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Lately I’ve been wondering if a license similar to this but instead based on market cap could be a way to monetize open source projects E.g. 100k/year for each

by aloer 3y ago

Lately I’ve been wondering if a license similar to this but instead based on market cap could be a way to monetize open source projects E.g. 100k/year for each trillion in market cap, updated yearly. First trillion is free

cududa 3y ago
Seems mostly very doable. Back in 2011 at my (failed) startup we had a license like that with an NLP provider/ vendor. I don't remember the exact details, but, one caveat was that we HAD to have an equity part to the deal to satisfy Delaware Law/ some other esoteric bit I don't recall. We already had negotiated an equity stake baked into the agreement, but I do recall that being a very specific requirement both our lawyers raised. I wonder how you could scale something like your proposed scenario and the overhead for the equity requirement, for open source projects.
londons_explore 3y ago
Problem is then it wouldn't be truly open source. And if your project isn't opensource, a lot of other projects can't include/link/build on your project.
johannes1234321 3y ago
So I create a company, which serves as a proxy, keeping my market cap low (yay private company) and sell the service of running your open source software for others. One way or another it will be tricked.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  "This license is revocable at any time, if, in the opinion of the author, the spirit of the license isn't being upheld".
- IanCal 3y ago
  It can be, but I think at this scale it's both very hard to hide and very easy to negotiate a real deal. If you've got a billion users and you think you can offer a worthwhile service you can pay for people to negotiate a license. Dealing with a bunch of tiny companies carefully constructed or who happen to set themselves up just isn't going to be worth the hassle. The limit here is about 10% of the worlds population.
geysersam 3y ago
It probably costed tens of millions to create the model. 100k per trillion market cap won't pay for that investment. If there was a potential trillion dollar market cap for applications of this model they wouldn't give it away for free. Facebook does not have a trillion dollar market cap.

by aloer 3y ago

cududa 3y ago

Seems mostly very doable. Back in 2011 at my (failed) startup we had a license like that with an NLP provider/ vendor. I don't remember the exact details, but, one caveat was that we HAD to have an equity part to the deal to satisfy Delaware Law/ some other esoteric bit I don't recall. We already had negotiated an equity stake baked into the agreement, but I do recall that being a very specific requirement both our lawyers raised. I wonder how you could scale something like your proposed scenario and the overhead for the equity requirement, for open source projects.

londons_explore 3y ago

Problem is then it wouldn't be truly open source. And if your project isn't opensource, a lot of other projects can't include/link/build on your project.

johannes1234321 3y ago

So I create a company, which serves as a proxy, keeping my market cap low (yay private company) and sell the service of running your open source software for others. One way or another it will be tricked.

londons_explore 3y ago
"This license is revocable at any time, if, in the opinion of the author, the spirit of the license isn't being upheld".
IanCal 3y ago
It can be, but I think at this scale it's both very hard to hide and very easy to negotiate a real deal. If you've got a billion users and you think you can offer a worthwhile service you can pay for people to negotiate a license. Dealing with a bunch of tiny companies carefully constructed or who happen to set themselves up just isn't going to be worth the hassle. The limit here is about 10% of the worlds population.

geysersam 3y ago

It probably costed tens of millions to create the model. 100k per trillion market cap won't pay for that investment. If there was a potential trillion dollar market cap for applications of this model they wouldn't give it away for free. Facebook does not have a trillion dollar market cap.