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Open source software license should include a clause saying that it is mandatory for commercial users to pay a certain amount of contribution annually, let's sa
by markus_zhang 5y ago
Open source software license should include a clause saying that it is mandatory for commercial users to pay a certain amount of contribution annually, let's say 0.01% of gross revenue?
So if they find it too expensively they can simply turn away and build their own, which is good for whoever get the chance to do some lower level programming, and if they find it OK the open source authors/maintainers can get some good money. It's a win-win. Of course this might request open source authors/maintainers to form a more rigid organization (how to share the profit).
- ghaff 5y agoThen it's not an open source software license.
- 29083011397778 5y agoI suspect you're conflating Free, Libre, and Open-Source Software. The first can be free (as in beer), the second free (as in you can do whatever you please with it), and the last is that the source is publicly available. GP's proposition would be Open-Source, but not FLOSS IIUC
- ghaff 5y agoIn general people use the open source definition and the licenses approved by the OSI as what defines open source. These don't allow you to discriminate based on usage, such as commercial use. (If you own the copyrights, you can dual license under both an open source and a non-open source license of course.) "Source available" or "shared source" licenses are not generally considered open source.
- andrewshadura 5y agoYou are mistaken. All three terms have the same meaning.
- andrewshadura 5y agoOpen source software is a name for free software which was intended to make it sound less ideologically loaded. Libre software, on the other hand, is a name for free software intended to make it less ambiguous while preserving ideology. Anyone who claims otherwise is either: a) trying to be an ideological purist fighting with those not following their ideology to the maximum, or b) trying to mislead you to try and devalue the terms, or has been misled by (a) or (b).
- ghaff 5y agoThe impetus for the term was supposedly that people kept being confused the distinction between free as in beer and free as in freedom/libre. However, to your point, one suspects that some prominent people like Tim O'Reilly latched onto "open source" as a less ideologically-aligned term.
- VWWHFSfQ 5y agothe goal of free software is _freedom_. money has nothing to do with any of it.
- markus_zhang 5y agoYou can have both IMHO.
- VWWHFSfQ 5y agosure but they're not compelled by the license itself. They are compelled to pay for the software in the form of hiring developers to work on it, donating to the foundation behind it, etc. Companies like Red Hat have done this very successfully for a long time because they prefer to keep the supply chain feeding the lifeblood of their enterprise healthy.
- markus_zhang 5y agoMaybe a dual license then?