Re: The Bounty License

One of my conference speaking topics is “Introduction to Smart Contract Development.” As an example for the talk, I created a Smart Contract and simplistic dApp for Open Source projects called “Buildstarter” where a feature champion can “register” a feature with a funding goal, and community members can “fund” the feature until its funded or the time expires. It’s not quite the same as transitioning the overall license, but the entire project is here https://github.com/techbubble/buildstarter and I’m happy to work towards moving it to production-grade (it’s only conference talk grade right now).

On the subject of transitioning an entire OS license, there is a fair bit of nuanced legal complexity to it that needs to be managed. I speak from experience of taking an OS project from founding to venture funded commercialization to acquisition. I think there might be some possibility of having a dual license, but transitioning the license might have too many gotchas.

As luck would have it, there is an excellent real-world example to see how a license change plays out including a great community discussion for MongoDB: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18229452

Nik


> On Oct 18, 2018, at 12:45 AM, Dennis Yurkevich <dennis@miqdigital.com> wrote:
> 
> Apologies I missed the initial conversation, could some provide a few examples of items you would want to distribute in this method?
> 
> On Thu, 18 Oct 2018 at 02:29, Matt Stone <mstone@stonecover.com <mailto:mstone@stonecover..com>> wrote:
> As a SaaS provider, this is an interesting approach.  I could imagine going to an existing customer base and saying we'd like to offer feature X for $n -- if we see enough interest, we'll build it.  When "the appropriate level" is met, that commitment applies to the the bounty.  The company decides if they need more or less than than the total bounty to prove market need and/or make a long term feature investment.  In either case, they would get a head start on the capability.
> 
> -stone
> 
> On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 5:19 PM Joe Andrieu <joe@legreq.com <mailto:joe@legreq.com>> wrote:
> How would you like to see it work, Heather?
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
> 
> -------- Original message --------
> From: heather vescent <heathervescent@gmail.com <mailto:heathervescent@gmail.com>>
> Date: 10/17/18 3:24 PM (GMT-08:00)
> To: melvincarvalho@gmail.com <mailto:melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
> Cc: Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com <mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com>>, "W3C Credentials CG (Public List)" <public-credentials@w3.org <mailto:public-credentials@w3.org>>
> Subject: Re: The Bounty License
> 
> While I applaud this concept, it is extremely problematic, specifically in putting all the risk onto the content creator.. Maybe that is not too much of a risk for a developer building code, but it is significantly different for a film producer. 
> 
> On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 3:19 PM Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com <mailto:melvincarvalho@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 17 Oct 2018 at 23:22, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com <mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com>> wrote:
> Following up with an idea on "how can we fund things in this ecosystem".
> The concept of bounties came up.
> 
> Here's a simple concept:
> 
> Release software, documentation, and specifications under a "Bounty
> License".
> 
> The license states that the content is free for non-commercial use and
> sets a bounty price to transition the license into a FOSS license.
> 
> For example, libvc is a Verifiable Credentials library in C++. It is
> under a bounty license of $50K, if the bounty is paid, it moves to BSD
> 3-clause license. I can imagine three companies joining in and paying
> that bounty because it reduces implementation risk for them, and they
> get the software at a fraction of the cost of developing and maintaining
> it themselves. The upside is that the developer is paid for their effort
> vs. what happens today (leeching).
> 
> This is easiest for software... harder for things like documentation,
> videos, etc. Information that once it's out, it's out, is more
> difficult. So, for those items, previews are released and the full
> version is only released once the bounty is paid.
> 
> Bounty prices would have to be above market rates... because the content
> creator took on considerable risk in creating the content.
> 
> -- manu
> 
> PS: I know there are some things that may be better paid for up front,
> and we can still do that in parallel to the suggestion above.
> 
> love it!
>  
> 
> -- 
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: Veres One Decentralized Identifier Blockchain Launches
> https://tinyurl.com/veres-one-launches <https://tinyurl.com/veres-one-launches>
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Heather Vescent <http://www.heathervescent.com/>
> President, The Purple Tornado, Inc
> Author, A Comprehensive Guide to Self Sovereign Identity <https://ssiscoop.com/>
> Author, The Cyber Attack Survival Manual <http://amzn.to/2i2Jz5K>
> 
> @heathervescent <https://twitter.com/heathervescent> | Film Futures <https://vimeo.com/heathervescent> | Medium <https://medium..com/@heathervescent/> | LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathervescent/> | Future of Security Updates <https://app.convertkit.com/landing_pages/325779/>