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As the person who wrote the software and owns the copyright, nothing prevents you from dual-licensing your software. You can release your software as GPL on Git

As the person who wrote the software and owns the copyright, nothing prevents you from dual-licensing your software. You can release your software as GPL on GitHub, with a notice that you're willing to also license your code under a paid proprietary license; interested parties may send an email to sales@example.com at their leisure. Do note that this effectively prevents other people from collaborating with you, since their contributions would be GPL-protected and you may not sell them. So it's not a good model for larger open-source projects. But if you're an independent open-source developer who works as a sole contributor and feels exploited, then it's probably a better model.

pietrovismara 6y ago
It's not what OP meant at all. He's asking for a license that lets regular devs use your project freely, but require fortune 500 like companies to pay.
- faeyanpiraat 6y ago
  In a way the dual licensing could do exactly that, it's just a manual process, and not "automated" by the license.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    It depends on the project. If your GPL project will be so tightly coupled with the company's project that their entire project will become GPL - then yes. Big libraries like Qt, for example. On the other hand, if the coupling to the user's project is loose and doesn't make their entire project GPL, they have no reason to pay for a license. For example, compiling with gcc or hosting with nginx, or calling ffmpeg doesn't make your entire product GPL.
    - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
      Wouldn't using AGPL solve this issue?
- solatic 6y ago
  Who do you think a "regular dev" is? If it's software for personal use, then the GPL is just fine. The GPL is explicitly designed to protect personal use. If it's software for commercial use - I mean, that's exactly what the issue is here. Commercial users ought to need to pay for the software they use. Just because you offer a commercial license doesn't mean you need to charge a million bucks for it - if someone emails you and says that they work for a startup, you can always respond with a exclusive commercial license free of charge, if you like. If you own the software you can charge whatever you like to different people.
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    > Who do you think a "regular dev" is? Someone who's not employed by a fortune 500 company, probably the 99% of devs?
    - solatic 6y ago
      Why is it evil for a large company making a large profit to exploit your free work, but not a small company making a small profit? They're both benefitting from work you're doing without paying you. Personally I don't see an qualitative difference, just one of degree. Like I said, go ahead and offer free commercial licenses to small companies, who in your estimation are 99% of developers.
      - pietrovismara 6y ago
        Because a small company, by definition, doesn't earn millions and usually has very small margins (if none, if they're still in the startup phase). A large company can definitely afford to contribute more. > Like I said, go ahead and offer free commercial licenses to small companies, who in your estimation are 99% of developers. Offering commercial licenses adds a lot of work on top of the already difficult development of OSS projects. I don't understand why you think that the situation can be fixed using existing solutions, when the problem arised with these solutions already in place. Perhaps we need something different?? Edit: I also completely reject the notion that everything should be commercialized. OSS is the antithesis of this. Down with commercial licenses, down with rich capitalists exploting people's voluntary work.
faeyanpiraat 6y ago
There must be a way to expand the GPL to allow for dual licensing contributed content. You could also share revenues, to incentivize developers to join. I'm not sure how that would be possible in an effective and transparent way though.
- orlandohill 6y ago
  You don't need to expand the license, just ask contributors to sign a contributor license agreement. https://indieopensource.com/public-private/contributors https://indieopensource.com/public-private/contributors
fabianhjr 6y ago
> Do note that this effectively prevents other people from collaborating with you, since their contributions would be GPL-protected and you may not sell them. It is common to require a CLA/CAA in these dual-licensing cases such as Qt and other big commercial projects.

pietrovismara 6y ago

It's not what OP meant at all. He's asking for a license that lets regular devs use your project freely, but require fortune 500 like companies to pay.

faeyanpiraat 6y ago
In a way the dual licensing could do exactly that, it's just a manual process, and not "automated" by the license.
- michaelt 6y ago
  It depends on the project. If your GPL project will be so tightly coupled with the company's project that their entire project will become GPL - then yes. Big libraries like Qt, for example. On the other hand, if the coupling to the user's project is loose and doesn't make their entire project GPL, they have no reason to pay for a license. For example, compiling with gcc or hosting with nginx, or calling ffmpeg doesn't make your entire product GPL.
  - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
    Wouldn't using AGPL solve this issue?
solatic 6y ago
Who do you think a "regular dev" is? If it's software for personal use, then the GPL is just fine. The GPL is explicitly designed to protect personal use. If it's software for commercial use - I mean, that's exactly what the issue is here. Commercial users ought to need to pay for the software they use. Just because you offer a commercial license doesn't mean you need to charge a million bucks for it - if someone emails you and says that they work for a startup, you can always respond with a exclusive commercial license free of charge, if you like. If you own the software you can charge whatever you like to different people.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  > Who do you think a "regular dev" is? Someone who's not employed by a fortune 500 company, probably the 99% of devs?
  - solatic 6y ago
    Why is it evil for a large company making a large profit to exploit your free work, but not a small company making a small profit? They're both benefitting from work you're doing without paying you. Personally I don't see an qualitative difference, just one of degree. Like I said, go ahead and offer free commercial licenses to small companies, who in your estimation are 99% of developers.
    - pietrovismara 6y ago
      Because a small company, by definition, doesn't earn millions and usually has very small margins (if none, if they're still in the startup phase). A large company can definitely afford to contribute more. > Like I said, go ahead and offer free commercial licenses to small companies, who in your estimation are 99% of developers. Offering commercial licenses adds a lot of work on top of the already difficult development of OSS projects. I don't understand why you think that the situation can be fixed using existing solutions, when the problem arised with these solutions already in place. Perhaps we need something different?? Edit: I also completely reject the notion that everything should be commercialized. OSS is the antithesis of this. Down with commercial licenses, down with rich capitalists exploting people's voluntary work.

faeyanpiraat 6y ago

There must be a way to expand the GPL to allow for dual licensing contributed content. You could also share revenues, to incentivize developers to join. I'm not sure how that would be possible in an effective and transparent way though.

orlandohill 6y ago
You don't need to expand the license, just ask contributors to sign a contributor license agreement. https://indieopensource.com/public-private/contributors https://indieopensource.com/public-private/contributors

fabianhjr 6y ago

> Do note that this effectively prevents other people from collaborating with you, since their contributions would be GPL-protected and you may not sell them. It is common to require a CLA/CAA in these dual-licensing cases such as Qt and other big commercial projects.