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by hgs3 1569 days ago
What's your goal? If you want to prevent people from profiting off your work, then adding non-commercial language is the appropriate thing to do. "Open Source" isn't a trademarked term. You can legally use it to describe your non-commercial software, but you will face criticism from those who strictly go by the OSI definition. Alternately, if being OSI approved matters to you, then consider releasing your software under a viral, copyleft license like the AGPL and then sell closed source licenses.
1 comments

The goal is to get some form of value back for sharing it... from those who otherwise wouldn't contribute (as a few do already). Even if seemingly small, it's better than nothing.
I'd recommend you explore what other projects are doing for creative solutions. For instance consider Slint, a UI toolkit, offers their software under a viral copyleft license, a paid-for closed source license, and an "ambassador" license [1] which allows the code to be used in closed source software for free, but with the requirement that the Slint developers can use the derived product and its logo in marketing material for free.

[1] https://slint-ui.com/ambassador-program.html