Re: Realtime/embedded project to help with employment.

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

"Marin David Condic" <nobody@noplace.com> wrote in message news:3F3F739A.8040308@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?

Granted this is true, but I am _less_ concerned about that,
than I would be about lost revenue!

> 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.

But this is my point. With free software, this never enters the
picture. With non-free software, the situation _does_ become
more complicated because you must make judgement calls about
how to enforce your licensing terms. Additionally, your _client_
must also worry about it, since he might be subject to software
audits etc.

> 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.

No, not FUD, but a lot more worries than I've ever had to consider
with free software ;-)  IOW, much less "hassle". That is the only
point I am making.

> The only complication is how do you reasonably fairly distribute the
> revenues.

There's that word "only" ;-)  This is a big issue with the blank
CD and tape tax that is being collected. They have yet to agree on
how to divide it up! These are not necessarily trivial, nor are
they necessarily complex -- my point is that it can easily become
complex.

> 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 and I can probably agree on an arrangement. However, when you
get a large collection of people who have a stake
in the "pie", you'll have a tough time reaching concensous, because
a few will have unrealistic ideas about the worth of their own
contributions.

I am not suggesting that this is unsolvable. Perhaps the one way
to solve something like that is to have a very small group set
the ground rules up front. The blank tape and CD tax people have
AFAIK, decided to arrive at a "what's fair" later on. That is
asking for trouble AFAICS.

> 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.

It can be done, but it requires administration and overhead, which
too is OK. But I don't see many organizations like this around at
the moment, and one has to ask why this is so.

> 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

I am not advocating that you work for your employer for nothing. We
are not talking about this kind of thing.

Your employer of course, not only has a payroll dept, an accounts
receivable dept, but also has lawyers on the payroll, or some
business association with a lawyer's office.

Compare this to the "hobby code something in your basement/garage"
scenario. You cannot even compare these two!

Sure if I was single, I could quit my job and try to start up a
business of my own. But we are not talking about business startups.

We _were_ talking about free vs licensed software. I am just suggesting
that the licensed kind usually requires more of the "business" model
than most software hobbyists are willing to muster. If someone
else were to handle this end of it, would there be much left
over? I have my doubts.

IOW, if most software contributions to the world (apart from
salaried jobs), are made by "software hobbyists", the most effective
license is usually a free type of license. The reason for it
is because it frees the contributor from worrying about
"business", and permits them to do what they like best.

That is, write software.

If someone wants to do "business" in software on their own, there
is nothing stopping them (yet -- see the concerns about patents
in another thread). But I hope you'll agree, that there is a
number of added hassles to be conquered in _that_ model, that are
over and above what free/GPL software demands.

Clearly for me at least, I feel a sense of gratitude for free
software I use today. So I am glad to contribute what I can in
return.

For special projects that I would consider marketing, so far
it has been my own limited experience that selling your own
software requires you to deal with too much "hassle" on the
business end of the stick.

But your tolerance level may vary!  ;-)

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg