Selling my own GPL software, part 1: a lot of hurdles

• Textual

  8 1,845 5.7 Objective-C

  Textual is an IRC client for OS X (by Codeux-Software)

  

Textual is a good example of this working IRL for me. Their app is one of the best IMO IRC clients on MacOS, is open source [1] and is also sold on the App store and their site.

1. https://github.com/Codeux-Software/Textual#original-limechat...

2. https://www.codeux.com/textual

• TrueCraft

  14 2,070 0.0 C#

  Discontinued Minecraft for hipsters

Your comment intrigued me so I did a little bit of digging.

> I remember Drew DeVault (sircmpwn) used to have a big scary warning saying if I have looked at the official minecraft code, I should not contribute to truecraft (now archived I believe).

The repository is indeed archived, but is still available on GitHub. It was changed in 2015 [0]. The older notice is as you recall:

> Pull requests will be rejected from authors who have read any decompiled official Minecraft code.

The current notice [1] adds some other ways the formerly rejected developers could get involved:

> If you are a developer, you have two paths. If you have not read the Minecraft source code, you are what we call a "clean dev", and you should stay that way. If you have read the source code, you are what we call a "dirty dev", and the way you can contribute is different. If you are a clean dev, you're welcome to contribute to this repository by adding features and functionality from Minecraft Beta 1.7.3, fixing bugs, refactoring, etc - the usual. Send pull requests with your work.

> If you are a dirty dev, you are more limited in how you can help. You can work on projects that are related to TrueCraft, but not on TrueCraft itself. Direct contributions that you can participate in includes the website and the artwork. You can also work on things like helping to build a community by spreading the word, participating in IRC or the subreddit, etc. You may also work on reverse engineering Minecraft to provide documentation for clean devs to use - see reverse engineering guidelines on the wiki for details on how you can do this. Under no circumstances may you ever share any code with a clean dev, decompiled or otherwise.

[0] https://github.com/ddevault/TrueCraft#get-involved

[1] https://github.com/ddevault/TrueCraft/commit/fcfd3886746fd1f...

• SurveyJS

  surveyjs.io sponsored

  Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  

• emailengine

  30 1,771 9.5 JavaScript

  Headless email client

  

I’m selling an AGPL licensed app that allows to access IMAP/SMTP accounts over REST (https://emailengine.app). At first I sold it in a way where AGPL version was completely free and public, but you could pay to get the same thing with a MIT-license. Turned out that no-one cared about the license, everyone was happy to use the free AGPL thing, so I changed it in a way where the app is dual licensed under AGPL and proprietary license and you need a “license key” to fully unlock it. As it’s AGPL with source code available from Github you can freely remove that license key check, just a 1-line change. It’s still a big enough of a hurdle that I’ve actually gotten some customers.

• cla-assistant

  7 1,268 4.1 JavaScript

  Contributor License Agreement assistant (CLA assistant)

  

I use CLAAssistant and do not accept PRs without it https://cla-assistant.io/ - not that there are any notable PRs, mostly README typo fixes and such.

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