From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.2 required=5.0 tests=AC_FROM_MANY_DOTS,BAYES_00, XPRIO_SHORT_SUBJ autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,828c115241d90eca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-07-18 10:07:39 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!psinet-eu-nl!psiuk-p4!uknet!psiuk-n!news.pace.co.uk!nh.pace.co.uk!not-for-mail From: "Marin David Condic" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ADCL Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 12:12:12 -0400 Organization: Posted on a server owned by Pace Micro Technology plc Message-ID: <9j4ch0$6hu$1@nh.pace.co.uk> References: <3B55ACAB.3EB3CF69@PublicPropertySoftware.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 136.170.200.133 X-Trace: nh.pace.co.uk 995472736 6718 136.170.200.133 (18 Jul 2001 16:12:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@pace.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 18 Jul 2001 16:12:16 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:10173 Date: 2001-07-18T16:12:16+00:00 List-Id: O.K. This is a kind of progress. We are at least now talking about how to structure royalties and not about whether or not they should exist at all. IMHO, I think that any initial attempt to put code out under a royalty-bearing open source license ought to be as simple as possible. The ADCL (as Dr. Leif's paper described it) is a bit tricky in this area. It seeks to set a price based on usage of the components - which while reasonably equitable, has the disadvantage that it is tough to calculate and could be subject to abuse, as you point out. Perhaps a flat rate is better - with obvious discounts for volume. ($1000 for quantity 1, $2000 for 2..50, $3000 for 51..500, etc?) Maybe the original developer could set a quantity 1 price on his work & have the ADCL stipulate a standard sliding scale for multiple copies. Maybe for some things, its better to go on percentage of gross sales based on percentage of included source. Maybe the license should have several options? While I understand the equity of counting volumetric usage, my concern is that a) no tool currently exists to do this and b) the complexity of it may drive users away from the deal. (Hard to compute in advance what your costs are going to be.) I wouldn't worry too much about code padding to create dilution. In theory, people could do this but in practice I think it would be sufficiently undesirable for the users to muck up their code this way that the cost advantage probably wouldn't be worth it. Remember, the big problem here is that if the license starts costing the user too much, he goes and builds his own. Hence the argument over "is it 40% or 50% of the end product?" is going to fall into the weeds if the price/unit becomes too onerous. Besides, the small-time users who want to cheat you just don't pay and wait for you to come find them. Its the big ticket items with high visibility that are going to be an issue for the license and the cost of cheating in those instances just doesn't make it worth while. (Do you *really* want to pay lawyers to argue about it for years in court? And possibly lose? Everything? Or is it cheaper just to pay the guy the royalty he asked for and get on with it?) The interesting thing to note is that if there *was* a reasonably simple and accessible license that had *some* measure of success, it would get the ball rolling and it is always possible to create specialized versions of it with different pricing schemes and rates. Sort of like going to Office Max and picking up standardized contract forms wherein you just fill in the numbers. The ADCL is what you get as a plain vanilla deal that might suit most uses, but for those areas where it doesn't work well, the user can always contact the developer and suggest some other license terms. MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Al Christians" wrote in message news:3B55ACAB.3EB3CF69@PublicPropertySoftware.com... > > As royalties that depend on how smart the linker is are beyond my ken. > > The simplest would be for the author to puplich a flat $ amount per copy > for commercial use instead of the percent based on SLOC. Do you really > want me to just pad my SLOC count to reduce your royalty? This public > license with fixed royalty per copy works for music. With a license > offering based on flat fee per copy sold, the author can at least take a > guess at how much advantage his package offers in comparison to whatever > the competition (commercial, free, write it myself) is, and a whole > lot of complicated math and what-if questions are cleanly avoided. > > The idea (that Ada promoters should promote, I think) is that software > parts should to embody the same positive qualities that work for > hardware parts (in reliability, in buy-vs-build comparisons, and in > ease of interconnection), and pricing accordingly would strengthen that > perception. > > > Al