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by mindcrime
1569 days ago
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Yes, it's been done. No, it's not a good idea. And the result is no longer open-source. I'd strongly advocate not doing that. If you want to make something "shared source" or "source available" (as opposed to open source) it would be better to use an existing, well-known license for that. Microsoft put out a few such licenses years ago[1], maybe consider one of those. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Initiative |
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It's a good short-term cash grab, especially if your project has good vanity metrics (they don't magically go away when you relicense) and many users. https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-to-earn-1-5m-in-revenu... is a case study where an open source project switched to a proprietary license and managed to extract $1.5M
But it definitely burns bridges and arguably gives the project the downsides of proprietary software (fewer contributions, people switching to open source projects) and the downsides of open source software.