A real business model for open source – the double-lag-license

medium.com

5 points·Nomentatus··5 comments

Summary: Use a "lag" license.

After some period of time, a proprietary license becomes an open source license. For a twist, there can be a two-stage reveal. First, reveal the source code, but grant no additional rights. Second, license the code under an open source license.

The article doesn't mention any by name, but it seems possible that some companies may have implemented such a plan, if not in such a premeditated way.

I think Rosen calls this kind of license "Eventual Source":

https://www.rosenlaw.com/pdf-files/Rosen_Ch11.pdf

Not quite - stage zero reveal source, stage one give rights under the same lag license, stage two public domain/MIT or BSD open source.

I interpreted the idea a little differently then:

While I’ve been dithering about publishing the idea, and someone else has mentioned it first (and may also have thought of it first.) So let me quote Zbigniew Łukasiak, commenting on the Hacker News site on November 7, 2018: “One idea that I have not yet seen is to do the split in the time dimension — sell licenses that convert into a Free Software or Open Source license after a year or two.” [typo corrected]

Zbigniew didn't mention a second stage, true. My scheme does. I thought the fact that I'd added to the original idea was made clear, but perhaps not, or not early enough - so I could disambiguate "the idea" even in this sentence and have done so now. Thanks for pointing to where you ran into difficulties.

would people fork the code to undermine this idea?

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