[ucirello]

author here! the decision was mine; if anything, the senior leadership was fine with an unencumbered open-source license. What I didn't want was someone using it to make a business out of this tool without me in the mix.

In a sense, a futile effort; because if you reverse engineer a nlspec and rebuild it, then you can have it with any license you may want.

[embedding-shape]

I wasn't doubting it wasn't you making the decision! :)

I was more curious why go with modifying a FOSS license (which clearly isn't the right choice if you want to prevent others from doing whatever with it) instead of just straight up keeping full copyright to yourself/the company and a "regular" license?

Then you get exactly what you want, without also sending double-messages about that people can do whatever they want, which is what you're trying to prevent.

[zwaps]

He said why, he wanted to open source it with the mentioned exception.

I think there are also licenses that do that, and revert to full MIT after some time, but the author decided to roll their own.

What’s the problem with that? He can license it however he wants and the reason he mentions is perfectly valid tbh

[hungryhobbit]

Legal writing is like code: it's a specific domain, that requires special expertise to write properly.

If you see a problem with a non-programmer writing code, then you should see a problem with a non-lawyer writing licenses.

[selridge]

Do you see a problem with a non-programmer writing code?

[hungryhobbit]

Terrible decision.

OSS licenses (and existing commercial ones) are tried and true (and re-used) for a reason, while your license very well may not even hold up in court!

I mean, I'm not a lawyer, and I assume you aren't either ... would you hire someone who isn't a programmer to write your code for you? Then why are you doing your own lawyering without a law degree?