Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 23:38:36 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: open source license with 24 month proprietary clause Message-ID: <3EB606EC.E945C205@mindspring.com> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20030504213212.03a5f140@localhost>
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Brett Glass wrote: > At 09:16 PM 5/3/2003, Jeremy C. Reed wrote: > >Has anyone heard of an open source license where new code based on it can > >be kept proprietary for 24 months? > > Jeremy, you're misusing the word "proprietary" in the same way that > Stallman does. Also, what if market conditions make it impossible > to recoup one's investment in 24 months, That's easy to answer: get a patent, and you have another 18 years on top of that. 8-|. Frankly, if you can't recoup your R&D investment in 24 months, I have to not only wonder how you got funding to make that investment in the first place, I have to wonder at the value you are expecting to realize in the first place. > or you decided to sell your business a year later? It could > turn into a "time bomb license." It *is* a "time bomb license". So are patents, so is copyright; if you are legitimately arguing about anything here, it's the length of the fuse. > If you want to give something away, give it away. If you cannot afford > to give something you own away, there's no shame in keeping it. Simple > as that. That's true. But it's pretty clear the original poster *does* want to give it away, after an amortization period. FWIW: any time you buy software, or even a laptop, the IRS says it depreciates to a value of $0 in as little as 3 years (that's the period of time over which you are permitted to depreciate such things). So if you spend 10 years writing something, and then want to amortize R&D costs over a standard depreciation schedule for "like artifacts", well, you've wasted 7 years. -- Terry
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