license idea

[Mark Rafn]

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Ryo Chijiiwa wrote:

> On 7/16/2003, "Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate at pixelized.ch> wrote:
> >> 2)  For-profit organizations may re-distribute the software, however if
> >> they charge more than a reasonable "distribution" fee, they must pay
> >> royalties to the project.
> >
> >free as in speech? Not only individual are free to speech. Why you
> >discriminate organizations? Surely not free (5: No Discrimination
> >Against Persons or Groups)

Agreed, this is not an open-source license.  Just for clarity, what about 
for-profit individuals?  

> Isn't that a lot like saying income taxes are descriminatory because it
> only applies to a particular group of people (i.e. people with a certain
> amount of income)?

Of course they are.  Income taxes are not free either.

> No.  Your contribution is in return for using my software.  So you
> contribute, and we're even.

Be clear about the distinction between use and distribution.  Not that 
this required fee (to submit their work to you) is free in any case, but 
any use restriction is beyond even that.

> Consider this: $50 for a corporation is nothing, but for me, that's 1-2
> weeks' worth of food.  At the end of the day, if they don't think the
> software's even worth that much, they really shouldn't be using it
> anyway.

Fair enough.  Of course, if you feel the need to judge which users can
afford to pay, you really shouldn't be calling it open-source.
--
Mark Rafn    dagon at dagon.net    <http://www.dagon.net/>  
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