Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom meeting at ISSAC

[Bill Page]

On 31 Jul 2007 22:24:49 -0400, Stephen Wilson wrote:
> Camm Maguire writes:
> ...
> > 2) The only rationale for a non-commercial use clause that I can see
> >    is to keep open the possibility of a controlled separate licensing
> >    to particular entites for commercial use.

The intention of NAG as very clearly articulated by Steven Watt at the
Axiom meeting, is to reserve the right to derive some income from
Aldor through an alternate form of licensing (or some other proposal)
*if* any developer of Aldor finds some way to include Aldor in a
product or service for which they receive income. Mike Dewar of NAG
has also explained this same point of view both on and off this list.

So if you use Aldor to write a program to design a new airplane and
make a lot of money selling the airplane - no problem, go for it. The
airplane does not incorporate Aldor. But if you create a software
package e.g. a new computer algebra system that includes Aldor and
market it as a competitor to Maple then aldor.org will want a piece of
that action.

Understanding exactly what is meant by charging for "services related
to Aldor" seems harder but Stephen said that they would publish an
interpretation of the license that makes it clear that this does *not*
include services such as teaching a course in how to program in Aldor
or otherwise using it for most academic purposes and research.

> >    Thus, open Aldor ideally could make significant strides which would be
> >    available to the  commercial version, but the latter could "embrace and
> >    extend" the former, effectively co-opting this work and potentially 
> > draining
> >    open Aldor of its user and developer base.

Do you mean that volunteer developers should somehow be protected from
competition with commercially-oriented developers? We do not know
exactly what form a commercial license for Aldor would take but my
impression from talking with Stephen Watt is that he is open to
suggestions and proposals.

What prevents work contributed to Axiom right now from being abused in
this way now?

> >    The copyright holder  can argue that they earn the moral right to this
> >    option with the initial source release, but the point as I see it is 
> > that no
> >    volunteer should consider sinking in large quantities of time and
> >    labor in scaling a steep learning curve and improving the system
> >    for free if the system isn't effectively guaranteed a very long
> >    lifetime as a vibrant open source project.

Isn't that a problem with any open source project (even Axiom)?
Ensuring that Aldor has a long (or at least longer) life is one of the
motivations for making it publicly available in the first place. As
far as I can see distributing Aldor freely for non-commerical use is
the best possible guarantee of this.

> >   The calculus for a volunteer is that the benefit accrued from one's own
> >    learning and that of many others over a long payoff period more than
> >    compensates for the time lost upfront scaling the learning curve and 
> > possibly
> >    tailoring the system to any particular needs.
> >

I think there are many possible motivtions for volunteers and
certainly sharing and collaborating with others is one of them. I do
not really understand why you think
the APL2 non-commercial use clause would make that any less likely.

> > Just my $0.02.
>
> Thats worth a lot more than $0.02, IMHO.
>

I agree that it is worth a lot, but personally would not want to put a
monetary value on it. :)

Regards,
Bill Page.