Kritacolor library re-licensing

[Thomas Zander]

On Thursday 22 June 2006 08:36, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> > 2. Isn't it sufficient to just keep the Krita graphics library open
> > but allow closed-source apps to link?
>
> I had the same discussion with David Faure a while ago. He argued that
> it would be nice to receive bug fixes from the companies who did closed
> source development based on an LGPL krita image library. Which I
> wouldn't get if krita's image lib were GPL.

In a company I worked previously we needed a good library for our graphics 
stuff and I found it a challenge and started working on the basics in my 
own time. I licenced it under the Apache style license.
Not much later I got to work on the library in my boss' time and several 
colleagues helped me with it.

This is a valid example where open source that is non gpl or even lgpl 
makes sense. But even with these very liberal licenses over the course of 
3 years I think I got maybe 2 patches and 10 bug reports from non-company 
employees (it was downloaded a whole lot more than that!). After a year 
away from the company the project is still in use, but I see zero patches 
going into cvs. While I'm pretty sure there are still things that the 
company I used to work is maintaining.

In other words; in my experience the loss of making something non GPL is a 
whole lot greater than the gains you get in practice.
-- 
Thomas Zander
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