[Qt-interest] Licensing

[Scott Aron Bloom]

Actually Kustaa, it happens all the time...

Remember many "small" companies with IP, are backed by large companies
with startup capital.

But we are not talking patents here... And it's a red herring.

My point is this.. I love Qt, I love being an evangelist for it.  As a
consultant, Ive personally brought it into 23 different companies!

However, one of the big, as in HUGE fears in using it is the licensing
scheme.  They don't want to pay on a per developer basis for the
commercial license.  It was a major non-starting point for most of
them.. Its just too expensive on an annualized basis.. So when it went
LGPL, it became a much easier sell.. 

Now however, its convincing them its legal and here is what we have to
do to be legal.  It would make my job, and I know the job of a LOT of
other LGPL users in the workplace, where the code is closed source, a
lot easier, if there was a Nokia provided checklist.

My basic view is this, when Nokia made this decision to go LGPL, they
must have had an expectation in mind of how closed source developers
would use the license, a preferred way if you will.  My plea, is just
document that preferred way, and let us developers follow it.

Im not really afraid of Nokia suing me or my clients, because I have
asked enough of the questions, and had attorneys review my procedures
WRT to the license usage.  However, my clients are always worried, and
would love to see this checklist.

Scott


-----Original Message-----
From: qt-interest-bounces at trolltech.com
[mailto:qt-interest-bounces at trolltech.com] On Behalf Of Kustaa Nyholm
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2010 5:22 AM
To: qt-interest at trolltech.com
Subject: Re: [Qt-interest] Licensing


>> Patents are a much bigger IP threat, but as long as you are
>> small no one is going to put in the $100k/month to sue you when
>> you have no money.
> 
> Who claims this is about money?
> 
> It is for sure a way to get rid of competitors.
> 
I'm not sure if I got your question correctly but my point
was that effectively suing some will cost money in the
order of $100k/ month even before you get to the court.

For both parties.

So even if A is infringing B's patent, B will think
carefully weather they want to put in that money if
there is no chance of recovering that money from A,
especially if A is small company with little assets.

More, in the case of software patents these are
most often easily circumvented so A would be likely
to just change their product, so B's remedy would
be, far from putting A out of business,
compensation for alleged damages and/or licensing
payment in the order of some percent of the product
price, all this if the court grants it if B wins.

As no-one can count on the outcome of a litigation,
especially of a patent case these are mostly
solved out of court.

So I don't think large companies are likely to
sue small companies over software patents.

br Kusti


_______________________________________________
Qt-interest mailing list
Qt-interest at trolltech.com
http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-interest