Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

I think you're over-complicating it. To start with, how do you enforce 
the GPL? Realistically, I bet there are thousands of examples of someone 
out there getting GPL'ed code and doing something with it and not 
distributing source or otherwise violating the license. How are they 
caught and prosecuted? They aren't. They are doing something so small 
that it falls below the radar. You're *never* going to enforce the 
license 100%, so get over that and look at what really counts - 
enforcing a license on the users big enough to get noticed.

How do you collect and distribute the revenue from the license? People 
are collecting revenues on software licenses every day. It doesn't take 
a team of lawyers to purchase some piece of software, read the license 
and understand what you're allowedd to do with it, so I think all the 
objections I've heard here about needing a team of lawyers is just plain 
FUD.

The only complication is how do you reasonably fairly distribute the 
revenues. That is also not insurmountable so long as you don't insist 
that it be absolutely, 100% equitable in every circumstance. (Is it ever 
100% equitable in life? Are salaries or bonuses ever 100% equitable?) 
You have two possibilities: A single author and multiple authors. If a 
license for X is sold and there is a single author, then the single 
author gets the license fee minus some overhead. For multiple authors, 
you need some agreed-upon percentage split of fees between the authors. 
A code counting tool of some sort could give a crude approximation. A 
deal agreed to by the authors upon submitting the product to the broker 
might be an option. Its not impossible to find some way of doing it that 
is reasonably fair and equitable.

The alternative, of course, is to just give away everything and ask for 
nothing in return. "Cashing my paycheck is so complicated! I've got to 
have a driver's license and a bank account and know how to sign my name 
and balance my checkbook and all that... I think I'll just rip it up and 
work for free." :-)

MDC


Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote:
> 
> But there are still many issues left:
> 
>   - how do you split the profits? Use ASIS? What if some code is
>     considered rocket science while other code is "fluffy"?
>   - How do you enforce your license?  Does every vendor have to
>     write their own software "lock" software?
>   - How do clients move their software to new machines (do you have
>     to issues new keys, or does this org do it for you? Do they
>     have front line customer support staff?)
>   - Does the org have lawyers?
>   - Does the org enforce on your behalf (ie. sue offenders, and
>     take them to court? Do they break legs when they fail to pay?)
>   - Does the org defend you when the client sues you because
>     of your software's [perceived] quality or failure?
> 

-- 
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

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