Money opens source

[ali]

Colby wrote:

I'm working out the final details of the license header for all of my files before I release all of the new source I have written. It will basically be equivalent to the dual license model that Qt from Trolltech (EcuFlash uses Qt, so there are some inherent reasons I need to adopt their license). In short, the Trolltech dual license model basically works like this:
* If you are using the software in a open source project, for personal use, etc, you are free to use it however you see fit.
* If you are using the software in a non-open source or commercial project, you must obtain a license ($) to use it.
I think this model works well for this situation.

Well thanks Colby for changing your mind on publishing the source code under the open source license. You’ve just cost me tens of thousands of dollars in out sourced R & D and my own time.

I have designed a powerful tuning software package for the professional tuner. All this effort now renders useless because I do not have the source code that Colby promised to release to complete my package and even if I ever get it I will have to pay Colby to use it which was not initially cost I expected.

You may recall the current software license agreement saying:

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:
1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated.
2. Altered versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any distribution.

Now Colby is about to change his software licence agreement on the use of ECUFlash, so no one can use it commercially unless you pay ($). I wonder how Colby is planing on charging, “Per use” perhaps, sounds familiar? Or may be we’ll need to mortgage our homes.

The reason why I started this project was to give workshops the freedom to purchase a good, well supported and cost effective tuning package without the added expense of so called unlock codes. This then makes it cheaper for the end user isn’t this what you wanted Colby.

Has any one else got the ability to help us complete this project.

PS: By the way Colby what’s your address so I can send you a Christmas card!

[MDTURBO]

It's hard to see sarcasm on the inter-web, but I'm assuming that's what that was? At least he's opening the source up now which is a start. Thanks colb

[qoncept]

My advice: Release your software under the GPL or whatever license you feel like and make it free. If the main thing that's going to make your software better than the others available is support, charge for that. Seems to work well for Redhat. If you don't feel that's restrictive enough, sell ECU definitions.

[MDTURBO]

^^ Personally I'm not a believer in the open source business model. If you're selling your product in the hopes the customer will need support to use it, it's probably a shitty product.

[qoncept]

The lack of support and someone to hold liable (seems to be) one of the biggest thing keeping professional tuners out of the open source software. I wouldn't rule out a market. I also wouldn't rely on the hard work of countless others doing stuff for no pay in their free time for my own income, though. Apparantly this is "business" to more people than I had grown to believe.

[cboles]

First of all, I have no idea what your product is, so I can't really comment on how the open source licensing affects it unless you can elaborate. Second, why would you embark on such a project that completely depends on EcuFlash without contacting the developer (me)? How can your first post on this forum just be to complain? How have you been contributing to this project to date?

The source code *will* be released released under the GPL. If you read and understand the GPL, you will see that there are many possibilities for using it.

* you could make a modifed version, provided you supply the source code for it to anyone for free.
* you can charge people for support / distribution / installation / training with the software (a la RedHat), but you must still provide the source for free.

* if you want to sell your software, and have it be closed source. you can obtain a non-GPL license from me (the author/copyright holder) to use the source code for another purpose. if you understand the dual-licensing model (a la mySql, Trolltech), you will see that this does not conflict with the GPL, since the original author can provide copies of the source to different individuals, each with different terms.

Again, I can't comment on your situation because you have never discussed it with me. Instead you have chosen to make this sarcastic post. I'm not really seeing how this is forwarding your cause.

[coder]

So ECUFlash will no longer be free for commercial use?

I’m must admit that I haven’t seen this post from Colby changing the licensing rules and I’m quite unimpressed by these changes, keeping in mind that the current license on ECUFlash does not restrict the commercial use or modifications (not that you can make them without the source).

I can see your point “ali”, changes to the new license agreement will affect all of the people hoping to use ECUFlash in commercial products. I’m not sure how many people contact RedHat before they start to write commercial software based on it just to make sure that the license they are forced to agree on before installation is correct. As far as contacting the developer (Colby) is concerned it didn’t do much good in my case. I asked many times how much would I need to donate (read how much would it cost) to encourage Colby to compile a command line version of the latest ECUFlash and allow me to distribute it with my application, unfortunately I was completely ignored!

I have been around for some time, and I have a huge respect for the knowledge and skills required to create ECUFlash. So my response to you “ali” is: if Colby wants to change licensing for the new version of ECUFlash he can, if he refuses to publish the source for the current version (free for commercial use) he can, one thing he cannot do is to stop you from using the currently available compiled version of ECUFlash for whatever purpose you may be using it. I’m not sure how legal it is to publish a fully functional software under “free for commercial use” open source license, promise to release the source code for this software and then change the licensing rights as far as commercial use is concerned prior to publishing the source code. If you could prove that you were misled you would have grounds to claim for damages.

[qoncept]

Colby's licensing won't be charging for commercial use of ECUFlash. ie, a tuner can use ECUFlash for free. Including it in part or whole as part of another piece of commercial software is the issue, and I think it's totally reasonable. If you're going to make money off software dependent on what someone else created, you gotta pay the original guy.

I'm no entrepreneur or I may have gone this route with Enginuity. But I don't have the resources or desire to provide full-fledged support et al, so I released it under the GPL.

[cboles]

BTW, the EULA you read when installing the EcuFlash executable is not the same as a source code license. You ARE free to use the EcuFlash executable for commercial purposes, such as tuning peoples cars, and charging them money for it. You just can't charge people for the program itself, since you didn't write it. Likewise, you can't take parts of the source code, combine it with yours, and charge people for that either. You are going to find this is true for most open source projects you encounter, so I'm not sure what is surprisingly different here.

