License

In its original form, Qi I was introduced in April 2005 under the GPL version 2 license. Though the work was warmly received, the GPL was perceived to be unfriendly to the commercial use of Qi; that is, to the production of proprietory binary code. Hence when Qi II was produced, a new license was created which enabled people to do that, based on the following principles.

1. That when people make money out of someone's work they should pay for that work.
2. That programmers like to experiment with source code and they should be free to do that.
3. That since my sources were provided open for people to experiment with, the results of their experiments should be open too.
4. That when people want to use someone's work without a profit motive then they should be able to do this for free.

In place of Stallman's four freedoms the Qi license has two freedoms and two obligations.

For Qi II, the obligation is very light. The license for the production of commercial software was placed in the language guide and the cost was priced to make the book easily affordable to anybody involved in software development (£24.50 in 2009). This license overwrites the default license which everybody is bound to unless they do not have the book.

These licenses cannot be changed except through the hand of the author (myself, Mark Tarver). This requires that I physically change them myself. This should be obvious to anybody who understands licenses.

The Default License

I'm now going the explain those licenses. Here is the default license which you get when you download Qi.

This software is licensed only for personal and educational use and not for the production of commercial software. Modifications to this program are allowed but the resulting source must be annotated to indicate the nature of and the author of these changes.

Any modified source or source generated from this program is bound by this licence and must remain available under the same conditions it was supplied and with this licence at the top.

This software is supplied AS IS without any warranty. In no way shall Mark Tarver or Lambda Associates be held liable for any damages resulting from the use of this program.

The terms of these conditions remain binding unless the individual holds a valid license to use Qi commercially. This license is found in the final page of 'Functional Programming in Qi'. In that event the terms of that license apply to the license holder.

That's pretty straightforward; you can use Qi for free if you are educating people or distributing your stuff for free without any expectation of any monetary gain either in terms of money for product or services.

This license applies to anything that results from modifying my program. For example, you cannot simply globally change the names of some variables in an editor and then say it is a new program. 'modify' is used to describe effectively mapping the source through computational means, either cross compilers or editors.

If you want to place your own license on something like Qi, you have to write it yourself line by line, by hand as I did. Then you can rightfully claim it is yours. However this is pretty pointless, because the commercial license is so cheap that effort involved would pay 1 cent an hour.

The Commercial License

Here is the commercial license

License

The following license gives you a personal non-transferable right to produce closed source commercial Qi applications. It is activated by writing your name into the space provided. It remains valid as long as the license remains attached to an authorised copy of 'Functional Programming in Qi'. Note that xeroxed or electronically duplicated copies of this license are not valid. The license is personal to one individual person and is not transferable. I, the undersigned

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being the owner of this copy of 'Functional Programming in Qi' understand that I am free to produce commercial applications with the Qi programming system, to distribute them in source or binary form, and to charge monies for them as I see fit and in concordance with the laws of the land subject to the following conditions.

1. Neither the names of Lambda Associates or Mark Tarver may be used to endorse or promote products built using Qi software without specific prior written permission from Mark Tarver.

2. That this commercial license does not extend to Qi source code itself which must remain free for educational and personal use and in open source whether modified by me or not.

3. That possession of this license does not confer on Mark Tarver or Lambda Associates any special contractual obligation towards me.

4. That in no event shall Mark Tarver OR Lambda Associates be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary or consequential damages (including but not limited to procurement of substitute goods or services, loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption), however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability or tort (including negligence) arising in any way out of the use of Qi, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.

Essentially the commercial license gives you the right to distribute your code under whatever license you like and charge whatever money you like as long as you recognise that the license does not give you any rights over the Qi sources. By your code is meant code that is written by you and is not a modification of code written by me as part of Qi. The phrase open source, which is perhaps confusing, just means that the sources are open to be read and changed within the license. This sense was the sense that 'open source' carried in the 1980s. Though the term is not copyrighted, I will drop this phrase in the next reprint since the open source movement has appropriated this expression.

Hence these dual licenses give you the freedom to produce your own code for money, it gives the hobbyist freedom to do his own thing without paying a cent, it keeps the sources open (in the old sense of the word) so that we can all share any improvements in my work with each other without hindrance, and it imposes as the only financial obligation for those wanting to make money, the purchase of a book which they will need anyway. I generally regard this as much better than the flawed open source model which I have extensively criticised and I will not repeat these criticisms here.

Mark