[hhm]

Is this really a commercial license? Check the license text:

"You may, free of charge, download and use the SDK to develop a modified Valve game running on the Half-Life engine. You may distribute your modified Valve game in source and object code form, but only for free."

Sure, you can't make commercial products out of it, but you are allowed to re-distribute any modifications for free. This can be used by people who want to make free, open source games, for example.

[nailer]

http://opensource.org/osd

"1. Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling..."

[hhm]

Yes, but if a license isn't open source as defined by OSD, it doesn't mean that it is automatically commercial. My claim is just that the additional restrictions imposed by Valve push the license into some gray area, between OS and commercial.

[dragonwriter]

"Commercial" is commonly used to mean "not Open Source" or "not Free Software", and in that usage not being Open Source does mean that it is "commercial".

Properly speaking, "commercial" is an orthogonal concern to "Open Source" -- if software is sold by a merchant under a license, that license is commercial, whether or not the license is also an Open Source license.

You seem to want to create a new use of "commercial" where it on a continuum with "Open Source" but not merely the negation of "Open Source", such that there would be "Commercial" and then some poorly specified "gray area" and then "Open Source". I'm not sure that this is either a particularly good use of the term "commercial", nor a particularly useful concept regardless of the terminology. Non-Open Source or non-Free licenses always permit you to do something with the software (that's why they are "licenses").

[hhm]

Your definition (in the first line) would imply that closed-source freeware is commercial, I don't agree with that. I do agree that commercial is orthogonal to open source.

So my original point about the license not being properly commercial stands. I do agree with you that it is not really proper to claim that there is a spectrum between commercial and open source.

[nailer]

dragonwriter's not defining anything in his first line, he's pointing out a common misconception.

In reality, the 'opposite' of Open Source is proprietary. There is commercial Open Source (Red Hat), and proprietary software with source code available (Unreal SDK).

[hhm]

Then I agree with you both. Thanks for the clarification.