[cc-licenses] open source non commercial license

drew Roberts zotz at 100jamz.com
Mon Feb 5 17:36:07 EST 2007


On Monday 05 February 2007 04:05 pm, Michael Tiemann wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-02-05 at 20:15 +0000, Mark Brown wrote:
> > On 2/5/07, Emerson Clarke <emerson.clarke at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >         I wish there was a way i could just say it was free for open
> >         source
> >         use but not free for commercial use.  But the more restrictive
> >         licenses get in the way of that becuase they are
> >         incompatible.  It
> >         would then mean that my code could never be used with a GPL
> >         project.
> >
> > The usual approach in that situation is to do as Rob suggested and
> > dual license the software under both the GPL and a proprietary
> > license. QT is one prominent example of this approach.
> >
> > This allows at least GPL compatible free software applications to use
> > the work but does limit what can be done commercially, especially
> > where the work is a library like yours. Anyone who wanted to develop a
> > proprietary application using the library would have to obtain a
> > commercial license before distributing their application. It doesn't
> > completely eliminate commercial exploitation (people can still do
> > things like sell Linux distributions including the software) but
> > anything that did would have trouble getting accepted by the
> > community.
>
> I agree--the dual-license hack is the best approach I've seen to get the
> best of both worlds.

ANd even thismay not be optimal Free Software development wise. People may be 
less inclined to submit patches/enhancements where a dual license model is 
used compared to one where only a free license model is used.

Perhaps a dual license model practiced by a developer co-op? All developers 
share in the revenue from non-free license revenues but dont get non-free 
license rights without paying?
>
> M

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)



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