a public LICENSE that makes software free for noncommercial and small-business use, with a guarantee that fair commercial terms will be available for everyone else
A number of readers have commented that the headcount-based threshold for small business status seems out of proportion with the revenue and capital figures. See, e.g.:
All the numbers together needn't paint a consistent picture of a single hypothetical company, so much as work together to keep business who should do a deal from skating by under the free grant. The headcount figure also takes into account contractors and part-timers, not just full-time employees. But I've become convinced it would be worth reducing the headcount figure.
The general call is still that it's better to "hard-code" one good-enough number into the terms than to introduce the complexity of parameterization or a fill-in-the-blank. Software folks tend to like those concepts in the abstract, but in practice they've proved complicated and confusing for license terms. See, for example, the Fair Source Lciense.
So the goal here is getting a number that's "good enough" for a very broad swathe of potential licensors. 100 was a nice round power of ten, like $1m figures for revenue and capital. But my instincts tell me 10 is probably too low in many cases, especially since we're potentially counting part-time contractors.
A number of readers have commented that the headcount-based threshold for small business status seems out of proportion with the revenue and capital figures. See, e.g.:
All the numbers together needn't paint a consistent picture of a single hypothetical company, so much as work together to keep business who should do a deal from skating by under the free grant. The headcount figure also takes into account contractors and part-timers, not just full-time employees. But I've become convinced it would be worth reducing the headcount figure.
The general call is still that it's better to "hard-code" one good-enough number into the terms than to introduce the complexity of parameterization or a fill-in-the-blank. Software folks tend to like those concepts in the abstract, but in practice they've proved complicated and confusing for license terms. See, for example, the Fair Source Lciense.
So the goal here is getting a number that's "good enough" for a very broad swathe of potential licensors. 100 was a nice round power of ten, like $1m figures for revenue and capital. But my instincts tell me 10 is probably too low in many cases, especially since we're potentially counting part-time contractors.