Regards
Tim Marshman

Choosing a non-qualifying license means that I lose access to the use of Sourceforge (which I migrated off for local svn as soon as I made the decision), and probably lose the ‘qualifying open source project’ status with IntelliJ. Thankfully my users have donate enough that it’s not too hard for me to spring for a real personal license…

I’ve really never gotten enough code feedback and contributions, and in nearly seven years nobody’s been comfortable enough with the code that I could even consider making them a co-developer on the project, much less handing off the reins.

Right now the ‘de facto’ situation is that the old version is still GPL, so it kind of fits the ‘a few versions behind the latest’ type of development (ala Ghostscript, iirc). I’m working on substantial changes for a new version, but it’ll be a while before I have to decide whether to open that up.

If I’m ever at the point where I want to walk away from it, I will most definitely open up the source code; that’s not really a question.

If someone wants to take over for me…well, I’ll let them when they show they can. But the truth is that projects where the maintainer changes have a much greater chance of dying, because the new maintainer has no real ’skin’ in the project. Especially something the size of JBidwatcher, where most of it is written already. I’m sure everyone’s had the experience of a project handoff, a few new versions, and then *thump*, the project goes dark. The list of people out there who really care about the scraping problem is pretty small, honestly, and most of them are going to build their own solutions.

The core thing to understand is that I don’t WANT to operate in a non-open source fashion. I really don’t; I like being transparent about the code. It’s good in a lot of ways… However, I’m really not willing to let people do what was done to me. None of the ‘commercial resale prohibiting’ source-visible licenses (at least of the ones on the page pointed to) are free of other nastiness like ‘commercial use’ restrictions. If I have to hire a lawyer to go after someone, I’d rather it be very clear that the person is breaking the law, and leaving my source open leaves that question open.

I’m so very *bad words here* tired of fighting this battle. I’d rather program, because that’s what I’m good at and love. Not legal shit. Since I am not a lawyer, and the benefits have not ever gelled and the drawbacks are very distinct, painful and known to exist, I take the simple route of saying, ‘No more.’

Hope this helps…

Best of luck with your auctions!

– Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

The real value of open source comes in when you decide to move on to other projects, or an additional developer jumps in excited to help out fixing bugs and adding features. Most users won’t notice the differences between free, and open source but it still matters. I’ve seen too many great programs wither and die as the developer lost interest, suffered a hard drive crash, or got too busy to be able to keep working on them. With open source the chance exists that it can rise again in the hands of another.

There are a number of licenses that forbid commercial distribution Go here and search for “commercial” :
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/

Another option is keeping the GPL code always one or two versions behind the latest.

JBidwatcher is a great program and where you take it next is your decision. Thank you for letting us enjoy your hard work. It would be a shame for JBidwatcher to go closed source, but ultimately what matters most is what license you are comfortable with.

THANKS for all your continued hard work and perseverence!

Liz