Re: Is it possible to sell commercial use rights to an open source Racket package?

> On Aug 23, 2019, at 6:24 AM, Sage Gerard <sage-nnKKxiom5Z1/[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Has someone tried to release an open source Racket project under a license that enforces paid commercial use of that project? Light Googling suggests this would be antithetical to the LGPL if not open source in general, but  https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html <https://download.racket-lang.org/license.html> says "the Racket license does not restrict you at all."



I am a lawyer, and I remain mostly mystified about Racket's licensing / IP ownership status since it joined Software Freedom Conservancy in June 2018. 

In some cases, SFC takes ownership of trademarks and copyrights [1] which means that in terms of license interpretation & enforcement, assumedly the buck would now stop with them. 

Did SFC do so in this case? No idea. Before the switch, Karen Sandler from SFC circulated [2] a template agreement [3] but AFAIK the actual agreement that Racket's core team signed, and the details thereof, has never been shared with the community. (Can it? Should it? Not my call. Or did I miss it?)

Furthermore, the original SFC/Racket press release mentioned a "newly formed Project Leadership Committee" [4] — there's never been any mention of who's on this committee, or whether their responsibilities involve licensing. 

Lingering elsewhere: the relicensing project that commenced more than 2.5 years ago [5] — not clear whether under the SFC this effort is alive, dead, or what. Of course, Galaxy's Edge took 3 yrs to build, so maybe I'm being unreasonably impatient. 

(BTW though I do not redistribute Racket, there's often a certain amount of modified Racket code in packages I maintain, therefore the limitations on Racket code also limit the licensing of my packages. Other things being equal I'd rather use a license more liberal than the LGPL.)


[1] https://sfconservancy.org/about/ <https://sfconservancy.org/about/>
[2] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/racket-dev/QeYN6uZBWBc/qAbUb_mWBwAJ
[3] https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/ConservancyFSATemplate.pdf <https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/ConservancyFSATemplate.pdf>
[4] https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/jun/12/racketjoins/ <https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/jun/12/racketjoins/>
[5] https://github.com/racket/racket/issues/1570 <https://github.com/racket/racket/issues/1570>

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