4 ms·

How about a new type of licence. If you contribute to FOSS its copyleft, otherwise if you want to use it closed source its a copyright 10% revenue based commerc

How about a new type of licence. If you contribute to FOSS its copyleft, otherwise if you want to use it closed source its a copyright 10% revenue based commercial licence.

cercatrova 6y ago
That's not really FOSS, if I get it from someone else who did contribute to the project, which they can share with me under their FOSS license, then I just bypassed your commercial license legally.
- pickledcods 6y ago
  You can catch that with a pass-on clause. The idea behind this is to stop commercially exploitation of your contribution to FOSS with intention to keep everything for themselves and keeping the FOSS philosophy for those who do care.
  - cercatrova 6y ago
    The problem with all of these kinds of FOSS-but-not-really is that, well, they're not really FOSS, only ostensibly so. Companies would have every right to use FOSS themselves, so it's not really the FOSS philosophy, it's something else. In that case, just make it source available or even proprietary, just don't call it open source.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
That's just a proprietary license with source code available, the same kind of thing that companies get mocked for "expecting free labor to help them make money" on HN.
fhrhsfwdrj 6y ago
Isn't it the dual-license that for e.g QT does ? (LGPL for open source projects, Commercial licence for closed source projects)
- detaro 6y ago
  side note: LGPL is not just suitable for open source projects, plenty use with commercial closed source too. But yes, that sounds like the dual-license model: if you don't like the terms of the open-source license, you can pay for other terms.
pornel 6y ago
You don't need a new kind of license for this. You can dual-license a project as (A)GPL & commercial. Business-wise it's like a freemium model. The GPL option is friendly to FLOSS projects while avoiding being free-as-in-free-labor. Companies happily pay for a commercial license, because that's easier and safer for them than to think how GPL could work for them.
- mroche 6y ago
  If the project is accepting third-party code contributions, the dual-licensing steps into CLA territory which not everyone is comfortable with. So depending on the project that may cost the development some contributors.

How about a new type of licence. If you contribute to FOSS its copyleft, otherwise if you want to use it closed source its a copyright 10% revenue based commercial licence.

cercatrova 6y ago

That's not really FOSS, if I get it from someone else who did contribute to the project, which they can share with me under their FOSS license, then I just bypassed your commercial license legally.

pickledcods 6y ago
You can catch that with a pass-on clause. The idea behind this is to stop commercially exploitation of your contribution to FOSS with intention to keep everything for themselves and keeping the FOSS philosophy for those who do care.
- cercatrova 6y ago
  The problem with all of these kinds of FOSS-but-not-really is that, well, they're not really FOSS, only ostensibly so. Companies would have every right to use FOSS themselves, so it's not really the FOSS philosophy, it's something else. In that case, just make it source available or even proprietary, just don't call it open source.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

That's just a proprietary license with source code available, the same kind of thing that companies get mocked for "expecting free labor to help them make money" on HN.

fhrhsfwdrj 6y ago

Isn't it the dual-license that for e.g QT does ? (LGPL for open source projects, Commercial licence for closed source projects)

detaro 6y ago
side note: LGPL is not just suitable for open source projects, plenty use with commercial closed source too. But yes, that sounds like the dual-license model: if you don't like the terms of the open-source license, you can pay for other terms.

pornel 6y ago

You don't need a new kind of license for this. You can dual-license a project as (A)GPL & commercial. Business-wise it's like a freemium model. The GPL option is friendly to FLOSS projects while avoiding being free-as-in-free-labor. Companies happily pay for a commercial license, because that's easier and safer for them than to think how GPL could work for them.

mroche 6y ago
If the project is accepting third-party code contributions, the dual-licensing steps into CLA territory which not everyone is comfortable with. So depending on the project that may cost the development some contributors.