Rework early history

dosp-survey.ltx

@@ -130,58 +130,63 @@ just be a precursor to tomorrow's recognized standard.
 
 \numberedsection{Early History}
 
-For many years, Aladdin GhostScript implemented a DOSP policy whereby
-new versions were published under a proprietary license, and then regularly
-relicensed under the GNU GPL with a delay of one year.  (It might be
-clearer to say that year-old versions were regularly republished under
-the GPL.)
+The earliest notable use of DOSP we found is Aladdin GhostScript (TODO: WHEN).
+Aladdin's practice was to publish new versions of the software under proprietary
+license.  It also published versions of its software under GPL if they were
+older than about a year.\footnote{CITE}
 
-GhostScript author L. Peter Deutsch described this practice as providing
+GhostScript's author, L. Peter Deutsch, described this practice as providing
 commercial exclusivity that would help fund continued development of the
-project.
-
-Eventually, GhostScript adopted a simultaneous dual-licensing approach
-in which all releases were available under GPL and redistributors could
-choose to pay for a proprietary license exempting them from GPL
-obligations.
-
-% TODO This is about Artifex rather than Aladdin - the change happened
-%      after the product was transferred to a new company!
-Attorney and author Lawrence Rosen, who discussed GhostScript's model in
-his book on open source licensing, told us that Artifex eventually
-concluded that the GPL was unpalatable enough to commercial embedded
-developers --- the entities that were typically already paying for
-proprietary licenses or that could be induced to pay for violations of
-GhostScript's copyright --- that the delay in making GhostScript available
-under the GPL did not significantly change these companies' incentives to pay
-for licenses.
-% Sorry for the super-long sentence. I'm sure we'll break that up somehow.
+project.\footnote{CITE} This is a commonly cited motivation for adopting DOSP.
+
+Interestingly, GhostScript's makers eventually dropped the delay in favor of 
+dual-licensing.\footnote{CITE and add date}  With this approach, they
+simultaneously release GhostScript under both a proprietary license and GPL.
+They continue to use this model today, though they have replaced GPL with
+AGPL.\footnote{See \otsurl{https://ghostscript.com/licensing/index.html}.} They determined
+that their market of commercial, embedded developers were paying to avoid the
+A/GPL, and that the time-delay did not significantly change these companies'
+incentives to pay for licenses.\footnote{CITE to Rosen's book?}
+
+
 
 % Rosen also says that sendmail may have had a dual license in the same
 % era or even before Ghostscript.  I found references to sendmail having
 % a "traditional" dual license but so far have not found references to a
 % scheduled relicensing practice.
 
-Another important software project committed to a form of DOSP as a minimum
-guarantee.  As part of the controversies surrounding adoption of the Qt library
-by the KDE project, various Qt copyright holders agreed to DOSP practices
-as a contractual backstop to ensure that future versions of Qt remain
-usable in free software. A series of contracts between Qt copyright holders and
-a KDE community nonprofit entity (the ``KDE Free Qt Foundation") include commitments
-to release future Qt versions under specific license terms with a ``within a timeframe
-of not more than 12 months" relative to any proprietary
-release.\footnote{See \otsurl{https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation/},
-which includes the exact language of the licensors' contractual commitments;
-a portion of the historical context is described in
-\otsurl{https://tinf2.vub.ac.be/$\sim$dvermeir/manual/KDE20Development-html/ch19lev1sec4.html}.}
-These rights to delay the application of the free software license have not
-% TODO - ever? to what extent?
-usually
-% TODO
-been exercised in practice; Qt versions have generally been promptly
-licensed under the required licenses. The possibility of a delay together
-with a specific timeframe represented a compromise between the Qt developers'
-and KDE developers' views of their respective interests.
+Another early example of DOSP is KDE's Qt library, which committed to a form of
+DOSP as a minimum guarantee.  KDE is a desktop environment built using the Qt
+GUI library.  Over the years, the company that produces Qt, Trolltech, has
+experimented with a variety of public collaboration approaches that includes a
+mix of FOSS and not-quite FOSS, commercial approaches.
+
+When KDE adopted Qt as its GUI toolkit, "lock-in" concerns about reliance on a
+codebase owned by a commercial company led to a series of agreements between a
+KDE nonprofit and Trolltech.  The original license allowed the KDE Free
+Qt Foundation to release a version of Qt under BSD license if Trolltech
+substantially stopped Qt development for more than a year.\footnote{See
+\otsurl{https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation}.} Moreover, a
+series of contracts between KDE's nonprofit and successive Qt copyright
+holders include commitments to release Qt versions under specific license terms
+``within a timeframe of not more than 12 months" relative to any proprietary
+release.\footnote{See \textit{id.}, which includes the exact language of the
+licensors' contractual commitments; a portion of the historical context is also
+described in \otsurl{https://tinf2.vub.ac.be/$\sim$dvermeir/manual/KDE20Development-html/ch19lev1sec4.html}.}
+
+In practice, we didn't found any documentatary evidence of significant time
+delay.  That is, while the agreements allow a lag between proprietary release
+and FOSS (or Qt/Free license) release, it appears that in practice this lag has
+been insignificant or non-existent.\footnote{CITE? TODO: maybe we can ask the KDE
+folks if this is true?}  The agreements established minimal standards for the
+protection of KDE, but Qt's various copyright holders appear to have generally
+exceeded those standards.  In this case, DOSP was a fall-back scenario for a
+conditions that never arose.
+
+KDE and GhostScript are the two earliest projects we found making documented use
+of DOSP.  They use them in different ways, but both appear to contemplate DOSP
+as a way to protect a period of proprietary commercial exploitation.  As we will
+see from later projects, this is the most common use of DOSP. 
 
 \numberedsection{Scheduled Relicensing}\label{scheduled}