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thaines / helit

My machine learning/computer vision library for all of my recent papers, plus algorithms that I just like.
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License clarification requested #3

Closed KingMob closed 7 years ago

KingMob commented 7 years ago

Hi, in the README for handwriting you say that you use "GNU Affero GPL 3.0 for the bits we want to license (research use is OK, but commercial use would be extremely problematic)". However, the Gnu Affero GPL 3 license doesn't place any restrictions on commercial use (as long as modified source code is offered).

I'm asking because I work for a small startup that's contemplating adding handwritten notes to our greeting card/sharing service we're launching. We came across Handwriting.io and it looked neat but pricy, so we started hunting around for other possibilities and found this.

I don't want to step on any toes, but it's not clear if you're actually trying to prohibit commercial use of the handwriting library or not.

thaines commented 7 years ago

You're entirely right that, as long as you share your modifications with the users, you will have satisfied the license requirements, and can do so commercially if you wish. That's absolutely fine. It's done this way because we have an obligation to publish the code, so that other researchers can build on it, but also an obligation to let the uni make money off of our work - this is effectively a 'poison pill' type approach to achieving both aims are the same time, as most companies would not be willing to integrate such a license into their systems. Part of this is that the code is a long way from something that can be used commercially - you're almost certainly looking at months of effort to get it into that state, and then you have to give all of that work away to the world, and all of your competitors - spending money for no advantage. The other part is the need to silo that code from the rest, making sure there is no risk of doing anything that requires you to release other aspects of your companies code base, which can be fiddly to get right. Of course, you may decide that you're willing to live with these issues.

On 11 October 2016 at 17:38, Matthew Davidson notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi, in the README for handwriting you say that you use "GNU Affero GPL 3.0 for the bits we want to license (research use is OK, but commercial use would be extremely problematic)". However, the Gnu Affero GPL 3 license doesn't place any restrictions on commercial use (as long as modified source code is offered).

I'm asking because I work for a small startup that's contemplating adding handwritten notes to our greeting card/sharing service we're launching. We came across Handwriting.io and it looked neat but pricy, so we started hunting around for other possibilities and found this.

I don't want to step on any toes, but it's not clear if you're actually trying to prohibit commercial use of the handwriting library or not.

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KingMob commented 7 years ago

Thanks for the clarification!

And thank you for sharing your work. I used to be an academic in cognitive neuroscience, and found it sad to see everyone hoarding their code.

Best of luck.