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 at 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 at 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 • 🐰
>>
>>
>
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