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by phoe-krk 1572 days ago
It has already been tried - see e.g. the duo of https://paritylicense.com/ + https://prosperitylicense.com/

Just don't call it open source or free software. It's source-available at this point.

3 comments

That was an interesting rabbit hole, their github owner is https://github.com/licensezero/. I don't think I've seen licensing as a service before (https://fastpathlicense.com/) or connecting a license to a Patron reward tier.
Thanks for sharing, I haven't seen these before. I'm curious what the viewpoint is from other devs are on sw with a license like this? Would you use sw under either of those licenses? (They seem reasonable to me).
I don't really understand what goal you're trying to achieve that the GPL or LGPL couldn't. As a dev, if I see a project using a license I'm unfamiliar with, I'll probably first look elsewhere as I already understand the ins & outs of GPL- and MIT-style licenses, but not whatever this new thing is.

These two licenses in particular are pretty crummy. Define "commercial." When does the 30-day period start? How would my usage be proven one way or the other in court?

No, I wouldn't. Most of what I do requires Free Software licenses or sometimes even GPL compatibility, and such licenses are neither free, open nor GPL compatible. For me, such software wouldn't be much different from proprietary freeware.
So you wouldn't add a test case, new example, or fix a typo in the docs to gain access to an MIT equivalent license?
It's not MIT equivalent. It it was, it could be relicensed.

In many cases it's not even relevant what I would do or not, because such licenses make it not possible to integrate such code in a project under GPL, or to include it in a free distribution.

Looking at these licenses closer, I wonder if Parity could actually be considered free. Seems to my eye like it could be, but IANAL. For practical purposes, I'd probably consider it same as non-free until it's said to be DFSG-compliant. Prosperity sure isn't free though.

Prosperity license seems to be exactly what OP is looking for. Looks like it's had a few big projects use it too, which is promising.

I wish someone would write a software compatible equivalent of Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA however: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/