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by consp 214 days ago
Funny how I've seen it twice now that when asked what license a published software would adhere to was GPL, but only for non commercial and "you should contact us for commercial use". So you have both he GPL poison pill and non conformity in one package!
2 comments
immibis 214 days ago
I think that's a good option. You get all the benefits of open source as long as you pay it forward. And if you don't want to pay it forward to your users, then I'm not paying it forward to you. This is reciprocal altruism.

I'd suggest using AGPL instead of just GPL.

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im3w1l 214 days ago
Imagine if I as a hobbyist take this project A and mix it up with gpl code from another project B. I release this mashup as project C. Now some company contacts me and wants to use C commercially. If I say yes, A will be upset. If I say no, B will be upset. A contradiction!

Conclusion is that gpl but only for non-commercial does not work. They need to use a different license to get something self-consistent.

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immibis 214 days ago
There's a part in the GPL that says you're free to discard any terms other than the GPL and specific ones (like attribution). So if they really did apply the GPL, you can use it commercially, but only under GPL terms.

I don't think it's that bad. Most commercial enterprises don't want their commercial products to be under GPL terms, so they'll pay for the license regardless. You should really fix the SaaS loophole by using AGPL instead though.

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