Making The GPL Easier For Companies To Swallow

stupidNewbie writes "There is a new GPL "wrapper" gaining momentum on Capitol Hill. Dubbed O-STEP, the Open Source Threshold Escrow Program allows vendors to license their products until so many millions are made, then agree to release the code under GPL. This sounds like a good bridge for companies looking to tap into the strengths of open source distribution." Starting from zero, it can certainly gain momentum quickly -- sounds like a good idea though.

Comments

Re:Not Bad...

[joyoflinux]

Well, anything is better than no consideration of the GPL at all..

They'll never reach the threshold.

[jridley]

I have a friend who used to (years ago) be an accountant in the record industry. Their books were set up to NEVER show a profit. It wasn't illegal, and if you didn't know about it and agreed to a percentage of profit, you were just screwed.

Unless they're very careful with wording on this, companies will just set things up so that the threshold is never reached.

If they ARE careful enough that no legal loophole is available, I suspect that companies will consider this a time bomb and avoid it anyway.

Developing trend

[JDWTopGuy]

First it was "glowing cyber balls", now "Making the GPL easier to swallow"? Is slashdot trying to make troll-friendly stories?

Re:My target is $10,000,000,000

[Pharmboy]

Great, so I want to get on the good side of the government and big companies by signing up for this license. I think I'll just set my target for $10 billion so I don't have to worry about it ever actually going open source, god forbid

But the point is, the amount is declared up front. The buyer sees that the seller won't open up until he makes 10bil, and another that is looking to make 150mil, then he looks at the 150mil knowing it will go open source sooner, and his costs of licensing will go down on an already installed infrastructure.

I don't know if this really is the way to go, and at first I though, 'eh, sounds silly'. But the more I looked at it, the more interesting it is. The one thing that I DO like about it, is the fact that it assumes that being 'open source' is important and desirable to the end user. While appearant to you and I, to other consumers who don't know or care what OSS is, it exposes them to the idea.

As to the application of it, I have always thought that Microsoft should release the source for DOS 6.x and 16 bit versions of Windows. Of course, the time to do it would have been when 98 came out.