A small followup

Lots of the thinking about FOSS comes with a US bias, in particular a US legal system bias.

An example from France recently

https://thehftguy.com/2020/09/15/french-judge-rules-gpl-license-to-be-inappl...

I was going to summarise it but then realised that I would basically have to re-type the article.  If you are interested in how these US concepts transfer into other legal systems it is an interesting read.

If this is uninteresting do not click the link.

cheers

bruce

On 2022-12-26T11:08:41.000+01:00, Bruce O'Neel bruce.oneel@pckswarms.ch wrote:

HI,    While not a detailed discussion of FOSS licensing, there are lots of  interesting bits in this Strange Loop 2022 talk.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9IqwIovdiA&list=PLcGKfGEEONaDO2dvGEdodn...    "REMEMBER WHEN WE BROKE THE INTERNET?" BY JULIA FERRAIOLI AND AMANDA  CASARI (STRANGE LOOP 2022)    Lots of places have dual licensing arrangements where the OSI  version is free, but if you want or need support or extra (nice)  features you pay.    https://posit.co%C2%A0(RStudio%C2%A0renamed%C2%A0themselves,%C2%A0Never%C2%A....)    Labkey with a .org for the free version and a .com for the not free  version.    If what you want is just to let people use your code freely then     CC BY-NC-ND 4.0CC BY-NC-ND 4.0    Name: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License  Abbrev: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0  FSF: non_free (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC-BY-NC)  URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0  FOSS: no  Extensible: yes  Restricts_use: yes    might cover what you want.    More, way way more examples, on the R Licensing page.    https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/share/licenses/license.db    Another example is     https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7687/what-non-commercial-lice...    which is a somewhat typical license that comes out of an European  University.    This is a very deep subject that burns infinite time.   Non-commercial is a bit vague.  I work for a big company but we  do basic research.  Is that commercial?  Or no?  *I* have taken  the position that it is commercial, but, others do not.    cheers    bruce    -------------------------    On 2022-12-26T10:09:31.000+01:00, rabbit rabbit@callistohouse.org  wrote:

...

Thank you. Yes, indeed. That’s fine, a non-free license that   allows free-use under conditions is fine. Do you know of such a   license? 🐰      •••   𝙄𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜   𝙖 𝙋𝙤𝙧𝙨𝙘𝙝𝙚, 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙠   𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙛𝙤𝙧    𝙢𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧, 𝙨𝙤   𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙄 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙   𝙨𝙖𝙛𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙥𝙖𝙨𝙨!    _ARRIVEDERCI, RABBIT • D_𝙖𝙩𝙨𝙪𝙣 𝟮𝟰𝟬𝙕   • 🐰

...

On Dec 26, 2022, at 04:01, David O'Toole    deeteeoh1138@gmail.com wrote:

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...

    I think the Free Software definition requires that the user have    the freedom to use the software for any purpose, including    commercial. I am not a lawyer, but I have understood this to    imply that restricting commercial use would make the license a    non-Free one.        On Sun, Dec 25, 2022 at 11:31 PM rabbit    rabbit@callistohouse.org wrote:

...

I am unfamiliar with FOSS licensing. Does anyone know about an     open source license that allows free use for free software,     but requires payment if its uses are for commercial software?          •••     𝙄𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙧𝙚     𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖     𝙋𝙤𝙧𝙨𝙘𝙝𝙚, 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙠     𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙛𝙤𝙧      𝙢𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧, 𝙨𝙤     𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙄 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙     𝙨𝙖𝙛𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙥𝙖𝙨𝙨!      _ARRIVEDERCI, RABBIT •     D_𝙖𝙩𝙨𝙪𝙣 𝟮𝟰𝟬𝙕 • 🐰

We once had Richard Stallman at the HPI and he gave a talk about free software. One of the audience had a question like the following: he wants his software to be free, but he is also a pacifist and wants to prevent the software from being used for weapons and such, is there a way? Mr. Stallman responded that what the asker wants is a contradiction because if the software is to be truly free software you must not restrict who will use it or how it will be used [or modified or distributed]. So you have to choose your priorities.

"Open source" is less strict about protecting or enforcing those freedoms. But the definition of the Open Source Initiative does not allow restrictions on how the software may be used either. https://opensource.org/docs/osd#fields-of-endeavor

Some FOSS licenses like the GPL are simply very unattractive to certain audiences such as corporations. That is the foundation of the dual licensing idea... BerkeleyDB (by Oracle nowadays) is one example about which you can read more: free if used in appropriately-licensed free software, but requires commercial licenses for use in other kinds of software.

Freeware licenses (i. e. non-open-source) do not seem to carry names that often, at least I do not recall any. It appears like everyone writes their own... or they copy some text that they have seen elsewhere. Note that this may be illegal too because the license texts are also often copyrighted. So if you just copied the license text from another software package and exchanged the names in there, you may violate the copyright of the license author in doing so. ;-)

In the end, you must probably get advice from a lawyer if you take this seriously. If there is not much at stake for you, it might suffice that you write plainly what you want or do not want. That may not hold up in court, but if you do not plan to sue whoever you may discover to have used your software against your will, that may not be so relevant after all... I do not know how necessary these liability voiding clauses are nowadays to protect yourself.

Am Mo., 26. Dez. 2022 um 10:00 Uhr schrieb David O'Toole < deeteeoh1138@gmail.com>:

I think the Free Software definition requires that the user have the freedom to use the software for any purpose, including commercial. I am not a lawyer, but I have understood this to imply that restricting commercial use would make the license a non-Free one.

On Sun, Dec 25, 2022 at 11:31 PM rabbit rabbit@callistohouse.org wrote:

...

I am unfamiliar with FOSS licensing. Does anyone know about an open source license that allows free use for free software, but requires payment if its uses are for commercial software?

••• 𝙄𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖 𝙋𝙤𝙧𝙨𝙘𝙝𝙚, 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙠 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙢𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧, 𝙨𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙄 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙨𝙖𝙛𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙥𝙖𝙨𝙨! *Arrivederci, rabbit • D*𝙖𝙩𝙨𝙪𝙣 𝟮𝟰𝟬𝙕 • 🐰