[sldev] [POLICY] ESC exempt from open source and GPL licensing?

[Rob Lanphier]

On 11/9/07 4:50 PM, Gordon Wendt wrote:
> It is my understanding that per the GPL which the viewer is licensed
> under all derivative works (viewers) have to have a copy of the
> license and the source code either included with them or easily
> accessible however the OnRez viewer by the Electric Sheep Company does
> not have either which is a violation of the license, I may be mistaken
> but I have also gotten the understanding that ESC is somehow exempted
> from this license, now for the part that effects open sourcing, how?
> why? and why is our open source work being used for commercial gain by
> them without them giving back to us and yes I realize they claim to
> submit stuff back but that's still not a fair tradeback if they aren't
> following the licensing agreement for using the open source code

The commercial license brings in revenue for Linden Lab so that we can
continue to hire developers and publish the work we create under GPL. 
This model has been very successfully deployed by many well respected
projects, including MySQL, Ghostscript, and Trolltech's Qt.

Basic information about dual licensing can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_licensing

See chapter 5 of "Open Sources 2.0" for a detailed discussion of the model:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources2/toc.html

Rob









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