[rabidrat]

> people could make money from those who didn't like free.

Does GPL ever work this way? In practice, GPL discourages corporate (=widespread) adoption, driving down the quality of open-source software, and creating the market for paid closed-source software (which is often worse than open-source software, but packaged better). I'd love to see cases where a GPL-dev successfully negotiates a reasonable "cost-plus" arrangement with a company for a non-free license.

Your analysis of the MIT license is spot-on, btw.

[HideousKojima]

My org is currently evaluating several PDF generation (as well as general BI reporting software) solutions. Several of the options we're considering offer a free AGPL version and a paid commercial version. AGPL is a deal breaker for several members of my team (though not for me) so they would prefer the paid versions of the AGPL software.

So at least in my experience, yes dual-licensing can work

[pwdisswordfish0]

> In practice, GPL discourages corporate (=widespread) adoption, driving down the quality of open-source software

On the contrary, GPL tends to be associated with software from the era that predates the new "social coding" phenomenon. The tendency of folks whose first contact with OSS was GitHub and who are most likely to choose the MIT License usually give us brittle, highly niche devops boondoggle that is the byproduct of their responsibilities at their dayjob and that gets abandoned a couple years after being pushed out to GitHub (when the creator realizes the futility of trying to convince other programmers churning out corporate boondoggle that they or their company should pay the creator for their contribution to the mudpie).

[chii]

> which is often worse than open-source software, but packaged better

isn't that a contradiction? How can it be worse, but packaged better, if the packaging is what people are paying for?

> GPL discourages corporate (=widespread) adoption

and i believe this is because most GPL software doesn't provide enough value over the cost. But for MIT style licenses, there is zero cost, and thus, adoption must be high by the laws of supply/demand!

In other words, the excess value provided by the software under an MIT license is extracted and kept by the corporations using it. GPL licenses forces some sort of non-monetary compensation in the form of contributions, and thus, the corp cannot extract and retain the full value of the software (and hence, they correctly decide to make a cost/benefit analysis, and choose the most profitable decision).

[ex_amazon_sde]

> GPL licenses forces some sort of non-monetary compensation in the form of contributions, and thus, the corp cannot extract and retain the full value of the software

No, this is false.

- You can use a GPL library without making changes and contributing anything upstream

- You can use a GPL library internally and make changes without contributing anything upstream

- You can use a GPL library, make changes and distribute it to 3rd parties and, only in that case, you simply have to share the changes with the 3rd parties. [Not with upstream]

[chii]

> You can use a GPL library without making changes and contributing anything upstream

which is fine - your usage of GPL software doesn't affect anyone else. If you decide to charge for it, that's OK too - since if the market exists for such software, the price would equalize to the break-even point of the cost of production.

> You can use a GPL library internally and make changes without contributing anything upstream

If it's "internal", aka, not visible to the outside world, then that's fine too. There's no effect from anyone else's perspective.

> You can use a GPL library, make changes ... share the changes with the 3rd parties

This is the point i was trying to make - in this case, where you make changes, you have to share it. Even tho it's just the 3rd party, this 3rd party has the right to distribute these changes. And anyone that has access to the software is also the 3r party.

So, in other words, if you have visible effects to the outside world with your (changed) GPL software, you are effectively bound to contribute those changes for free, or relicense with the owner to hide those changes.

[jcelerier]

> Does GPL ever work this way?

it works very well for Qt

[swiley]

>GPL discourages corporate (=widespread) adoption

I have never worked at an organization that does not use GPL software in some way. It discourages shipping GPL components/dependencies in binaries which is the whole point of the license.