Re: [OT] Can I make a prototype Free and sell the final product?
From: Kevin B. McCarty (kmccarty_at_Princeton.EDU)
Date: 11/22/04
- Previous message: Shawn McCuan: "No Sound On My System"
- In reply to: William Ballard: "[OT] Can I make a prototype Free and sell the final product?"
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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 17:18:26 -0500 To: nospam_40811@alltel.net
William Ballard wrote:
> I'm hacking together a little prototype for somebody, mostly as
> a curiosity and kindness. It'll be just a prototype.
> If they like it, I'll flesh it out and charge them money.
>
> Regardless, I'd like to put the prototype on SourceForge.
> (It might help close a sale.)
>
> Do I need some kind of dual license?
If you are the only copyright holder, you can license any copy in any
way you like, regardless of the history of the code's licensing. So you
can certainly do what you propose.
One thing to consider: once you have released the prototype under an
open source license, there is nothing to stop someone else from forking
it and adding features to compete with your final commercial product.
And if the license in question is the GPL, you will not be able to merge
new code from the fork back into your product (without the permission of
the forker).
Finally, don't sell anyone the _copyright_ on the commercial product, or
they might conceivably be able to sue you for continuing to distribute
the open source prototype! The case of Eric Weisstein being sued by CRC
over his "World of Mathematics" a.k.a. http://mathworld.wolfram.com
comes to mind: http://slashdot.org/yro/01/11/06/2028252.shtml
ObDisclaimer: IANAL, and you might get better advice on debian-legal.
regards,
-- Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu> Physics Department WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University GPG public key ID: 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
- Previous message: Shawn McCuan: "No Sound On My System"
- In reply to: William Ballard: "[OT] Can I make a prototype Free and sell the final product?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
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