Dual-Licensing Situation

[Joseph Heenan]

AR wrote:
> Jacob Head wrote:
>> Equally, these “terms” do not, to me, seem to be terms. A licence term 
>> is a binding obligation on a party. These do not seem to exist here.
> 
> Again, I disagree.  I am bound to forfeit the ability to get a 
> proprietary license from the same licensor without being told.

Is this really a forfeit?

In the situation you describe, you start developing software against GPL 
software. You must surely realise at this stage that this can only be 
distributed under the GPL license, and are making a conscious decision 
to develop an open source project. (If you want to develop a commercial 
product, it is surely your responsibility to determine under what terms 
you can get a commercial license for all software you plan to use.)

Later, you "rediscover" you can only distribute your software under the 
GPL license (as the vendor is declining to offer you a commercial 
license); you are no worse off. Any right to acquire a commercial 
license was an extra right, granted only under certain conditions, and 
indeed one that is normally not available in most/many GPL projects.

(An equivalent situation could easily come about because of the vendor 
ceasing to trade before you took out the proprietary license, and no 
doubt in half a dozen other ways.)

Joseph