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by ssddanbrown 1082 days ago
Having licensing based upon environment variable value is very odd. From the readme:

> Bespoke is MIT licensed for env variabe OPEN_SOURCE=true

> Bespoke Cloud is Business Source Licenced for env variable OPEN_SOURCE=false

> You will be violating our Business Source Licence if you have the environment variable OPEN_SOURCE=false

I would personally be uncomfortable using any software licensed in this manner, since you're not licensing the code itself, but the code in a particular environment. It's also pretty useless to add this complexity since the usage of that environment variable could easily be patched out while under use of your "OPEN_SOURCE=true" conditions.

1 comments

Yeah! go for it! no problem patching it out!

Right now this was the only method I could come up with to release thing faster. I might think this through a little longer.

Thanks for the feedback :)

Consider whether you might want to release it as AGPL3, and offer a proprietary license for a fee.

That prevents a private company from forking a closed source version without paying you.

I thought the community hates AGPL3. I'm not sure why forking and setting env varaible as OPEN_SOURCE=true would be a hard thing to do.
They do, because many in HN are entrepreneurs building platforms that don't want to open source their products that incorporate your code.

What authors don't realize is that they can still do that if you let them pay for a non GPL version.

I made it AGPL3 after your suggestion. Now everyone is happy I suppose