[mwcampbell]

> Sometimes I wonder whether it'd be possible to earn a living off mammoth. Although there's an option to donate - I currently get a grand total of £1.15 a week from regular donations - it's not something I push very hard.

There's no shame in making the source available but using a license that requires payment for commercial use, like the Prosperity [1] license.

[1]: https://prosperitylicense.com/

[abiro]

The problem with this approach is that it turns open source adoption into a procurement process: the developer who wants to use your projects needs to go through the legal department etc. So if there is any alternative option, employee devs will avoid a dual-licensed package.

[goodpoint]

This license is not written by a legal expert, I suspect.

For example this clause, phrased like an order, does not make sense:

"Don’t make any legal claim against anyone accusing this software, with or without changes, alone or with other technology, of infringing any patent."

You can't give orders to people in a license or other contracts. You can only describe conditions.

[mwcampbell]

> This license is not written by a legal expert, I suspect.

FWIW, it's written by Kyle Mitchell [1], an attorney. It's just that he places particular emphasis on writing his licenses in plain language, not legalese.

[1]: https://kemitchell.com/

[staticautomatic]

Sure you can. Contracts are simply bargaining for promises to do or not do something. Here, the “order” is the licensee promising not to do something.

[musingsole]

Also nearly impossible to enforce. This approach just adds a layer of guilt/paranoia in the implied legal consequences.

[pembrook]

Few companies of any consequence are going to use a piece of software illegally.

Every boilerplate due diligence process when trying to sell your company includes looking at what open source work you’re using to see if there’s any legal issues.

You’d be stupid to risk scaring off a multi-million dollar pay day over something so trivial.

[scosman]

Don’t spend your time worrying about those who won’t pay. Almost always a better use of time to think about expanding those that do/will. It’s frustrating, but not a good use of time.

[telesilla]

In a business context however, how knows how many apps are using it, and a properly done licence forces business to pay, maybe only once but it's something. A commercial license could bring in some small revenue that justifies maintenance and new features.

[tonyedgecombe]

Some people don't want to run a business and that's OK.

[gitgud]

If a library has a restrictive license like that, then it had better be polished and extremely user friendly, or I'm not using it....

Whereas, if it's a permissive license like; MIT, then I'm personally more likely to be much more forgiving and even try and fix problems.