[okraigher]

Why not use an open source license that requires payment for commercial use? Then technically companies have to pay for their use and should have no problem justifying the expense if it is small.

In this model there is probably a use case for an aggregated subscription service where a company pays one fee every year to an entity which redistributes it to open source projects proportionally by some usage metric. This is similarly to how artists are given royalty for how many times their song was used in a movie or played on the radio.

The license used would need to support the aggregate service mentioned above.

[yencabulator]

> open source license that requires payment for commercial use

That's a contradiction. If you mean source-available, say so.

Realistically, a non- open-source build system is doomed to obscurity.