[kemitchell]

> Indeed, it is a principle of open source that people can freeload off your work. As soon as an author restricts their work to non-commercial use or commercial-with-a-fee (which is entirely reasonable), it is no longer considered "open source".

I'd challenge that. Under copyleft and other "share-alike" or "reciprocal" licenses, loading isn't free for everyone, in particular those who create software. There's a cost in sharing source and rights for new code.

I think the community as a whole has forgotten that, because copyleft licenses have fallen behind the times. With a glaring, unpatched vulnerability like the ASP loophole affecting most copyleft code, the terms of the licenses no longer implement the deal their authors wanted to make. Which is why I proposed the license in the second quote you pulled.

[MrBingley]

That's a good point. For copyleft licenses, reciprocation does not occur through payment, but by users open-sourcing their code. In that case it's fair not to expect reimbursement.

I read your license, and I like the idea. It does seem a bit complicated, but I guess that's inherent in having to wade through payments and private licenses and such. I'm curious, was the LR-0 approved by the OSI? I can't find it on their website.

[kemitchell]

Reciprocation can occur via payment! That business model is called "selling exceptions" in FSF-speak and "dual licensing" by most everyone else. MySQL pioneered it, decades ago. Basically: "If you can't meet the conditions in LICENSE, buy a different license from us." That's exactly the model licensezero.com tries to make available to independent developers, as a service.

And thank you for reading the license! I've probably poured more time into that document than any other in my career. You're right: there is some inherent complexity in what it attempts to do, compared to permissive open source licenses like MIT or Apache.

Since submitting the license to OSI for approval, the discussion has repeatedly gone off the rails, consuming months of time and thousands upon thousands of words on the mailing list. The silver lining: accepting that OSI approval won't be forthcoming, soon or at all, and that it isn't worth what I thought it was, frees me up to focus even more sharply on clarity and simplicity. If you're interested, I'd love your feedback on this post-OSI "fork":

https://github.com/licensezero/parity-public-license/blob/ma...

I've already had some great feedback from others. A few let me thank them publicly in the repo.