What license to pick...

[flash gordon]

At 10:09 AM 9/29/00 +0200, Lionello Lunesu wrote:
>OK..
>
>So we (my company) have decided to make our VR-toolkit open source! But we
>haven't decided which license to use for it. GPL seems the obvious choice,
>but we want to restrict the freedom somehow (at least in the beginning, just
>so we can ge more organised). We definately want to prohibit commercial use
>(I guess GPL covers this),

GPL does not prohibit commercialization, it protects it.

Personally I think that is a major flaw in the GNU/GPL concept of 
'freeware' - I think the term 'freeware' should be reserved for software 
that is both free of restrictions on modifications and use AND free of 
charge/cost [except for nominal media and copy costs].  GPL should better 
be referred to as 'full use' software, in contrast to the typical 
commercial 'limited fair use' copyright restrictions.

As is, GPL allows people to commercialize/capitalize something in they had 
no creative input.  Mere merchants can in effect render it property by 
requiring payment for the software above the cost of media and 
reproduction, which in this day and age is virtually nil.  The social 
exchange should be, what you receive freely, you shall give freely.  To me 
it is tantamont to fraud to charge for software [except for minimal media 
and copy costs] for which you hold no legal rights.   Any charges above 
such minimal related costs would have to be seen as a de facto exchange for 
the software code itself, in which a mere merchant/seller has no rights.

Were I to release code for the public good and access, I would resent it 
highly if someone assimilated it, packaged it and marketed it, and making 
thousands or even millions in the process.  And if that were to happen, I 
think I would be reluctant to be altruistic and release more code pro bono.


>but we also want to be notified of any changes
>made in our source (so we can review them and possibly build them in, in the
>'real' version). AND we don't want other people to be able to create their
>own distribution of the toolkit.


So what you want is to make the source available, so others can enhance it, 
critique it, fix it and you have full rights to all their effort but they 
cannot release their work?  definitely not GPL afaik and certainly not what 
I would call full-use freeware.