Show HN: A license designed to save the open source movement | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A license designed to save the open source movement

1 pointgioscarab8 comments

Open Source experimenter license.

"You" (or "Your") shall mean an individual, human, exercising permissions granted by this License.

"Software" shall mean the source code, associated documentation and configuration files included in the <project name> directory

"License" shall mean the conditions for use, copy, modify, merge, publish or distribute the Software as defined by Section 1 through 3 of this document.

<project name> Experimenter's License

Copyright <year> <copyright holder>

Permission is hereby granted to You, free of charge, the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish or distribute copies of the Software, subject to the following conditions:

1.Use, copy, modify, merge, publish or distribute the Software only for experimental or educational purposes.

2.Companies, institutions, organizations and corporations don't have the right to use, copy, modify, merge, publish or distribute the Software

3.THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR USING, COPYING, MODIFYING, MERGING, PUBLISHING OR REDISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE AND ASSUME ANY RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR EXERCISE OF PERMISSIONS UNDER THIS LICENSE.

How do you draw the line between companies and individuals? Is a one man consulting 'company' allowed to experiement with the software?

Personally, I feel the way to "save" the open source movement would be simply have maintainers start valuing their time more properly.

Something along the lines of "This is my project, you can use it if you want. If you want a patch added, pay me. If you want support, pay me."

A one man company consulting another would apply the software for commercial purposes. Commercial use is not comtemplated by the license. The one man company should contact me and buy a different license.

I am not sure about: >"This is my project, you can use it if you want. If you want a patch added, pay me. If you want support, pay me."

Because if you are an experimenter asking for a patch I could be also interested in, that could help the project in any way, I could consider doing it for free as part of effort required to develop the project.

To be clear, the word "human" is used determine who can use the software because I am convinced that, when a company, institution, organization or corporation is created, it has its own intelligence, means and interests that go beyond and above the interests of human beings.

Many are scared of the singularity, thinking that general artificial intelligence out of human control is the greatest threat for humanity.

I am convinced that the greatest threat for humanity is more probably just a corporation operating to achieve its own interests.

Immediately fails to match the OSD due to rule 6: https://opensource.org/osd

In addition, it runs afoul of #0 and #3 of FSF's Four Freedoms: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms

The idea is, let experimenters tinker with it and help you develop your idea, while at the same time exclude companies, institutions, organizations and corporations. If the software is interesting for them they can contact the copyright holder to buy a different license.

Instead of giving away for free our work to entities that may work against our own interests, we give it away for free only to people like us.

Hobby clubs? Nonprofit organizations?

It's a difficult space and there's reasons there's so many options already. Not that it isn't worth further effort, and more options are often useful.

Hobby clubs could not use it because they are an organization, members of the club could use it because they are individuals playing with their hobby. Non-profit organizations could not use it.

I must say often non-profit organizations even if not producing money have strong conflicts of interest.

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