Comment by memefrog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by memefrog | Hacker News Reader

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It is not "virtually closed source" to license something as GPLv3 and also under a proprietary license. In fact, it is something explicitly advocated for by Richard Stallman himself and the Free Software Foundation generally:

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions

He's got mixed feelings, but says "I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed."

If of all people rms considers something acceptable, then whatever that thing is, it certainly can't be described as "virtually closed source".

If you release something as open source software, then it is open source software. The end. That's what the term means. Also licensing it under a proprietary license doesn't change that. Free software licensing is not "try before you buy", and it is not "free usage for non-profits". Open source and "not for profit" are not synonyms de facto or de jure. You can use GPL'd software in commercial products and in fact many people do, frequently. You probably have a dozen copies of Linux in your house in various appliances that you don't even know are there. There are many other examples.

There is a subtle but important difference here though:

If you publish a piece of software under two licenses, one open source and one commercial, why would anybody pick the commercial one?

You cannot say "corporations have to pick the commercial one". The only way to do that would be to include a term in the open source license so it cannot be used by corporations. But then it would no longer meet the open source definition. "Free for private use but payed for commercial use" is not open source!

But if the open source license is copyleft (e.g. GPL), any software that uses it would also have to be open source. So dual licensing allows corporations to pay to keep their own code a secret.

This implies that dual licensing is pointless for non-copyleft licenses like MIT, and also for developer tooling that is not directly used in the final product.

You might want the logos

so you have an about window that says "look how lazy i was, i used all this software i dont support and you still have to pay me full price"

idk. it reaaaaally _isnt_ that big a selling point to see all the open source projects one has used in a commercial application as you might be thinking

> Why would anybody pick the commercial one?

The OpenSource license is typically GPLv3 that imposes that your whole application has to be GPLv3. This is enough for corporations to avoid it.

> It is not "virtually closed source" to license something as GPLv3 and also under a proprietary license.

That is not what is proposed in the article:

----

Isotope is open source, but there are different licenses depending on how you intend to use it:

    Open source license.

This license allows Isotope to be used in personal or open source projects for free.

    Commercial license.

This license permits you to use Isotope in almost any commercial app. Realistically speaking, any company wishing to use it, most likely will need to buy a commercial license.

----

That is not open source. It's proprietary software offered as freeware for non-commercial use.

Isotope's actual license page is much clearer than the article's summary:

> The open source license is designed for you to use Isotope to build open source and personal projects. The Isotope open source license is GPLv3. The GPLv3 has many terms, but the most important is how it is sticky when you distribute your work publicly. From the GPL FAQ:

>> If you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's users, under the GPL.

> Releasing your project that uses Isotope under the GPLv3, in turn, requires your project to be licensed under the GPLv3. If you are okay with this, feel free to use Isotope under the GPLv3, without purchasing a commercial license.

https://isotope.metafizzy.co/license.html#open-source-licens...

Isotope's code is available under GPLv3 with no further restrictions. Although the page says that the project's use of GPLv3 is "designed for you to use Isotope to build open source and personal projects", it does not say that Isotope cannot be used for commercial projects under GPLv3.

Thank you for the correction; I'm not familiar with the project and just went off how the article described it.

> Although the page says that the project's use of GPLv3 is "designed for you to use Isotope to build open source and personal projects", it does not say that Isotope cannot be used for commercial projects under GPLv3.

Yeah, it's unfortunate they misrepresented the GPL and I wonder if that is how the author became confused.

They haven't misrepresented anything. The GPL license can be used for open source projects by companies (e.g. for commercial purposes). There is no need to include a more specific category if you already covered the broader category.

> That is not open source. It's proprietary software offered as freeware for non-commercial use

I shudder at these confident, definitive statements when they're off the mark this far. It's not just "freeware" when you can see, modify, sell and redistribute under the same licence. It's open source.

> It's not just "freeware" when you can see, modify, sell and redistribute under the same licence. It's open source.

As the author described it, you could _not_ sell it:

"This license allows Isotope to be used in personal or open source projects for free."

It turns out that the author was incorrect about Isotope because their software is GPL, but what they were proposing was not open source:

"There are no Pro versions, no license keys and there’s nothing else to maintain. Individual developers enjoy the same tool for free, while companies pay a reasonable price."

Sure, but that's not the case? It was already mentioned in this thread that it was dual-licenced GPLv3.

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