Simple Mobile Tools suite to be acquired by Israeli adware company

Post by dun44 » Sun, Dec 03, 2023, 8:40 PM UTC

dessant wrote: post #68

dun44 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I'm sure writing those apps was an effort. But I was asking about something quite different - the cost of maintaining them. You do need time or money or people to keep an Open Source project alive; but you don't need to pay the authors for the work they've done previously. As for the problem with a paid version - it's because when it happens, shortly afterwards the free version starts to rot. Monetisation might b…

From a quick look on GitHub the projects were not just an initial effort with little time invested in after release, but were actively developed for years. This year alone there are several releases which contain new features. If I'm not mistaken, they were publishing the exact same version on both app stores, and the apps could be purchased or some of the features were put behind in-app purchases on Google Play. Thi…

Post by juunpp » Sun, Dec 03, 2023, 9:31 PM UTC

mcpackieh wrote: post #65

juunpp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter part is not legal as far as I know, which then makes the first part moot. Unfortunately, I cannot find a good reference for this from the FSF's website, I am going off of memory. But I believe this matter is precisely one of the reasons not to use a liberal licence, or be wary of contributing to liberally-licensed projects.

If all the other contributors had signed over their copyright to the original author, then the author or whoever he sells the copyright to could release future versions under a different license. Copyright assignment is often done (for instance, with official GNU projects) because it makes license enforcement easier. However it also makes re-licensing easier. As far as I know, other contributors to these projects nev…

Post by brightlancer » Sun, Dec 03, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

dun44 wrote: post #72

mcpackieh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all the other contributors had signed over their copyright to the original author, then the author or whoever he sells the copyright to could release future versions under a different license. Copyright assignment is often done (for instance, with official GNU projects) because it makes license enforcement easier. However it also makes re-licensing easier. As far as I know, other contributors to these projects nev…

With BSD, anyone can take the code and build a derivative product, under whatever business model, open source or not. GPL, on the other hand, can make it possible for a corp to buy the project and effectively prevent further development, like it happened with MySQL.

Post by type0 » Sun, Dec 03, 2023, 11:43 PM UTC

juunpp wrote: post #73

mcpackieh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all the other contributors had signed over their copyright to the original author, then the author or whoever he sells the copyright to could release future versions under a different license. Copyright assignment is often done (for instance, with official GNU projects) because it makes license enforcement easier. However it also makes re-licensing easier. As far as I know, other contributors to these projects nev…

Makes sense, thanks for clarifying. Also, I take it whatever adware they want to add is proprietary, so that won't be compatible with the GPL'ed code anyway. The legal basis for this sellout seems very thin to me altogether. I think the company's only option would be to remove every single third-party contribution?

Post by notpushkin » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 7:21 PM UTC

dun44 wrote: post #76

brightlancer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPL, on the other hand, can make it possible for a corp to buy the project and effectively prevent further development, like it happened with MySQL. That's not correct. All of the MySQL GPL code was and is free for continued development. The company has no right to stop you or me from continuing to work on it. MariaDB was forked from MySQL and continues to be GPL licensed. How do you think the GPL "effectively prev…

Oh, sure you can develop it - same as with every other open license, including public domain. But it prevents you from replicating the original business model.