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nayafia / lemonade-stand

A handy guide to financial support for open source
Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal
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Rename "Dual license" to "Selling exceptions" and expand #92

Closed joshtriplett closed 5 years ago

joshtriplett commented 5 years ago

"Dual license" normally means something different, namely releasing one project under two or more licenses simultaneously, often for broader compatibility with other Open Source licenses. For instance, the Rust project is dual-licensed under MIT and Apache 2.0. "Dual license" doesn't normally describe the business model of selling separate alternative non-copyleft licenses.

Expand the text a bit, to clarify what kinds of companies might purchase such exceptions (not all companies prefer non-copyleft), and to allow for other legal structures in doing so.

nayafia commented 5 years ago

Hmm. @joshtriplett what do you think about calling it Commercial licenses? I like these edits, just trying to think of a term that's a bit more descriptive.

techtonik commented 5 years ago

selling is a speculation. Companies might provide a service that contains patented algorithms or there could be reasons when internal software licensing is unclear, so exposing it to public to comply to copyleft bring too much legal pain. Open sourcing things inside of corporations is hard.

techtonik commented 5 years ago

I agree that Dual licensing means different things, so License exceptions probably a better name.

joshtriplett commented 5 years ago

How about "Alternate licenses or exceptions"? "Alternate licenses" more clearly describes the concept of offering a different license separately from the primary license, and "or exceptions" includes the case of offering an exception to the existing license rather than a completely separate license.

If that sounds good, I can rework the text accordingly.

techtonik commented 5 years ago

Dual licensing and exceptions should cover all required parts of copyright law. But the text is about getting paid. License is kind of legal enforcement, so applying it to open source is weird.

I would leave it Dual license, but remove Apache and MIT from the code with just two choices Commercial License and Open Source. Often commercial license is just a legal way to provide support.

techtonik commented 5 years ago

If OSI license contains exceptions, it is not OSI anymore, so it just providing two separate licenses - each with its own bonuses/conditions even if the code stays the same.

nayafia commented 5 years ago

@joshtriplett Alternate licenses is clearer, but still feels vague, especially as it doesn't seem clearly distinguished from the Restricted license category further down.

Is there a reason why you'd rather not use Commercial license as a category name?

joshtriplett commented 5 years ago

@nayafia Because I don't want to propagate the misconception that Open Source licenses are non-commercial.

@techtonik Licenses with exceptions can still be Open Source licenses. (For instance, consider the common case of GPL with an exception for OpenSSL; that's still an Open Source license.)

joshtriplett commented 5 years ago

How about "Copyleft with paid exceptions/alternatives"? (I think we can consider alternative ways of "paying" to still be "paid exceptions/alternatives".)

nayafia commented 5 years ago

@joshtriplett Copyleft + paid license?

joshtriplett commented 5 years ago

@nayafia I can live with that.

techtonik commented 5 years ago

@joshtriplett OSI licenses are non-commercial, because they don't force people to give money, but they don't limit people to selling the software if anybody wants to buy it.

techtonik commented 5 years ago

Licenses with exception are not Open Source licenses.

Can I restrict how people use an Open Source licensed program?

No. The freedom to use the program for any purpose is part of the Open Source Definition. Open source licenses do not discriminate against fields of endeavor.

https://opensource.org/faq#restrict

techtonik commented 5 years ago

Actually, linking to https://opensource.org/faq#commercial is a good idea.

joshtriplett commented 5 years ago

@techtonik

@joshtriplett OSI licenses are non-commercial, because they don't force people to give money, but they don't limit people to selling the software if anybody wants to buy it.

In the context of software licensing, "non-commercial" has a fairly specific meaning: commercial purposes not allowed. All OSI licenses are required to allow commercial use.

Licenses with exception are not Open Source licenses.

Exceptions aren't additional restrictions, they're additional permissions.

nayafia commented 5 years ago

@joshtriplett Updated and merged! Thanks for these edits, they're great.