Comment by jgilias | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jgilias | Hacker News Reader

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Obligatory disclaimer - I'm not a lawyer.

I'm pretty sure your text doesn't do what you think it does. Dual-licensing means that there are two licenses and the user can choose which one to use. The GPL + commercial combo works because there are reasons why commercial entities would want to avoid GPL licenses. Mainly, to not have to release whatever they are building as GPL too. So when you give a choice of GPL 'BUT also' commercial, there will be people who will opt for commercial to build their closed-source application.

However, if you give an MIT + commercial combo, there is no reason why one should opt for the commercial one. Unless your commercial license includes some SLA agreement or something as a carrot.

You seem to think that you can enforce use cases for the MIT license, which is not really the case. If you attach conditions to your MIT license, it is not MIT anymore. Neither is it open source.

Not everything has to be open source though. I think something like the Fair Source license [0] aligns with your intent better.

[0] https://fair.io

Sure this might be the case but still adopting a fair.io license is not going to improve things when the simplest way is just to write down in english words what you mean.

Courts will argue about the legality long after I'm dead but for me right now this is an agreement I propose, if you want to see it in your own way go ahead, I'm not going to sue you; but history will look at your existence in a bad way how ever you squirm from the fact that I'm saying: "Use this for free with MIT _OR_ if you want to make money, share some of it." - You can't get away from that...

This is my last answer to these "but MIT is free", "ALGPL does not exist" kind of comments, nothing exists except your conscience... do what you want!

> but history will look at your existence in a bad way

That was really uncalled for.

I get your point. I get involved in these discussions because I am not really satisfied with the current status quo. I want OS creators to have their cake and eat it too. Well, at least have a cake to eat. And the problem with your consciousness driven approach is that it's not a real solution. Let's say I work at a company, and I push for us using your work under a commercial license because I'm a good person. Then five years later I move on and someone else takes my place. They notice that we're using a commercial license instead of an MIT one, and just switch to the MIT one. And by doing so they are fulfilling the fiduciary duty to their shareholders.

Software use should not depend on individual morals. Any usage restrictions should be written down in the license.

They can't switch because if they earn money they are obliged to pay as per my agreement. There is no more discussion to have if you don't understand that the law does not exist only people exist.

I don't have time or will to waste time trying to force people into common sense more than I have with this hybrid license (let's call it that to avoid the collision with dual license).

I have just invented the hybrid license, enjoy!

If you don't believe the law exists, why even bother licensing your code at all?

This is not an MIT or open source license then.

What if I adapt your code under MIT and distribute it. Can someone else then use it commercially? Or do they pay you? Or me? The answer is your license either isn't open source or it is easy to bypass.

Dual license copy left on the other hand works because the stipulations and restrictions are compatible, i.e. not overlapping.

It overlaps, so if you resell/redistribute my work I still get paid if someone uses your stuff, obviously!

Is it obvious? court cases have a way of exposing the edge cases of 'plain english', as well as a general tendency to interpret ambiguity against whoever happens to benefit from it. Lawyers would tend to describe what you're doing as a 'crayon license', and it's often an apt description. I would not like to wind up in court over this license, on either side, and I will as a general rule avoid them.

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