Some pertinent questions have emerged following Moovida 2.0’s announcement, enough to dedicate a whole post explaining in more detail Moovida 2.0’s stance on open source and licensing.

The Moovida Core UI is basically Banshee with some tweaks and arrangements. It will use the same license as Banshee, however it is important to understand that Banshee is not only a UI, but also a framework with a lot of extensions. Each extension can have its own license. So it is correct to say that the Moovida Core UI will use the MIT licenses, and some extensions and services inside it will be proprietary.

Extensions, services and the whole Banshee framework is made accessible to the Moovida Immersed UI through XML-RPC data exchange. So MIT or Proprietary extensions in the Moovida Core UI will be available to the 3D UI through that communication channel.

The whole project can be contributed to by either writing Moovida/Banshee extensions or by adding LUA code to extend the 3D UI, accessing the services through XML-RPC.

Just consider the Diesel engine as a rendering platform, like a web browser, and you develop the UI with the LUA language and the artwork we are providing.

The Diesel engine will support OpenGL ES on some platforms. We are not going to maintain Moovida 1.0’s Python framework for long, but hey it’s free software, if someone wants to make something out of it, help yourself!

One of our developers shared an article by Techdirt entitled The Future Of Music Business Models (And Those Who Are Already There) the other day. In a nutshell, it’s an interesting look at how professional musicians can embrace the creative commons model to promote their music, then cash in by offering exclusive products and services at elevated costs. Nothing new, but it demonstrates how it’s paid off well for both reputable acts such as kings of viral NIN, to lesser known acts such as Jill Sobule.

Instead of fighting the inevitable force that has become P2P sharing which usually ends up fueling frustration with fans and costly lawsuits, these musicians have taken tabs on the commercial open source business model. Test drive the shabby version for as long as you want, or pay up to get pimped out.

FLOSS                                                Flossin

Besides the fact that the article has way too many examples making it suitable for starving artists looking for inspiration, it demonstrates the creativity certain musicians have for marketing themselves all while embracing free sharing.

There is definitely a lesson to be learned from these musicians. Can B2C open source software be so successful in creating an innovative yet sustainable business model?

Looking forward to hearing your opinion on the subject…