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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

Your license is very weird: https://github.com/ask-fini/paramount/blob/main/LICENSE

    This file is part of paramount project, licensed under the GNU General
    Public License (GPL) for companies with fewer than 100 employees or
    fewer than 1000 invocations/month. For larger companies or higher
    volume, a commercial license is required. For more information,
    contact hello@usefini.com.

I'm fine with companies not using open source licenses, but this is a very odd way to do it. Licensing something under the GPL doesn't work like this.

You should look at one of the existing non-open-source licenses like the Business Source License or https://fsl.software/ rather than modifying the GPL by adding an extra paragraph at the top: https://github.com/ask-fini/paramount/commit/8345edd8f776572...

Also, with a license like this it's not accurate to say "Paramount - an Open Source package..." - that's a misuse of the term.

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> Licensing something under the GPL doesn't work like this.

Sure it does! The GPL covers this exact scenario.

Section 7 enumerates the additional restrictions you may include alongside the license which will apply to any further distribution. Those are mostly around indemnification, trademarks, etc.

It explicitly says all other non-permissive additions are considered further restrictions and if the program says it is covered by GPL you may remove those terms.

(There’s also section 10, but we don’t need it.)

Since the README says this is “under GPL license for individuals”, and the GPL license says I can remove those terms… without even getting really far into the mud here, I can download a copy of the software, strip those restrictions, and repost it under the GPL sans restrictions for anyone to use.

That all said… it will probably have most of the intended effect. Individuals won’t care about the license much (may limit outside contributors), but no company is going to touch this with a ten foot pole with a hacked up GPL on it, >100 employees or otherwise.

Except Section 7 has this embedded in it:

> When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option remove any additional permissions from that copy, or from any part of it. (Additional permissions may be written to require their own removal in certain cases when you modify the work.) You may place additional permissions on material, added by you to a covered work, for which you have or can give appropriate copyright permission.

So I've forked it, I'm less then 100 employees or 1000 invocations and ripped their clause out. Go forth and use as much as you want!

GPL has a ton of clauses that appear to pretty much prevent these shenanigans. Explains why I can't recall any Enterprise backed software like this under GPL.

Yes I believe that was the whole point of my comment. The third paragraph covers this.

The second to last makes the same as your second to last.

So no except… we’re in agreement here.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, we have now removed this paragraph and the whole package is now under GPL regardless of usage!

The idea was to get in touch with enterprises looking to make heavy use of the project - but you're right that this may have unintended effects.

That's a great response - thanks very much for taking this feedback on board.

Great work! Thank you!

I feel like doing OSS like licenses has turned into a way to nerd snipe people into adding comments to your submission.

> Also, with a license like this it's not accurate to say "Paramount - an Open Source package..." - that's a misuse of the term.

It’s not free and open source software (FOSS) that’s for sure. The GPL can’t be used like this, were it so simple plenty of others like Redis or Elasticsearch would have done so. This license is worse than no license.

Maybe work with a specialist attorney on the license if you haven't already?

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