
Why I replaced MIT with copyleft license for Nodemailer - andris9
https://blog.nodemailer.com/2017/02/02/nodemailer-v3-0-0/
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nikcub
Donations for open source projects have notoriously low participation rates -
to the point where popular and critical infrastructure projects can't afford
to maintain a fulltime employee or two - so don't take it personally.

If you want companies to pay you, then ask them to pay you. Keep it as a
simple license (not one that has devs asking wtf it is), but offer a
commercial bundle with email and dev support, LTS, backwards compat and
perhaps authentication modules (for LDAP/AD, OAuth) and I think you'd be
surprised by just how many companies make these purchases (I make them all the
time).

Also, on price - $100-300 is "no-brainer i'll put it on my credit card and
expense it at the end of the month" while €800 is approaching purchasing
decision territory for a lot of companies.

~~~
andris9
The high pricing is intentional. If no-one is buying then I can just bring the
price down, while it is really difficult to move on the other direction if I
start with a low value.

~~~
falcolas
A good choice, imo. You can now offer "sales" and special discounts for people
who ask for them.

Might want to also offer a premium release for 10x or even 20x, since that
falls into the "No Brainer" category for larger corporations who would look at
800 as a sign of low quality.

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danjoc
Smart guy. Copyleft for the open source crowd to use freely, commercial
license for businesses who want to keep their own source closed.

I wonder where you get a good commercial license to use like this. Is it
always a custom thing requiring expensive lawyers or is there some repo of
commercial licenses one can use?

~~~
makomk
Open source software developers probably won't want to touch this with a
bargepole. Oddball copyleft licenses are a pain in the ass to deal with an
invariably incompatible with every other copyleft license including the GPL.

~~~
shortstuffsushi
Came here to say much the same. GPL / non-MIT generally = avoid, because IANAL
and don't want to figure out if I'm in the right or wrong.

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scandox
It's a great piece of software. I use it in two projects both commercial
platforms though not particularly big money makers.

The problem for me is I remain somewhat uncertain about the implications. If I
use this within a service that requires payment from customers, it seems to me
there is no change. And most software using this is likely to be delivered as
a service right? Maybe I misunderstand the license.

In a way if the approach was more aggressive it would be easier for me. I
could just go to the people that write the cheques and say: we use this
software. New version requires payment. Write a cheque.

As it is I'm not sure whether we have to pay or not. As for donations - well I
could make one personally (in fact I will) but it is unlikely to be 780
euros...

~~~
reality_czech
It looks very LGPL-like in spirit. It's hard to know if you can use it in
something commercial or not, though. The pessimistic interpretation is that if
you use it your software becomes a "derived work" of the library, in the same
way your Harry Potter fan fiction is a derived work of Harry Potter. You
probably don't want your commercial software under this license because it
commits you to (among other things) granting royalty-free licenses to all
patents, and settling all court cases in the jurisdiction of the European
Court of Justice.

The optimistic assumption is that no, that would never happen, your product
will not be a derived work because using the library with it is "mere
aggregation." But the license doens't clearly spell out what is a dervied work
and what is not-- there is not even the discussion of mere aggregation that
the GPL has.

The license also has the "death penalty" clause that the GPL does, which means
that your license to use it can be permanently terminated if you are found to
have violated any part of it.

So basically, I would say, stay away. And people in open source projects
should stay away too, for the same reasons... you don't want this fighting it
out with the existing open source license of your project.

~~~
true_religion
At work, if I see a product that offers a commercial licence and an copyleft
licence, I immediately buy it.

The licence costs are always trivial compared to the department's revenue and
budget, and it completely avoids any hashing over "will we violate copyleft if
we do X". Now the answer is always "we bought it, its ours".

At home, I just use the copyleft version. My personal blog engine is open
source, and on github Anything else I make, I don't mind open sourcing if it
comes to it.

700 Euro a year is trivial. We've spent more money _on drinks_ while talking
about licensing our own product.

~~~
incompatible

      Now the answer is always "we bought it, its ours".
    

I didn't realise commercial licenses are always so generous and easy to use.

~~~
true_religion
I'll clarify. I mean that software that's dual-licenced, usually grants
unlimited usage within the organization. Essentially you bought it, so it's
yours to do with as you wish---though you can't duplicate it and give it to
others on its own, you have to bundle it with your product.

If the licence is more restrictive than that, then it is likely the business
will fail because if we have to jump through hoops, we might as well (a) use
another product, cost isn't a factor or (b) use the copyleft licence and hire
lawyers.

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mintplant
I understand the switch to copyleft, but the EU's own website explicitly lists
GPL licenses as incompatible, in the matrix on this page:

[https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/page/eupl/eupl-
compatib...](https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/page/eupl/eupl-compatible-
open-source-licences)

Dual-licensing under the EUPL and GPL, with the option to choose either, would
be helpful. Otherwise Nodemailer is incompatible with the majority of other
copyleft code.

~~~
tomprince
Looking closer, you can't incorporate GPL code in a EUPL project, but you can
incorporate EUPL code in a GPL project. The EUPL explicitly is allowed to be
used as part of GPLv2 project, and indirectly as part of a GPLv2 project via
the CeCILL v2 licenses which has a similar provision.

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RangerScience
Hmm. A wee bit off-topic, but is there a license of these sorts that do the
"free until you make X revenue", similar to those used by Unreal and Unity?

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whitten
andris9, you mentioned that the EUPL was more European Union friendly, similar
to how GPL is more USA friendly.

Do you mind elaborating what you mean by this?

~~~
andris9
IANAL but as EU citizen doing stuff in EU I don't really care about the
implications of US patent system. What I do care about is a license that is in
a local language, designed specifically for the EU jurisdiction so every court
would understand what its exactly about. In general though I don't think
there's a huge difference as it's hard to believe that I would actually ever
go to court based on some license terms.

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wccrawford
Spoiler: Money.

~~~
X86BSD
So why not just close it and sell it then?

Using a license to extort money from commercial entities who he seems to say
use it without paying a dime for it and operating under the guise of open
source is... warped in my pov.

I don't begrudge him making phat loot. But if that's the goal open source is
not the right avenue imo.

Let the flame war begin but I don't see the point in open sourcing code if you
don't want people to use it however they want.

YMMV and probably does.

~~~
jackbravo
Under a copyleft license you CAN use it however you want. You just are obliged
to open source any modification you make to it.

I'm not sure how the "derived works" clause applies to node.js projects using
this project.

~~~
e12e
You're obligated to also distribute sources to changes _if_ you distribute.

You can implement single-image clustering on top of the Linux kernel all you
want, and keep your changes - so long as you don't distribute the software. If
you do, you must distribute under the gpl.

