intellectual property

All questions (and answers!) relating to intellectual property.

"Intellectual property (IP) is a term referring to creations of the intellect for which a monopoly is assigned to designated owners by law." ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

At dwyl we firmly believe that Open Source is the only way software should be released. We do not want to have a "Monopoly" on the things we build and that's exactly why this document exists!

Open Source reduces (often eliminates) Vendor lock-in (also known as Monopoly), duplication of effort, user powerlessness (inability to improve the product they love using) and project stagnation (_e.g. where a useful piece of software dies because the creator loses interest ... Google Wave, Google Reader and iGoogle ... Notice a Trend? Closed Source projects - even moderately successful ones - can be terminated at any time without any consent from people using them! _).

We want everyone to be able to use the dwyl app regardless of their financial position; much closed source software often has both a high initial/upfront cost (Adobe CS we're looking at you...) and/or recurring cost (again, Adobe "Creative Cloud" or Salesforce.com) or has "zero cost" but then sells your data to the highest bidder (which we think is much worse ... Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, SnapChat, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.)

We want people to be guaranteed the use of the software for as long as they find it useful. Often closed projects get killed by their creators without much warning

If you do not share the belief that Open Source is the future of code, please tell us exactly why and give us specific example of a situation where you think closed source is better. Thanks!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: Why did you select the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPL V.2) ?

A: The question of "which license should we choose?" is always a source of debate. In the end we selected GPL V.2 for the following reasons:

encourages (requires) people to perpetuate Open Source. If anyone builds on top of our work they are required to share improvements
dissuades others from re-distributing our work as closed software.

If you are curious about the difference between GPL V.2 and GPL V.3 watch this: https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU (Linus Torvalds on GPL v3)

Q: If you believe in Open Source why are you charging a monthly fee for using dwyl?

A: Sadly, running the infrastructure to host the dwyl app is not free. We have to pay "rent" for the servers, storage and bandwidth which costs money. We aim to be transparent with everything (especially our finances). We are charging $X for the service because we have calculated that we can run it sustainably at that rate. We hope to Buy Harware (yes, its unfashionable) to reduce our costs/overheads in the future, meanwhile we expect to build many amazing/useful features so that over-time the value of the dwyl app increases relative to the monthly usage fee and it will feel like a bargain (especially when compared to Salesforce.com!)

Everyone is still free (and will always be) to run the dwyl app on their own infrastructure without paying a penny; no "enterprise license" or "community" vs. "pro edition"!