This thread looks to be a little on the old side and therefore may no longer be relevant. Please see if there is a newer thread on the subject and ensure you're using the most recent build of any software if your question regards a particular product.
This thread has been locked and is no longer accepting new posts, if you have a question regarding this topic please email us at support@mindscape.co.nz
|
Hi, I am on the core dev team for an existing large open-source product (Umraco CMS) and also for another stealth-mode startup which will shortly be releasing an open-source product. For both products I am looking into the feasibility of using Lightspeed. How does Lightspeed's licensing model, or one which you'd be willing to negotiate, allow for this? We currently refer to closed-source binaries in the products (such as VistaDB); that's no issue, but does your redistributable rely on some form of plain-text license key that we'd end up having to distribute? What's to stop our customers re-using the Lightspeed assemblies picked out of our distribution? Secondly, although not to dilute the issue above which is most important - do you consider discounts for people using the product on open-source projects where funding is tight (i.e. donationware) Thanks very much in advance, Alex Norcliffe |
|
|
Anyone? :) |
|
|
Hi, Sorry for the delay in replying - we have been discussing this internally and should have updated the thread sooner! As much as we would love to have LightSpeed getting used in open source projects, we do not currently have a licensing system in place that would bind the assemblies in any way to your solution. VistaDB has a fairly solid model around licensing that of course means that end users would need the licensing in place to use VistaDB. We don't have such a system currently but would appreciate any feedback you have on how you could see this working? We ideally would like to build some system which binds to a project but that does not require a custom build as this would become infeasible at scale. Apologies again for the slow reply, John-Daniel Trask |
|
|
Hi, many thanks for your reply. Actually at Umbraco we originally got a license from VistaDB which allowed people to deploy the free Umbraco (open source) with a VistaDB binary without themselves having to have a license for VistaDB. VistaDB then later confused this agreement but I understand that issue is pending. Whilst Umbraco is open-source, the vast majority of installations take the released build (built by us in the core) which is precompiled to a large extent. Even package developers don't need the Umbraco source tree in their projects since the model of the platform is extensible without needing to compile Umbraco locally (in fact, it's discouraged for general website deployments since this would make it tricky for users to keep their Umbraco installation up-to-date). For us, adding to the Nant script to do a custom build of Lightspeed or anything else binding the assembly to ours would not be a blocker in itself for that reason. But to me this raises a larger question: open-source or not (bearing in mind an open-source project doesn't necessitate that we provide the source to referenced binaries), even for your customer's commercial products, are you saying that actually anyone who buys one of your customer's products which uses Lightspeed can take the Lightspeed assembly and (illegally) use it in their own projects without any hassle? What licensing mechanism are you using to qualify the Lightspeed installation at runtime, if any? In this scenario I don't see an open-source project being different from closed-source, since it just references the Lightspeed binary, if you're allowing for royalty-free distribution that is. Am I missing something though? :) Cheers Alex |
|