Resolver One, a new MS Excel's alternative, is currently available in two versions. First is a vanilla commercial one, whereas the second, Resolver One - Non-Commercial, requires a bit of explanation.
Resolver One - Non-Commercial is free (as in beer). Internally at Resolver we used to call it Resolver One for Open Source. Not because it comes with sources, because it doesn't, but because it could only be used to produce open source. Since then we have further relaxed the license to allow personal use.
What a user gets after installing Resolver One Non-Commercial is feature-wise the same application as in the commercial one, but with a different license. The license requires the user to make his spreadsheets open source or mark them as personal -- not for redistribution and profit.
Technically, the Non-Commercial version will not save the spreadsheet file until user decides on a license for his spreadsheet. When he tries to save the file for the first time, he will be presented with seven well known open source licenses to choose from (MIT, GPL, Creative Commons, ...), but he can also mark it as personal. If he selects one of the open-source licenses, it is included on top of the code part of the spreadsheet, making his spreadsheet free (as in speech).
2 comments:
I have never thought of it this way. I imagine a good idea for Resolver is to run a public repo for opensourced spreadsheets (like Launchpad etc.)
I have one spreadsheet I would like to publish. I was thinking about doing it on code.google.com. A repo dedicated to Resolver spreadsheets would be better.
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