This is such a political topic that I know I should keep my mouth shut. But, I've had this brewing in my head for a long time and now's as good a time as any t

This is such a political topic that I know I should keep my mouth shut. But, I've had this brewing in my head for a long time and now's as good a time as any to put it down in digital ink. I remember seeing an interview with Karl Lagerfeld. As many people know, there is no copyright on fashion designs. That means that when he makes a design and sells it, virtually the next day there are knockoffs in the market. They asked him if this upset him. He said (and I paraphrase), "No. People who would buy those knockoffs are not my customers". In other words, if you don't care about the Karl Lagerfeld brand, or if you don't have enough money to afford his brand, you might buy a knock off bag. This doesn't really affect his sales because you wouldn't have bought his bag anyway. Similarly, people who want to buy his bag, will not buy a knockoff -- no matter how cheap it is. They are his customers. In the same way, as a software author, it is not actually difficult to get paid for free software. The main thing is you have to ask to get paid. If you are the author of a major piece of software, people will pay you for that work. Those people are your customers. The main thing (very much like fashion) is that only some software will attract paying customers. This isn't really a problem with the license. As a programmer, locking your customers in so that they can only turn to you for help is not necessarily going to increase your sales. What you really need is exposure. You need to be popular. This is where open source works well. With open source, you have a very low barrier of entry for your potential customers. They also have a very low risk profile. They can use your code, or even parts of your code and if it doesn't work out, they can replace it cheaply. Again, as a programmer without access to lots of marketing money to bring in customers, I think this is going to help you out a lot better than locking your customers in to your platform. The key here is that once you have exposure and your project is popular, then you can ask your customers to pay for new work. Experience has shown that people who can afford to pay, and who value your work will actually pay. Just like the fashion industry. Where things diverge is when you are not a programmer. Let's say, you do not want to make money from writing code. Instead you want to make money from code as an asset. You have a bunch of source code that is already written and you want to treat it like it was a bushel of apples (err... a kind of endless bushel of apples, since you can sell it over and over again). In that case, you absolutely do not want to allow competition -- because anybody can sell a bushel of apples (endless bushel's of apples are especially appealing, it seems). So, if you are saying to yourself, "How do I get paid for writing free software", I really don't think this is going to work (especially since it isn't free software!) You are raising the barrier to entry for your customers. This is going to make your project less attractive, not more. The only people this can potentially help are non-programmers who want to reduce competition with their proprietary software.