To date me, I learned about the Ghostscript model from Michael Tiemann in late 1996, when it used a delayed release model - GNU Ghostscript versions were released approximately a year after the corresponding Aladdin Ghostscript version.
That model influenced my early thinking for chemfp. I thought there would be enough commercial interest to pay to develop the leading edge (and get a copy under an open source license), with a, say, 2-year delay for the no-cost open source version. There wasn't.
But unlike the Ghostscript of 30 years ago, I wanted chemfp to be a fully open source project. That is, checking now, https://web.archive.org/web/20070614092626/http://pages.cs.w... says "[Artifex Software Inc. is] the only entity legally authorized to distribute Ghostscript per se on any terms other than the GNU or Aladdin" - that doesn't sound like an OEM could re-sell the source code under the same terms as received by the OEM, since only Artifex was authorized to allow that distribution.
"Is there a particular reason .."
My general support for FOSS? My willingness to try an experiment, see how it turns out, and report the results, in order to further the discussion about open source software in my field and how to fund it? My understanding that my pharma clients, almost as a rule, don't do software releases? My expectation that I can always fall back to consulting? My annoyance that published papers on fast similarity search almost invariably showed an amazing performance boost compared to a slow reference baseline, so even if there was a buyout this way, it would still result in reaching my main goals of promoting my FPS format and setting a more honest baseline?
So no, no particular reason, but rather many reasons.
That model influenced my early thinking for chemfp. I thought there would be enough commercial interest to pay to develop the leading edge (and get a copy under an open source license), with a, say, 2-year delay for the no-cost open source version. There wasn't.
But unlike the Ghostscript of 30 years ago, I wanted chemfp to be a fully open source project. That is, checking now, https://web.archive.org/web/20070614092626/http://pages.cs.w... says "[Artifex Software Inc. is] the only entity legally authorized to distribute Ghostscript per se on any terms other than the GNU or Aladdin" - that doesn't sound like an OEM could re-sell the source code under the same terms as received by the OEM, since only Artifex was authorized to allow that distribution.
"Is there a particular reason .."
My general support for FOSS? My willingness to try an experiment, see how it turns out, and report the results, in order to further the discussion about open source software in my field and how to fund it? My understanding that my pharma clients, almost as a rule, don't do software releases? My expectation that I can always fall back to consulting? My annoyance that published papers on fast similarity search almost invariably showed an amazing performance boost compared to a slow reference baseline, so even if there was a buyout this way, it would still result in reaching my main goals of promoting my FPS format and setting a more honest baseline?
So no, no particular reason, but rather many reasons.