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sponsorware / docs

What is a Sponsorware project and how can YOU start one?
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Licensing #1

Closed runepiper closed 4 years ago

runepiper commented 4 years ago

What about licensing? Using the MIT license or similar while the code is not public, is not suitable is it? Some could upload the code before the threshold is crossed.

stefanbuck commented 4 years ago

Great question. As far as I know, if no license is given, the copyright law of your country apply unchanged ... whatever this means in detail. Maybe best to add a short disclaimer which says something along those lines:

By granting access to this repo you agree to not distribute or make profit from this source code.

Although distribute is tricky, because even hosting it yourself is already some kind of distribution.

runepiper commented 4 years ago

Sounds reasonable to me.

pkoch commented 4 years ago

I think we're sweeping an important topic under the rug. It'd be ideal to have some standard licensing agreement (even if it has to be per country), pre-vetted by a team of competent lawyers, that people can choose from on a pre-release period.

The less people have to think about navigating this maze, the more time they'll have to write code, the more sponsorware we'll have.

ferki commented 4 years ago

There's probably no "one size fits all" solution, as the license details all depend on the project in question, and the author's intent with their end result of creative work. Therefore I'd approach it from the same angle like any other licensing question for new projects: what's my intent with the product as author, what activities I allow or disallow for anyone who obtains a copy, and under what conditions.

For anything custom like a sponsorware license, I probably would start with taking a well-known and proven license like MIT, and modify it slightly, if needed. Of course, the less modifications I would need to do, the better it is. And this all depends on what I, as an author and copyright holder, see best fit for the project.

For example, I could decide to leave "use, copy, modify" in as allowed, and take "merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies" out as disallowed. The condition could be the same: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software".

I am not a lawyer, but the above could be an idea to start with, before presenting the case to an actual lawyer.