this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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[Help] How do I word my grant application to keep my software FOSS? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by thevoidzero@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Hi everyone,

I'm hoping there are people here who work on FOSS and have applied for grants to support their software financially. I am applying for a grant opportunity that is asking for a software from US gov agency.

My requirements:

  • I want to publish it under Open Source Licenses like GPL (not MIT) so other corps can't take this to use on their product,
  • The grant agency will get the source code, they can do whatever as long as the license is held,
  • I will develop the features they want, and request during the duration of grant,
  • I will want to continue development independently after the grant, or apply for more grants from other organizations,
  • To clarify the previous point, I do not want to give them the final product so they own it, and I can no longer do anything on the program.

So, if anyone has done similar things, please give me advice on this. Their requirement says "a web repository" should be provided at the end, so I think I can apply with the intention of giving them the software code while keeping the rights. But I don't want to make a mistake in application/contract and lost the rights to the program, I want to develop a lot further than just the features they want for their use case.

Or at least dual license to protect the Open Source Side while giving the grant organization rights to take the code for their other programs because of the money they spent.

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[–] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I don't mind them making money off of it, as long as they contribute to the open source community by improving it, contributing upstream, or using it in other systems and keeping those open source as well. I want other people to benefit from the effort I made and published, and if someone wants to improve it, I want others to benefit from there too.

I don't want the case like insulin in US, where the first invention is free because they wanted everyone to benefit from it. But now it's super expensive because of the incremental advances other corps did that are patented. And the free version is no longer viable to use without those incremental improvements.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The GPL doesn't say they need to contribute. It just says they need to publish the source if they make changes. The GPLv3 requires them to allow you to run modified versions

[–] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If whatever changes/improvement they make is available for everyone to use, I consider that contributions to the open source.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago

Ahh - okay that wasn't from your wording. In that case you're right that something like one of the GPL variants is probably what you are looking for.