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berneout / big-time-license

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
https://bigtimelicense.com
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Expect Multiple Contributors #9

Closed kemitchell closed 3 years ago

kemitchell commented 4 years ago

I'd like to go back and revise current master to expect multiple contributors to the project, rather than one. But that means thinking about paid licensing by multiple contributors.

The "easy" path would probably be to have the initial developer, or a company, do all the paid licensing and take contributor license agreements from outside contributors.

This license could also work with cross-license collaboratives. Any contributor could sell the paid license. But we'd have to think about the rules about how to get in touch with "the licensor" if there are in fact several potential licensors.

kemitchell commented 3 years ago

The answer here is probably that if a group wants to offer licenses, they need to centralize the ability to license all rights in the project somewhere, as in a company or a collaborative. That becomes the (unitary) licensor.

kemitchell commented 3 years ago

My fear is that requiring big company users to round up all the contributors, and then to negotiate a single set of fair and reasonable terms with all of them, will prove a nightmare in practice. It's hard enough to round up contributors to a project for CLAs after the fact. Throw in the uncertainty around price and terms, which need to be hashed out, and it's a big ball of chaos.