Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Emerson Clarke" <emerson.clarke AT gmail.com>]

> > 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.

Mark, perhaps im missing something but doesnt that mean that companies
are still free to use the software in circumstances where they are not
distributing it ?

As i mentioned before, i think that 90% of commercial software is
never made public.  And my understanding of existing open source
licenses like the GPL is that they only place restrictions on software
which is actually distributed to the public.

Or does the dual license somehow revoke the existing commercial
conditions in the GPL ?    For instance, if i were a large government
consulting firm hired to develop a piece of software worth millions of
dollars for the government, there would be nothing to stop me from
using QT internally as the basis for this implementation.