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Comment by droithomme | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully he will be able to maximize his income by making it as difficult to compile on a given platform as possible, with all sorts of specific dependent libraries needed and not specified from a variety of locations. It also helps to make sure that it breaks instantly when you try to compile and fixing that takes days of work and research to find out all the problems.

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Interesting that you say this because that is what I was thinking. Giving away the source, but not dependencies, makefile, etc.

Another possible model:

- Source (stripped) = free

- Source + dependencies and build instructions = small donation/contribution.

- Binaries = larger donation/contribution to save the hassle.

This is not allowed under the GPL, which he is using.

good point. I wasn't trying to imply this was allowed, just another possible model depending upon circumstance.

If the author owns copyright on every line of code used to make the binary, they can do what they like with it without need for a license.

However, if there is other GPLd software in there, and they are relying on the GPL to be able to distribute it, then you are right, they need to comply with the GPL requirement to distribute everything needed to build it (Makefiles etc...).

Disclaimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice.

Is it? From my understanding, he only needs to give the full source (with a GPL license) to people he's distributing the binaries to.

Only if the binaries are released under the GPL.

Sure it is. Under the GPL you are not allowed to distribute a binary without also distributing the source and dependencies. But it is fine to distribute the source code without bundled dependencies.

The problem is that you also need to supply the dependencies that you used to build it (makefiles and such).

Certainly. I'm not saying it's a viable business model. As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, one person could even buy the pre-built binaries and freely redistribute them. The GPL allows this. However the parent is still factually wrong.

not to people to whom he's not distributing a binary

But once he distributes them to one person who gets the binary that person can distribute them freely to everyone else.

and he's perfectly fine with that

Even though this is incorrect, I agree that this seems to totally violate the spirit of GPL which is meant to be used with free software. It's one thing to open source your code and have people donate to get support and fund development. It's quite another to charge for binaries. Others can just redistribute your binaries instead of you, so what is the point? Also, you are open sourcing and GPL'ing it, and yet you won't follow through and actually provide the built code- that's just shooting yourself in both feet. But, you have to appreciate the fact that he did open source it and that he is trying to make money off of it.

The reason this has no chance of working with open source software is the same reason DRM doesn't work.

If you cripple your version of the software, the next guy to figure out how to uncripple it will release his version, and everyone moves over to that. And your deliberately broken version dies the death it deserves.

That's on top of the fact that breaking your software deliberately until someone pays is pretty much the opposite of FOSS philosophy anyway.

Good point. There are surely ways around all the ways to distribute the IP under this model.

Or you could make it compile fine and ask for a nominal donation for the binaries. For those who are willing to give up a couple bucks for the convenience and to show their support, it might be an attractive option.

I can't say it'll work but it's nice to see people experimenting with new monetization schemes.

I was under the impression that he is only not giving away the binaries. To me, that implies that the makefiles are included with the source code. But you have to compile it yourself.

http://www.webyog.com/en/sqlyog_feature_matrix.php does a variation on this.

The core product is technically open source (see http://code.google.com/p/sqlyog/downloads/list) but is difficult to compile. They even offer a free binary version -- but it's a trial with nag screens.

If you strip out dependencies, makefile's, etc., that is technically a violation of the GPL. Now, as the copyright holder, he can distribute however he wants, but no one who receives the software would be able to, and it would not be considered open source software by any stretch of the imagination.

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