Comments on: TrollTech, Qt, and Dual-licensing http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2005/04/25/trolltech-qt-and-dual-licensing Transmissions from the Little Blue Marble Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:29:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: brockers http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2005/04/25/trolltech-qt-and-dual-licensing/comment-page-1#comment-65 brockers Mon, 25 Apr 2005 09:33:00 +0000 http://www.adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2005/04/25/trolltech-qt-and-dual-licensing/#comment-65 Your post pretty well covers the reasons for the success of dual licenses in the free software world. Sun dual licenses Star/Open Office, AOL dual licenses Netscape/Mozilla, etc.. The result is that commercial companies get a revenue stream without having to compete against their own product (via a BSD style license.) In addition they have the added benefit of incorporating outside development (which are generally unpaid), a solid channel for feedback (and even improvements), and expanded adoption of their product line. The other practical benefit to GPL'ed software is the amount of code duplication that is minimized. It is a common mis-conception that free software is more likely to fork, but the reality of the situation is that when GPL'ed software forks almost all development quickly follows the better development tract. Thereby code forks when its actually BEST for it to fork and then quickly re-combines. What does happen is that you get more code reuse. This is the basic argument that Novell used when porting their Netware environment to Linux. They decided it made no sense to invest huge sums of money in operating system development when a free option existed that they could use, extend, and reap any future benefits from. They could do more with fewer developers because they were not competing on the OS level, but on the services they offered on the OS. Your post pretty well covers the reasons for the success of dual licenses in the free software world. Sun dual licenses Star/Open Office, AOL dual licenses Netscape/Mozilla, etc.. The result is that commercial companies get a revenue stream without having to compete against their own product (via a BSD style license.) In addition they have the added benefit of incorporating outside development (which are generally unpaid), a solid channel for feedback (and even improvements), and expanded adoption of their product line.

The other practical benefit to GPL’ed software is the amount of code duplication that is minimized. It is a common mis-conception that free software is more likely to fork, but the reality of the situation is that when GPL’ed software forks almost all development quickly follows the better development tract. Thereby code forks when its actually BEST for it to fork and then quickly re-combines. What does happen is that you get more code reuse. This is the basic argument that Novell used when porting their Netware environment to Linux. They decided it made no sense to invest huge sums of money in operating system development when a free option existed that they could use, extend, and reap any future benefits from. They could do more with fewer developers because they were not competing on the OS level, but on the services they offered on the OS.

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