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Hi, James... On Wednesday 07 March 2007 09:31, James Yonan wrote: > As always, it's a challenge to maintain a popular project such as > OpenVPN on a shoestring, and I'd like to thank everyone who has made a > contribution thus far. Thank _you_ for the work you put into it. Although my employer keeps thinking in terms of "great, we don't have to pay for it" at least my fellow coworkers understand how superior OpenVPN is compared to most (all?) commercial SSL-VPN solutions. Just give them CheckPoint's SecureClient for a year and they would even be willing to pay for OpenVPN. :) > The Windows TAP driver is becoming more expensive to support, especially > with the new Vista driver signing requirements. I plan to jump through > the hoops so that the Windows TAP driver will be fully signed for Vista, > however this comes at a recurring cost, and I am considering ways that > the OpenVPN project can offset these and other costs by increasing its > sources of revenue. If Microsoft were decent they would support open-source and provide certificates for free. But we all know them. > The Windows TAP driver has always been dual-licensed by OpenVPN > Solutions LLC, with the GPL license for free usage, and a paid > commercial license for companies that don't want to be restricted by the > terms of the GPL, or that want to package the TAP driver in commercial > software. One method I'm considering to help increase project revenue, > but in a way that won't affect the vast majority of OpenVPN users, is to > change the dual-licensing terms for the 2.1 Windows TAP driver, so that > the free license would explicitly not allow commercial redistribution. If I understand this just applies to companies that sell products including the OpenVPN client on Windows, right? Well, my main concern would be that companies had to pay to just _use_ the OpenVPN software. That would surely be a problem and might drive some companies to other solutions. Currently my employer uses OpenVPN because: - we (geek admins) say it's great - there is little effort for the user helpdesk - it's free (beer) On the downside: - there is no SLA or support contract (which gets all managers nervous for no reason - also a reason why we have crappy Linux distributions on many production servers instead of free distributions like Debian) So if the "it's free (beer)" argument goes away that will surely make some companies think about alternative solutions. And I'd really like to be able to use OpenVPN in commercial environments without limitations. So if you intend to charge commercial software packagers it would be okay. I am used to completely free software (Debian) so there are never limitations even for companies who sell Debian CDs. But we are talking about Windows here so license issues are more imminent anyway. And companies that earn money with your software (more than just the price of a CD recordable plus shipping) may even pay for it. No bad feelings. Especially as we don't finance your holidays or your new car but pay for something that's inevitable. > This would mean that companies that package the Windows version of > OpenVPN or the Windows TAP driver into a commercial product or service > would now need to obtain a paid commercial license. Keep in mind that > the terms of the GPL already restrict commercial redistribution of GPL > and non-GPL code, and most companies that want to do so already must > obtain a commercial license, however I'm proposing to make the > delineation between the free and paid licenses more legally precise, and > centered on whether or not commercial redistribution is occurring. Yes please. I hate law stuff. Just make it clear enough so that even companies who distribute the software internally automatically to their client PCs are still allowed to do that. Again, thanks for a great piece of software. Kindly Christoph ______________________ OpenVPN mailing lists https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/openvpn-users |