Licensing Options

[Kelly]

Just a thought on your selection of licenses.  First of all, I appreciate the move to an OS license.  However, the GPL severely limits the use of your controls even in Open Source projects.  In a nutshell, it means that any project in which it is used becomes GPL'd, even if the project already uses a well-respected OS license such as Apache, Mozilla, or one of their derivatives.

I don't have anything against the GPL.  I *think* I can understand why you didn't choose the LGPL - though to me that seems the most suitable. 

However in order to make your product usable to a wider audience, I'd suggest offering it under a dual license at worst, based on what the user requires.  Perhaps a 'with attribution' version of the MPL would be an acceptable companion to the GPL.

That's all in addition, of course, to the commercial license you already offer.  That's likely the one I'll be choosing anyway.

That's my $0.02 worth.

-k

[Atanas Korchev]

Hi Kelly,

We put a lot of thinking over choosing the right open source license. I think Todd Anglin explains very well why we picked GPL over other licensing options in his blog post. Here is an emphasis:

"We spent a long time evaluating all open source license alternatives. We had many lengthy internal discussions, and at the end of the day we settled on the GPL for a few key reasons:

• GPL is a popular and widely used open source license (Linux is licensed under the GPL) that many businesses already know how to understand (read: the lawyers have already approved the GPL)
• GPL has a good "philosophy." It basically says, if you want to use our generosity to build software, all we require is that you pay it forward (i.e. keep your software free). If you instead want to make money off of your software, then we are now in a commercial relationship, and we simply ask that you pay us for our work just as you expect to be paid for your proprietary software.
• GPL is the most community friendly open source license in that it ensures the "intent" of open source developers is respected. That is, open source licenses are for open source developers. If you are a commercial developer, you need a commercial license.

Other OSS licenses like LGPL and MIT are good and definitely more liberal, but they can more easily be abused. Our goal is to support the OSS community with free software, and continue to provide well supported, commercial software to commercial developers."

I hope this helps,
Atanas Korchev
the Telerik team

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[Robert Butler]

So, what if I'm planning on deploying a site used by others, where the sourcecode is not available?  (i.e. we run and operate the site)

How does the GPL affect us? Are we required (via the terms of GPL) to distribute the sourcecode to our website?


Thanks,
- Robert

[Atanas Korchev]

Hi Robert Butler,

The Telerik Extensions FAQ blog post by Todd Anglin delves into this:

Do you plan to redistribute your software?
-->NO: GPL will have no impact on your software
-->YES:
====>Commercial? GPL is not ideal. Purchase a Telerik Commercial license.
====>Open source? GPL is fine as long as your OSS license is compatible.

You can also check the licensing FAQ page on www.telerik.com.

Regards,
Atanas Korchev
the Telerik team

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[Robert Butler]

But our app isn't "distributed"- people are merely using it, and it interfaces with services internal to our company.

That's the issue here, lol.

[Atanas Korchev]

Hello Robert Butler,

In that case this options applies:
Do you plan to redistribute your software?
-->NO: GPL will have no impact on your software

This means you can use the GPL license.

Regards,
Atanas Korchev
the Telerik team

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[Robert Butler]

Thanks. :D

[Greg]

What if the website is physically being hosted on the customer's server?

It's not being distributed to end-users, but it is being copied to their web server.

[Atanas Korchev]

Hello Greg,

If your customer is not planning to redistribute the web site - you are good with GPL.

Regards,
Atanas Korchev
the Telerik team

Do you want to have your say when we set our development plans? Do you want to know when a feature you care about is added or when a bug fixed? Explore the Telerik Public Issue Tracking system and vote to affect the priority of the items.

[Greg]

OK.  Thanks for the quick response!

[Alec]

Ok so here is a scenario:

• We do not redistribute our software, it is on our servers that only we control
• We do allow others outside our organization to login to our web sites to use one or more of products
• On two of our products, they are patent pending, but we will not redistribute the software. 
• We do charge our customers, but we charge them for our services, which happens to include access to our products (all web based). 

So what license should we use?

[Alec]

Any answer to this one?

[Atanas Korchev]

Hi Alec,

If you do not redistribute your web site - you are ok with GPL.

Regards,
Atanas Korchev
the Telerik team

Do you want to have your say when we set our development plans? Do you want to know when a feature you care about is added or when a bug fixed? Explore the Telerik Public Issue Tracking system and vote to affect the priority of the items.

[Alec]

Atanas,

    Thank you for your reply. 

Cheers,

Alec

[Priyanka]

Hi,

I just wondered to know that for GPL License we just need to write bellow line only?

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