iPhone restricts users, GPLv3 frees them

[Michael Brian Bentley]

If I were to develop something in the next few months, I would make 
the source available as a GPL v3 project, so that anyone that wants 
to use it within the constraints of GPL v3 can; and folks who want to 
use it commercially can buy a commercial license.

I wouldn't want to release source using a permissive free license 
like BSD because the free stuff mingles with the commercial stuff too 
readily. Interactions with other GPL code projects become a hairy 
legal question. And, importantly, then the only way I can 
legitimately make any money from commercial exploitation of the work 
is to have these folks contract me to modify code. Keeping the free 
open source side as separate as possible contractually from the 
commercial side is a good way to go.

Trolltech has this sort of arrangement for their Qt library; they 
charge per commercial developer on the commercial side.

There have to be differences in how the GPL'd version interacts with 
other libraries, depending on their licensing arrangements, that 
widens the gap between GPL and commercial releases of the same code.

The point of this is that I wouldn't necessarily go into this 
business of defending my commercial rights to the code alone. I'd be 
defending against someone releasing something that includes my 
commercial stuff as permissive or GPL'd code. FSF, on the other hand, 
is a staunch defender of GPL'd code staying that way.