Chandler Licensing Plan

<Current OSAF Thinking>

OSAF is planning our 0.1 release before the end of April. Our plan of record for licensing is to follow the model used by MySQL^?: recipients must either (a) make their entire application available under the GPL or an approved open source license; or (b) get a commercial license from OSAF.

I've been poking around and so far haven't found any "show-stopper" problems with this approach. I do know that:

• mySQL may have a larger revenue base than Chandler with this model. MySQL^? is generally intended to be combined with a front-end application whereas Chandler will be an end-user application itself. So our revenue potential may depend on our platform development, or combination into larger programs. But that seems OK for us, since OSAF's goal is to be self-sustaining for a small core of people and not to create the kind of return on investment that professional investors look for.

• if many projects adopt this model it could get complex for companies that do wish to create commercial products. Such companies might have to try to get commercial licenses from many different projects and it's possible that combining licenses could be difficult. So far, this problem appears like a "success condition," meaning it would develop after Chandler and a number of other projects have produced software that draws ventures into creating commercial products. So we'll watch for this problem, but it doesn't seem like one that would cause us not to follow this model.

• the "or open source license approved by OSAF" is not very clear and will lead to a bunch of questions. My plan is that long before we reach the 1.0 Release we will have a precise list of approved licenses or clear criteria for acceptable licenses.

• we need to make sure people understand the importance of the phrase "entire application" in the statement "make the entire application available under the GPL or open source license approved by OSAF." Some open source licenses (including the BSD, the Mozilla Public License and their variants) allow parts of the application to be shipped under that open source license and other parts to be governed by proprietary licenses. In the proposed plan, the entire application must be governed by the open source license for the Chandler part to be available under that open source license. If part of the application is governed by a proprietary license, then a commercial license must be obtained for Chandler. By doing so, we allow end-users to use Chandler under open source terms. We allow open source projects to use Chandler under open source terms. We allow anyone to use Chandler under open source terms if they are creating a product that is completely open source. If someone creates a product that is partially open source (for example, under the BSD or Mozilla licenses) or not open source at all (as permitted under the BSD), then that entity must get a commercial license. If someone plans to generate revenue using closed licenses, then OSAF would like to receive a bit of that revenue to sustain our core development.

• the price and terms for a commercial license have not been determined. We're only at 0.1, which is early for commercial development. So we haven't focused on this topic yet.

• this model requires that copyright ownership of changes accepted back into the OSAF tree for Chandler be assigned to OSAF. This could be undesirable for some. Hopefully OSAF's non-profit nature and overall approach will assure people that we such an assignment is acceptable. We're also looking into the question of "joint ownership" of the copyright, which is used in the OpenOffice^? project. This allows each of the creator and OSAF be treated as an owner. The creator can do as he, she or it wishes with the code, and OSAF can still license the code under both open source and commercial terms.

<End Current Thinking>