I’ve written an open source library for iOS, and I’ve received an email from an overseas developer who wants to pay me for my work so that he doesn’t have to attribute in his app.
The code is released under the MIT license, which allows for reuse so long as the license is distributed along with the code. I told him that he can just use it without attribution, but he insists on sending me something.
What’s the practice in the open source community, bearing in mind that several others have contributed to my library? Is there a standard or convention in the OSS community for this sort of thing?
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In principle, there is nothing wrong with accepting payment for software you provide, not even if that software is freely available through other channels.
Some gotchas to look out for are:
- Bank account details are loved by criminals. If possible, prefer to use services like PayPal.
- Be careful with what you promise and what contracts you sign.
- What level and duration of (free) support are you are entering into
- If the contract states the software is written for/on behalf of someone, you may be signing over your copyrights. Be sure to review it with a lawyer before signing.
- If you get paid regularly or large sums, you may have to pay (income) tax over it.
If the buyer wants to do something that isn’t possible under the current license, you can give them a version under a different license, provided that either you are the sole copyright holder, or all copyright holders agree, or the license explicitly gives you the right to sub-license the work.
But in no case should you allow the buyer to remove the copyright statements from the source code, as that probably indicates they want to claim the work as their own.
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Your biggest problem is the other contributors. Unless you have a written agreement with them, they own the copyright to the bits they contributed. This means you need to get all of them to agree to release the software under a different license.
Established projects require all contributors to sign a contributor’s license agreement. If you have done this, whether you can accept payment for a dual license depends on the wording of the agreement.