For example, if I were to sell EcuFlash to people instead of giving it away, I would have to in turn buy a license for Qt from Trolltech (the software which runs my GUI), even though they also provide an open-source version for free. I think that is reasonable, and in fact I am licensing Qt for another commerical project which is not open-source.

[cboles]

releasing software under the GPL does not prevent you from doing this. i will be releasing under GPL as well. as i mentioned before, if you are the original author you can release your code to one group (e.g. the public) under one license (GPL), and release your code to another group (e.g. a private company) under a different license (a commercial one). you always have this option. in fact the GPL only has teeth at all because the original author(s) are granting you such rights from their assertion of copyright. ironically it is this power of copyright which is granting the open-source freedoms to its audience, hence the term 'copyleft'...

I'm no entrepreneur or I may have gone this route with Enginuity. But I don't have the resources or desire to provide full-fledged support et al, so I released it under the GPL.

[cboles]

So ECUFlash will no longer be free for commercial use?

I’m must admit that I haven’t seen this post from Colby changing the licensing rules and I’m quite unimpressed by these changes, keeping in mind that the current license on ECUFlash does not restrict the commercial use or modifications (not that you can make them without the source).

I can see your point “ali”, changes to the new license agreement will affect all of the people hoping to use ECUFlash in commercial products.

As stated before, there is no change in the license terms. I think there is some confusion between the EULA for the compiled program and the licensing terms for the source code itself.

I’m not sure how many people contact RedHat before they start to write commercial software based on it just to make sure that the license they are forced to agree on before installation is correct.

Again EULA != source code license. Second RedHat purveys an operating system, composed of code they did not write. You are essentially paying them for service and support, as well as organizing the best and most stable versions of various linux components into a coherent distribution. Even though it is open source, most people write software which then runs atop the OS and doesn't involve any actual combining of source code, so I don't think this is the best analogy.

A better analogy would be something like OpenOffice. Imagine I wrote OpenOffice completely myself, and released it under the GPL. Now imagine that you want to take OpenOffice, add some features, and sell it for $299 to compete with Microsoft Office. Does this sound like a moral thing to do or comply with the GPL? It might comply with the GPL if you continued to release the modified source freely, but then it wouldn't be long before someone began providing a compiled distribution of your program for free, which would also be legal under the GPL.

As far as contacting the developer (Colby) is concerned it didn’t do much good in my case. I asked many times how much would I need to donate (read how much would it cost) to encourage Colby to compile a command line version of the latest ECUFlash and allow me to distribute it with my application, unfortunately I was completely ignored!

I apologize if I did not respond to you right away. People send me a lot of mail and PMs. I am very bad with PMs since I can't track my replies easily like I do with mail. I did respond to you at least a couple of times. If you didn't receive my emails/PMs, I can re-send them to you.

I have been around for some time, and I have a huge respect for the knowledge and skills required to create ECUFlash. So my response to you “ali” is: if Colby wants to change licensing for the new version of ECUFlash he can, if he refuses to publish the source for the current version (free for commercial use) he can, one thing he cannot do is to stop you from using the currently available compiled version of ECUFlash for whatever purpose you may be using it. I’m not sure how legal it is to publish a fully functional software under “free for commercial use” open source license, promise to release the source code for this software and then change the licensing rights as far as commercial use is concerned prior to publishing the source code. If you could prove that you were misled you would have grounds to claim for damages.

I choose to allow commercial use in the compiled software because I though it would be beneficial to tuners and end users by providing a low cost way for them reflash vehicles and charge primarily for their expertise, not licensing fees. I'm having trouble seeing how making an altruistic gesture like this obligates me to provide my source code for free to projects that will be charging for their software. Keep in mind that unlike many other open-source projects you see, this is not a pure software project - aside from my time, I have purchased ~20 ECUs, numerous hardware debuggers, and other components. It wasn't free for me to do this development work.

[swifty]

So my understanding of all this is:

If I am tuning my own car I can use Ecuflash for free

If I am a professional tuner and tuning other peoples cars and charging them then I can use Ecuflash for free

If I am a software developer or company and I am writing a mapping application and want to integrate Ecuflash into my application and sell it on for profit then I need the source code which is not free

[cboles]

Correct. You could also use EcuFlash for free in binary form along with a pay application - for example one could sell a map editor program that output to a binary format the EcuFlash can read, and then reflash with EcuFlash... It's only when you want to put EcuFlash "under the hood" of a for sale program that the licensing issues come up...

So my understanding of all this is:

If I am tuning my own car I can use Ecuflash for free

If I am a professional tuner and tuning other peoples cars and charging them then I can use Ecuflash for free

If I am a software developer or company and I am writing a mapping application and want to integrate Ecuflash into my application and sell it on for profit then I need the source code which is not free

[coder]

Colby as I have said in my previous messages to you, I don’t question your rights to profit from your hard work, more over I will be the first one to send you a cheque for a license (as long as the cost is reasonable). I don’t think that your altruistic gesture should create any obligations; however I have seen so many instances of people getting into troubles for things that most of us would not even consider as a potential issue.

Please be so kind and contact me as I haven’t got any of your replies to my last 4 or 5 messages (PM and emails), you should also have my proper email address (Tactrix orders and ECUFlash bugs reports).

I also agree with “qoncept” that many professional tuners will prefer an inexpensive commercial software solution rather than a free one. Support, training, good documentation and ability to blame someone else if something goes wrong are very important.

[MDTURBO]

Lastly, it would not cost a developer anything if they did not distribute the ecuflash binaries with their application. In otherwords, it would not flash directly out of the box, but the end user would have to download and install ecuflash themselves.

Personally (i know, another 2 cents) I think not integrating the ecu flash capabilities into your own executable makes your application unappealing and not very commercial-like.