Arch Linux

Phenax

Member

Registered: 2007-01-07

Posts: 21

Second Life has been Open Sourced

http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/getit

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Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Second Life has been Open Sourced

Isn't their license contradictory? How can they license their code under the GPL for one set of users and with their own proprietary license for other users? Doesn't this violate the GPL?

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: Second Life has been Open Sourced

Isn't their license contradictory? How can they license their code under the GPL for one set of users and with their own proprietary license for other users? Doesn't this violate the GPL?

As far as I know, it's perfectly legal to dual license things for different customers.

QT was dual licensed for years, not sure of it's status now. It was GPL for non commercial use.

James

xterminus

Member

From: Tacoma, WA, USA, Earth, Sol, M

Registered: 2005-10-30

Posts: 93

Re: Second Life has been Open Sourced

As far as I know, it's perfectly legal to dual license things for different customers.

QT was dual licensed for years, not sure of it's status now. It was GPL for non commercial use.

Yes, this is nitpicky.  But you can't license software under the GPL for "non-commercial" only.  This is considered "discrimination of fields of endeavor".

But what you can do is say "licensed under the GPL, but if you think the GPL sucks, you can use this other license instead because I'm the sole copyright owner and I get to decide what to do with my own code."

benoitc

Member

Registered: 2004-11-11

Posts: 62

Website

Re: Second Life has been Open Sourced

Quick message to let you know I created a repository for opensource (GPL2) version of secondlife :
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?p=221563

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http://www.archlinuxfr.org

arooaroo

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2005-01-13

Posts: 1,268

Website

Re: Second Life has been Open Sourced

As far as I know, it's perfectly legal to dual license things for different customers.

QT was dual licensed for years, not sure of it's status now. It was GPL for non commercial use.

Yes, this is nitpicky.  But you can't license software under the GPL for "non-commercial" only.  This is considered "discrimination of fields of endeavor".

But what you can do is say "licensed under the GPL, but if you think the GPL sucks, you can use this other license instead because I'm the sole copyright owner and I get to decide what to do with my own code."

xterminus is spot on. It's not precisely that commercial users are forced by the users to buy the commercial (non-GPL) license. It's just an option they offer because many commercial users of a given library do not want to comply with the GPL license, and therefore can buy a version under a different license from the copyright owner.

A commercial company could use the GPL licensed version, but their product which uses it would have to be opened up under GPL too.

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