open source licence question

[Christopher Browne]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 3:16 PM, bob 295 <icanprogram-sKcZck+fQKg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Does anyone know of what I would term an open source licence with a specific
> period of exclusive use?     In otherwords changes can be used in a
> proprietary fashion of a predetermined period (eg. 1 year) and then those
> changes revert to a standard GPL type licence.

That would be known as "dual licensing" (sometimes aka "dueling
licenses"), and this approach used to be taken by Aladdin Software
with its licensing of Aladdin Ghostscript.

There were two licenses:
 - For the first 18 months, some form of "Aladdin Public License"
would apply.  People could use the software freely, for
   some non-commercial purposes (and ergo this was NOT formally OSS,
under the DFSG and similar);

- After 18 months, Aladdin would re-release the same software under the GPL.
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