GPL as an evaluation license

[Meir Kriheli]

On 04/09/2011 04:10 PM, Omer Zak wrote:
> IANAL either.
> 
> But what you are looking for is, in principle, dual licensing.
> The providers of MySQL and Qt follow the same model.  Their software
> libraries are available under either GPL (with all the restrictions it
> entails) or under a proprietary license.
> 

Nitpick: In addition to GPL, Qt is LGPL (v2.1) licensed since 2009.

> When a client of yours gets your software under proprietary license, you
> are free to impose whichever terms you want upon them, including terms
> under which they are allowed to transfer the software to third parties.
> 
> --- Omer
> 

Cheers
--
Meir

> 
> On Sat, 2011-04-09 at 15:50 +0300, Aviad Mandel wrote:
>> Hi list,
>>
>> I know you're not lawyers, but I though you could help me with a GPL
>> issue.
>>
>> I'm writing a function library in C which I want to sell licenses for,
>> targeting a specialized industry. To make my entry point better, I
>> plan to release it under GPL (as opposed to LGPL) so that potential
>> users can evaluate it properly before making a decision. My target
>> industry is far far away from FOSS, so I'm pretty sure that they won't
>> release their own code under GPL in order to adopt mine free (as in
>> beer).
>>
>> So as long as I make sure I own all copyrights, will this work
>> legally?
>>
>> Two main questions:
>>
>> (1) Is GPL giving me the enough protection?
>> (2) Will GPL allow a company which hasn't bought a non-GPL license
>> enough freedom to evaluate the library?
>>
>> What makes this slightly complicated, is what happens when company X
>> decides to take my library and integrate it into their proprietary
>> software for evaluation. Even for their internal copies, they can't
>> badge the whole package as GPL, because they don't necessarily own the
>> rights to all components, and may not even have all sources.
>>
>> So let's look at the case where the company has just linked my GPL'ed
>> library with their proprietary source codes + proprietary libraries
>> for which the company only has as binaries.
>>
>> Now person X wants to send a copy of the software's binary (my library
>> included) to person Y, say over email. Under what conditions is it
>> legal? If person Y works at the same company? For the same company
>> (outsourcing)? Has access to everything necessary to build the
>> software, so that person Y could in theory build the binary from
>> software owned by the company + the library under GPL?
>