[VPM] multiple questions and answers

[Darren Duncan]

At 7:16 PM -0700 7/29/06, Jeremy Aiyadurai wrote (by private email):
>hello Darren,

Hello Jeremy,

Note that I made this reply public since others could benefit from the answers.

>P.S. the VPM mailing list seems dead, I have tried posting messages 
>but no-one seems to respond, and there seems to be little 
>discussion. Whats wrong?

The list isn't dead, and I have seen several messages from you.  But 
I think many of them weren't answered because no one who saw them 
could think of any quick and simple solutions, other than to look or 
ask somewhere else.  (Also, you shouldn't post the same question 
multiple times in short succession.)

All this said, I sent replies just now to your last 3 (unanswered) questions.

>Also, I have heard that companies like IBM give away patents for 
>open-source projects. Is this still true. Can I get one for free?

Forget about it.  Software patents are evil and are best ignored. 
Don't try to look for or obtain any patent grants no matter what they 
say.  Patents are hard to search, mostly useless, and largely 
unenforceable.

Just go about and do your work, and pretend that there are no patents.

>I am going full steam ahead, in making major project (not complete 
>yet -will have a perl component) of mine open-source using the GPL 
>license. I would also like to make some income from the project. My 
>Question is: how do I setup a dual license? eg. GPL for personal use 
>and non-profit business and Commercial license ($$$) for proprietory 
>integration. Can this be done? how?

Dual-licensing can be done easily.  Just release your project under 
the GPL as per a plain GPL project.  Assuming you are the only author 
of the project (or other contributors agree to turn over their 
copyright interests to you and/or give you unlimited permission to 
use and sublicense as you see fit), you can additionally  license the 
project to people under proprietary terms.  If people want a non-GPL 
license, such as if they want their changes to be proprietary, they 
can contact you to ask for a proprietary license.  You can also make 
money from supporting the project or customization even for people 
that just use the GPL license.  Various companies such as MySQL AB go 
this route.

-- Darren Duncan