[pmwiki-users] Commercialism in PmWiki (was: Google Analytics)
Marc Cooper
gmane at auxbuss.com
Fri Aug 25 06:48:10 CDT 2006
Patrick R. Michaud said...
>
> However, I should let everyone know that over the next few weeks
> and/or months, I'm intending to make available a paid (yes, $$$)
> "commercial license" for PmWiki, as an alternative to the
> existing General Public License that PmWiki is currently
> distributed under.
This is great, Patrick, absolutely great. I was very much opposed to the
Google idea, but this is excellent news. Good luck with it.
> This doesn't mean there will be two versions of the software,
> it only means that PmWiki will be available under two licenses...
> the General Public License and a more traditional software
> license that can (must) be purchased.
>
> One may reasonably ask "If PmWiki is available under the GPL,
> why would anyone pay for a traditional license?" The answer
> is that, believe it or not, there are businesses and
> organizations that have policies restricting the use of
> GPL software, or that can only used software that has been
> purchased and has an asset tag, invoice, or purchase order
> for it.
Yup, zero cost does not equal zero value - although US marketers seem to
imply that it does, so I've seen. Bizarre.
This will also makes it a lot easier to "sell" PmWiki to a business and
extract some cash from them (for Pm) for something that is nominally
free, but has value to them - often significant value.
For those that don't understand the whole FOSS idea, it is a remarkably
difficult concept to get across, and one that can hamper and even stall
a business discussion.
> The paid support will be available for both the commercial
> license and the GPL, although there may be different fee
> structures involved. I'm still working out the details.
Take care with that one.
--
Best,
Marc
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