Then there are the cases where companies are outright violating licenses such as the violations of the GPL with regards to OBS Studio by TikTok, among others.
And then, of course, Copilot might be used to launder code.
That leaves me with the impression that companies will not pay if they can get away with it, and getting away with it might even include breaking the law since the little guy does not have resources to sue.
However, there seems to be a glimmer of hope: copyleft licenses with the option for companies to purchase a commercial license. (This is an option for me because I'm writing the code from scratch.) Based on some previous comments (like [1]), it seems that even this may not work, which would be sad. But I thought I would ask before I throw in the towel.
To address things like Qt, obviously, dual licensing makes money for companies because if they dual license their stuff, other companies will pay because they are afraid of being sued be someone with enough resources to win. But as I alluded to above, that's not really the case for an individual.
So I would like to hear your thoughts and experiences about using copyleft with commercial licenses.
Does dual licensing work? Do companies pay?
By the way, by "effective," I don't mean that every company follows the license. All I want is for just enough of them to purchase a license and/or support to pay 2 times the typical developer salary. (I need 2 times the salary for tax purposes.)
Edit: I guess I have a meta-question: when companies violate licenses, how often are they just bluffing? Is serving them with a lawsuit enough? Or will they fight what they know is a losing battle?
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29524103
1. Does dual licensing work? YES. I used it in my previous company and it was very effective. We had GPL V2 licensed software that users could access and use. We had an enhanced version that was enterprise-licensed. We also confirmed that you can defend your rights legally.
2. Do companies pay? YES. The ones that have real money do. Those are the only kind you care about in business, because you aren't going to get money from the others anyway regardless of the license. It's far easier for them to pay a reasonable licensing fee and avoid future problems than to try to scam you.
3. Meta-question: when companies violate licenses, how often are they just bluffing? NOT RELEVANT. Your real problem is somebody trying to steal your business, not somebody using software in violation of the license. Think about models that make that hard to do. BTW you can go after them for copyleft license violations. Make sure you have the right license to prevent misbehavior. GPV V2 does not prevent someone from running a SaaS on your software.
Can you offer your software as a SaaS service with value added features? This is the best way to make money in B2B software and gives you protection against copycats. The usual model is to let people try out the open source version and then run a SaaS version that removes all the pain of operations.
The issue with copyleft licenses is that you cannot integrate community contributions to your product that were made under the copyleft license.
Do this right. Close the source and maintain some semblance of leverage.