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Comment by pickingdinner | Hacker News Reader

Some the consumer can freely choose. Others are imposed. eg. Adobe's student discount. You can word it or structure it however you want, but you're perfectly capable of imposing stipulations on specific groups. They're licensing the product to students at a discount.

For example:

If you plan on billing a client for this software or claiming it as an expense for your business, this software is provided with source for a one time fee of $50 with future upgrades provided at $25, after which will be under the MIT license. Otherwise this software is provided free of charge under the MIT license.

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Licenses usually come into play after someone has acquired some software; anyone can place any conditions on giving someone else a copy; a license affects what a person holding a copy may do with it.

Also, having contingencies on what someone “plans” to to seems fragile. Suppose I don’t plan to bill a client for this software, nor claiming it as an expense. Therefore, I acquire a copy of this software, licensed only under MIT. Suppose then that I change my mind. I should be completely free to bill clients for the software, since the MIT license freely allows me to do so. Right?

Either I am free to do that, or the software I acquired was not actually licensed under the MIT license at all, but had added conditions. And in the latter case, it was not actually Open Source.

It really isn't that complicated. You could just lie too if it isn't beneath you.

If I am looking to update a site for a client and see software that I need, and the author is asking for $$ for commercial use, and the client is willing to pay, I will respect that.

Presumption of conflict and safeguards against it, or just giving up, has caused a lot of great projects to be abandoned in my opinion.

If you go to github and the source is already there, the source is open. Any definition of open source beyond that is political and legal. And with that source being open, you could just copy it without even reading the license.

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