Why have just one license when you can have 5?
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I'd love to learn more about the background of this strategy
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Seem very complicated to me, my experience with other companies is usually 'if its not MIT/Apache2' we can't /won't use it out of principle. So this requires a lot of understanding from the other side to even attempt it.
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Especially bigger corps have rather stodgy/non-understanding legal departments. So i'm curious why the license is the way it is.
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Two core principles:
1. Be as permissive as possible (i.e. most of the project is Apache)
2. If I need to support my work later by offering some paid premium tier, deter free-riding commercial competitors (i.e. application layer is copyleft)
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We have a similar worry around 2., however our plan currently is 'yolo' if people try to compete with our own product with us that seems.. possibly not a big deal.
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I think it is a big deal! It's happened again and again in the COSS space. Additionally, Khan Academy had to deal with people who repackaged the source with a new name then charged people for it, which caused confusion and indirectly harmed the brand.
Yea but is a license going to save you from these people/activities? And does focussing on fixing it actually help much? I'm thinking you just need to go faster than everyone and keep a grip on your community.
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Yes, these are reasonable counterpoints. It's just a deterrence. And I have to hope that it's a greater deterrence to copycats than to potential contributors. If that's not the case, I'll change it! :)
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