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Can anyone explain why this would not work: 1. Modify the license for django to stipulate that companies using the software must display a highly visible 'powe
by acgourley 11y ago
Can anyone explain why this would not work:
1. Modify the license for django to stipulate that companies using the software must display a highly visible 'powered by the free version of Django' badge on their website.
2. Allow that notice to be removed for x per year.
I get that it's a complex legal and accounting question and I must be missing something.
- throwaway2048 11y agothis makes it lose the commonly agreed upon properties of "Open Source/Free Software", and even if you could get all the major contributors to agree to a license change, the insuing dramastorm would almost certainly lead to a fork. (this was very similar to the cause of the xfree86 -> xorg fork)
- VeilEm 11y ago> 1. Modify the license for django to stipulate that companies using the software must display a highly visible 'powered by the free version of Django' badge on their website. 2. Allow that notice to be removed for x per year. People would just stop using Django for new projects. That's a very silly requirement that would turn a lot of people away. That's basically a freemium model. Anyway if it's OSS I can just fork the project and do what I want with it. If I can't, it's not OSS.
- acgourley 11y agoSurely you can protect against a fork - other licenses do.
- throwaway2048 11y agoyou however, cannot retroactively relicense already released into the wild code. also such no-fork licenses are definitely not Open Source.
- superuser2 11y agoFor one thing, you lose GPL compatibility.