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Comment by cornholio | Hacker News Reader

This type of software is an excellent fit for "eventually open" licenses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12459492

This way, corporations and business users can pay to get the latest version and features just like commercial software, while the hobbyist community still gets a relative recent and feature-full release they can use for free, has source available and is guaranteed to become fully GPL code in 3-5 years.

The traditional open source economic models (support and customization, services etc.) simply do not work for professional software with a large number of non-programmer users. A commercial license would allow these clients to pull resources together to allow software to be written, and eventually released as open source for the benefit of all - and they are the most interested in this because they don't want to get locked in.

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This seems thankfully unlikely for Krita given its origins in the KDE project, which for example has the KDE Free Qt Foundation as a poison pill should Qt attempt such a move.

If I'm not mistaken, that's pretty similar to the reasoning behind BSL, which is even more "open" than "eventually open" - code is source available, anyone who isn't a competitor can use it however they want outside of competition, and in a fixed amount of time (max 4 years) the code becomes truly and entirely free to be used however one wants, including competition.

No it ain't, those are just an attempt to pass something closed source off as open source.

At least, I haven't seen the authors give their blessing to a fork of the old version of their software, beyond the text of the license itself. Maybe it hasn't been long enough, but it soon should be.

Why would the blessing matter, if the source is available and really licensed under a real open license after the exclusivity period? Why would the original authors give their blessing to a free competitor that aims to drive paying users away?

Perhaps you approach this a bit too dogmatically. The objective for me as a user is to have good quality software, with source available, in a competitive market that does not lock me in - because it allows other free or commercial spin-offs with low entry barriers.

If we can't ever accept something that does not pass the Stallman purity test - even if it means open source programmers in some niches should starve - what we end up in those niches is binary blobs filled with spyware. And due to network effects (see the above .PSD discussion), we soon find ourselves forced to swallow the blob because it's the only real option.

Another approach is to allow free non-commercial use, and to charge for commercial licenses. There are licenses that grant all the rights that non-commercial users want, but still require businesses to pay.

https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/ https://prosperitylicense.com/

But that's no longer open source, and offers no protection to the users against lock in. All it takes is some change of leadership or VC funding and the permissive license will be abandoned in favor of a proprietary revenue-maximizing model. Human nature and all.

What is needed is a non-repudiable commitment from the vendor that the software will be fully open source, and a business incentive for them to continue developing the commercial version; they have a few years to monetize any new features, and to continue making money they need to continue bugfixing and creating other desirable new features, as opposed to just milking the lock-in cow.

Both the PolyForm Noncommercial License and the Prosperity Public License are irrevocable. There is no lock-in. Everyone gets the code, just like with an OSI-approved "open source" license.

Dual commercial/non-commercial licensing like this is a simple way to require commercial users to fund the further development and maintenance of the software.

They are irrevocable, but they also disallow commercial redistribution of modified copies - in perpetuity.

This means that when the original vendor changes new versions of the software to a draconic proprietary license (as is their right as the full owner of the copyright), the community can't fork an older version and keep it up to date and distribute that; they can just use older versions until they become obsolete, incompatible, accumulate security holes etc. They are locked in to the vendor is they need those same features going forward.

The commercial license typically grants the right to sublicense the software as part of a larger piece of software that can be sold commercially.

Both commercial and non-commercial users can copy, modify, and redistribute modified and unmodified copies. Again, there is no lock-in.

There's little incentive for the developers to switch from dual commercial/non-commercial licensing of the source code to only distributing compiled executables. The whole point of choosing the dual licensing model is that it's more attractive to customers. You wouldn't want to use such a model if you were trying to keep trade secrets, but in such a case you wouldn't consider using an open source license either.

Further reading:

https://duallicensing.com/ https://indieopensource.com/public-private/indies

> Both commercial and non-commercial users can copy, modify, and redistribute modified and unmodified copies.

I don't follow. Both examples you provided explicitly forbid commercial redistribution:

  The Prosperity Public License 3.0.0
  license allows you to use *and share this software for noncommercial purposes for free* and to try this software for commercial purposes for thirty days
  [no other distribution allowances are made in the rest of the license]


  PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0
  Your license to distribute covers distributing the software with changes and new works permitted by *Changes and New Works License*.
  Changes and New Works License: The licensor grants you an additional copyright license to make changes and new works based on the software *for any permitted purpose*.
  [Complete list of permitted purposes]
  "Any noncommercial purpose" ; "Personal use ... without any anticipated commercial application"; "Noncommercial Organizations"

So both licenses disallow distribution if done for a commercial purpose. Do you mean to say that you can dual license, under such a non-commercial license and also under an open license, that allows commercial distribution? But then, how would you discourage commercial users from simply downloading and using the open source version? We're back to the service model of financing open source.

Those are examples of non-commercial licenses, licenses that grant rights, free of charge, but restrict commercial use of software.

When I say dual licensing, I am referring to the business model of offering software for free under a non-commercial license, and charging for commercial usage rights. Kyle E. Mitchell calls this Free-and-Paid Dual Licensing.

https://writing.kemitchell.com/2023/09/10/Two-Kinds-Dual-Lic...

To use such a business model you also need a commercial license. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, and it's normally something that requires input from a legal professional. Kyle has made a couple of recent efforts to improve things.

https://fastpathlicense.com/ https://commercial.polyformproject.org/

The PolyForm Project also has other licenses. For example, the PolyForm Small Business License allows free use in organizations with fewer than 100 individuals and less than 1,000,000 USD in annual revenue.

https://polyformproject.org/licenses/small-business/1.0.0

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