[Aleader-dev] Re: thanks and productization vs open source (was Re: pictures)

[William L. Jarrold]

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 11, 2003 at 10:07:50PM -0500, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> > One quick question though...(Btw, thanks V V much for pointing out that
> > the DANVA costs $250.  Holly mollee!)...suppose we were to productize
> > something based on Aleader.  Since it has knoppix inside (I am presuming
> > it has some sort of open source type licensing), does its licensing
> > disallow one to make a product based on knoppix?
>
> The short answer is "no".  We can sell something.  That's how
> Red Hat or Suse are able to sell Linux distributions.  The only
> wrinkle is that we must provide complete source code.

Right.  As I understand it RH (and presumablye Suse), make their money
via documentation, support, handholding etc...So, that is one business
model.

How about other business models...E.g. can someone pervert things and
make a small change to the source and sell their own version?...Can we
anticipate this and add a twist to our own version of copyleft or whatever
it is called that says if you make a gizmo based on our gizmo and sell
it, you must give us 5% of whatever you make?

Another issue is that in the psychological realm one needs to validate a
thing on a large group of subjects.  Sometimes this means getting norms
so that a score based on a test administration can be clinically useful.
This can be quite expensive.  Psycorp (not to be confused with the homonym
Cycorp) spends big bucks getting their tests validated from a broad sample
of kiddos all over the US...Psychologists don't work for free because
they have to pay lawyers for malpractice insurance.

Well, maybe the reason I am delving into this is the following: if I can
financially justify working on this now, then I can feel less guilty
working on it.  I get the sense you aren't interested much at all in
productizability.

>
> I think the only potential area for proprietary licensing is for
> films or film analysis.  If I analyze some film then I could license
> the analysis as proprietary and ask each clinic or research group to
> pay a license fee to use it.
>
> > (I just re-watched part of _Revolution OS_ a wonderful documentary about
> > linux...my lack of knowledge of legal issues associated with open source
> > is woeful).
>
> That's the only film I purchased this year.  ;-)

Excellent.  Glad to hear that.

Bill

p.s., you house looks amazing!

>
> --
> .. Sensual .. Perceptual .. Cognitive .. Emotional .. Oh My!
>