From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 01:58:34 -0700
From: Richard Uhtenwoldt ru@ohio.river.org
Subject: [9fans] inferno licence terms
Topicbox-Message-UUID: af405bc0-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <20000518085834.QQxJyjWIJlEiJ1hAnD-huomLlud2LxN3ECbifTw46mc@z>

C Forsyth proposes this license for Inferno:

>  * You can distribute without fee [ie, no run-time royalty to us] binary copies
>	of Inferno or binary copies of amended versions of Inferno
>  * You can distribute without fee [ie, nothing payable to us] Inferno source code to
>	other Inferno subscribers
>  * You can distribute without fee [ie, nothing payable to us] source code to the
>	tools, drivers and applications [code in /appl]
>  * You can keep modifications you make private - but we
>	encourage you to share.  [ie, you own them, we don't]

let me put this in my own words, to see if I understand.

there are in essense 2 tiers of Inferno users.  the lower tier gets
binaries for the whole thing and source for /appl.  the lower tier
doesnt have to pay anything to Vitanuova.   we can assume that at any
given time, at least one upper-tier user, motivated by idealism or the
desire to grow the Inferno userbase, is making this lower-tier material
available on a Web or FTP server to all comers, so that in practice,
lower-tier users pay zero.

the upper tier has to pay Vitanuova a subscription fee.  they get source
and can distribute that source --verbatim or amended-- to others in the
upper tier.  from this I infer that a subset of the upper tier could
fork the Inferno project.  is that correct?

if the "protestant" fork (the fork that broke with Vitanuova)
incorporates no new code from Vitanuova, do they have to continue their
subscription payments to Vitanuova in order to retain the permission to
use the old Vitanuova code on which their fork is based?

is there anything to prevent an upper-tier user from imposing his own
licensing terms on his distributees?  from charging money for
 a derivative of Inferno that he creates?

GPLed software generates forks only infrequently --when a "protestant"
group has a deep disagreement with the "catholic" group.  the Linux
kernel, for example, has never forked.  software "pirates", however, are
a frequent occurrence.  what is to prevent an upper-tier user from
forking the Inferno project on some minor, trumped-up principle, and
using that fork as a cover to distribute many pirated copies of the
source code?  the pirate could claim that he made a good-faith effort to
verify that the distributees were paid-up upper-tier users without
actually making that effort.

ie, exactly what does a distributor have to do to verify that
distributees are upper-tier users?

eg, most open-source-licensed source code is distributed via Web and ftp
servers.  but even if the server had a big sign out front saying "if you
are not an upper-tier user of Inferno, LEAVE NOW", many people might
download the Inferno source from that server without having paid for an
upper-tier "subscription".

if any upper-tier user can set up as a seller of CDs with the source on
it, what measures does a CD seller have to take to verify that buyers
are paid-up upper-tier users?

besides the right to collect money from every upper-tier user for the
privilege of being in the upper tier, what other rights does Vitanuova
retain that every upper-tier user does not have?

if I understand correctly, this is an excellent license!  it preserves
many of the attractive qualities of open-source licenses (secondary
developers can fork the project if the primary developer becomes abusive
or make bad decisions, casual users do not have to pay money --which
really helps the userbase grow) while giving the software's owner a
chance to recoup his development costs.  much better than eg that
Sun Community Source License.