Community certification complementary currency license (CCCCL)

[Michael R. Bernstein]

On Tue, 2004-11-16 at 09:05, Ernest Prabhakar wrote:

> > Is this an acceptable restriction for an open source license?
> 
> I doubt it.   This sounds to me more like what's called a 'Community 
> Source' license, where there's some extrinsic boundary on who's allowed 
> to use the source.  The whole notion of open source is that it is an 
> unbounded community.  Community Source probably has its place, but it 
> shouldn't be confused with open source.

I'll point out that it is possible to create a project community that is
a subset of the user-comunity as a whole with the boundary running along
rather different lines than a particular software license.

For all intents and purposes, this is how most Linux distributions work,
whether they are commercially or community driven (or some mix).

As an example, the Debian Free Software Guidelines (which formed the
basis of the open source definition) don't specify who may use the
software at all (as Ernest said, that's the point), only what software
may be included in the Debian project (and by extension, who may
participate in the project).

So, rather than restrict who may use your software, you might instead
want to create a community (perhaps a co-op) of *contributors* to the
project, while leaving the software without any restrictions on use by
non-community members.

Your community governing documents could be as restrictive as you wish,
but would be orthogonal to the acceptable software licenses.

-- 
Michael R. Bernstein <webmaven at cox.net>