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    SubjectRe: [BK] upgrade will be needed
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    On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 11:24:43PM +0100, Gerold Jury wrote:
    > Hi Larry
    > Hi Everyone
    >
    > Do you think it is possible to make a split licence that will distinguish
    > between active changes and passive watching/tracking ?

    A lot of people have told us to create two products, the free product
    and the commercial product, and license the free product with standard
    licensing terms. The expectation is that we would somehow make the free
    product less desirable so that people bought the commercial product.

    That's an excellent suggestion if our only goal is to make money, that
    makes the free product sort of a teaser and the commercial product the
    real deal. However, the goal really is to help the open source
    community, Linux in particular. If we give away crippled software then
    all the people who say we are just a money grubbing corporation are
    more or less correct. At that point we aren't giving away the good
    stuff and it was always the goal that you got the latest and greatest
    because that's what can do you the most good.

    However, it sure sounds like the noisy people would be a lot happier
    with a stripped down BK that didn't have as many of the restrictions.
    And a possible out for even the open source users is that they buy seats
    if they really need the more powerful features. Or we could donate
    some on a case by case basis.

    If the hackers who are using BK can reach agreement that it would be
    better if the BK they had didn't move forward unless they got commercial
    seats then we could start moving towards a license on the free product
    that was less restrictive. What that would mean is that the BK you have
    is basically it, we'd not advance it other than keeping it up to date
    with the protocol and/or file formats of the commercial version. If you
    think BK is good enough, fast enough, done enough that you don't want
    what we have coming down the pike we can go that route.

    I suspect that the heavy lifters really would like a faster BK with more
    features that help them get their job done but the rank and file could
    care less, they just want checkin/checkout.
    --
    ---
    Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com
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