[wisty]

> Honestly, GPL screws up commercial use almost as much as a non commercial use restrictions.

The GPL has a few problems, but non-commercial causes are just noxious.

Who exactly can use a non-commercial piece of software? Presumably, universities can. Can a government research lab use it? How about a military research lab? What about a contractor doing military R&D? If Exon-Mobile uses this to search for oil, is this research (thus non-commercial)?

Any clause which is likely to give your lawyer a headache trying to interpret it is probably a bad license.

The GPL has some ambiguous bits (like its interaction with interpreted code eg Python bindings to MySQL and Javascript libraries in the browser) but it's not as ugly as the term Non-Commercial.

[lucian1900]

Actually, interpreted code or browser code isn't really ambiguous. GPL is based on "derivative works" not necessarily C-style linking.

[wisty]

Is progressive enhancement of a HTML page enough to make the rest of the frontend "derivative"? What about the backend? What if they interact?

If the JS engine mixes interpreted code with the proprietary DOM, how does that work?

How about LGPL works?

But you're right - it's usually pretty clear if you think about it. There will always be edge-cases, but unlike non-commercial clauses the edge cases aren't that common.