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berneout / normally-open-closed

broad template licenses for software that allow or prohibit use for specific purposes
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Commercial devices prohibited #3

Open joshmh opened 4 years ago

joshmh commented 4 years ago

We're considering using the Normally Open Public License for the software on our Bitcoin ATMs. The "prohibited purposes" would be similar to the text below. The idea is to allow anybody to view, download and run the software while prohibiting other manufacturers from selling their devices with our software. We'd love to get feedback on this.

Prohibited Purposes

  1. You may not install or use this software, or software derived from it, on a commercial device. A commercial device is any device that is being used to generate commercial activity or that is being sold to another party.
kemitchell commented 4 years ago

@joshmh thanks for opening this issue.

I can't give free legal advice on GitHub, but as a guy who's shopped a fair number of licenses, I can give you a few tips.

The vast majority of people who read and try to understand your license will probably be programmers and businesspeople, rather than lawyers. Those kinds of people will be your best source of feedback on edge cases and clarity, too. I'd strongly recommend that you reach out to friends in your industry, or even folks making ATMs, for feedback. You might ask them to focus on the Prohibited Purposes, as you did here.

A formatting thing: The template offers an enumerated list under Prohibited Purposes, but you should feel free to just put a paragraph there. The rest of the license template doesn't insist on a list.

What isn't a commercial device? If I use a laptop for work, is that laptop a commercial device?

joshmh commented 4 years ago

I can't give free legal advice on GitHub, but as a guy who's shopped a fair number of licenses, I can give you a few tips.

Understood, and I appreciate the feedback. Getting feedback from our customers is a good idea.

What isn't a commercial device? If I use a laptop for work, is that laptop a commercial device?

Yeah this is where it gets tricky to define. We wouldn't consider a laptop for work a commercial device. The intent is to prohibit only customer facing devices, really Bitcoin ATMs themselves, without getting into how to define what a Bitcoin ATM is. There are two things we're concerned with: other manufacturers installing our software on their machines with some minimal changes and then selling those machines; and ATM operators running our software on other manufacturers' devices.

Here is an updated version:

Prohibited Purposes

You may not install or use this software, or software derived from it, on a commercial device. A commercial device is any device that is being used to generate commercial activity or that is being sold to another party. Commercial activity is activity between the device and a user in which revenue is being received from the user.

For instance, a Bitcoin ATM generates revenue between the device and a person who is buying Bitcoin with cash on the device, so it is a commercial device and the software may not be installed on it. However, a Bitcoin ATM that is used only for in-house testing and does not generate revenue is not a commercial device. A work laptop is not a commercial device. A tablet used in a point-of-sale system is a commercial device.