[Bluej-discuss] Open Source

[Aryeh M. Friedman]

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Adrovane Kade wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I agree that there is no more reason to keep the BlueJ source code
> closed. I understand the authors' concerns about financing the project
> and keep control over development. But I think there's so many people
> using it now and so many improvements could be made available faster
> if it was open source. Another reason I think it is important is the
> fact that BlueJ is not intended to compete with "industrial" Java
> IDEs. Its main purpose is to teach object-oriented development, isn't
> it? So, this educational motivation, IMHO, makes it an almost
> "natural" candidate for open source.

It is possible to use a license that allows for financing the project
and allowing user modifications.  There are several options:

    * Dual licensing (which the references below find inferior)

    * A relatively new semi-proven (there are only 2 software vendors
that use it so far) model refered to as Sustainable Intellectual Works
(SIW) [or "Community Oriented" depending on who is doing the talking]

    In summary SIW is commerical open source in that the license
requires payment for execution (sales of the book in BJ's case) but
the source is open to all.   It has the added benefit of allowing for
the reward of third party contributors (i.e. if you fix the watchpoint
issue then the BJ team owes some reward for doing it).

    Official Site for the SIW community:
http://www.flosoft-systems.com/miai/index.php (I host it temp. for
domain conflict reasons)... disclaimer I am a board member of the
umbrella organization that maintains the site

    How I implement the general prinicibles of SIW:

    The Fair Source License (the license I use for all my work):
http://www.flosoft-systems.com/about_flosoft_systems/license.php

    A three part blog I wrote detailing stuff:
http://www.flosoft-systems.com/flosoft_systems_community/blogs/aryeh/index.php

- --
Aryeh M. Friedman
Developer, not business, friendly
http://www.flosoft-systems.com
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