or
> /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2 which are identical files.
>
> Nowhere within the distribution is there any mention, that I can
> find, that by agreeing to this license I can no longer obtain a
> proprietary license.  But paulbanks quotes their website below.
>
> > They write, "Trolltech's commercial license terms do not allow you
> > to start developing proprietary software using the Open Source
> > edition."

I believe if you dig around enough, you'll also find a FAQ that says to 
the effect: "What if I started developing with the GPL2 version and now 
wish to sell my product commercially?"  The answer, effectively, 
is "Call us, we'll talk."

j


-- 
Joshua Kugler
Part-Time System Admin/Programmer
http://www.eeinternet.com
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