Help in choosing a license

[James McGovern]

The software is targeted at our industry vertical and can be considered a
reference implementation of sorts. The reason we desire 100% implementation
of its features is the belief that not doing so actually restricts freedom
of usage.

The second point was taken from Sun and their idea of open sourcing Solaris.
They provided licenses to anyone to use intellectual property provided that
it was only used in Solaris. They have stated that the ideas cannot be
implemented in other operating systems such as Linux, etc

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Poole [mailto:mdpoole at troilus.org]
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 9:42 AM
To: James McGovern
Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: Help in choosing a license


James McGovern writes:

> Been busy making the case at work to take some inhouse code we have
written
> and open source it but would like to place the following constraints on
it.
>
> 1. You may use the software in any system that you do not sell for no
cost.
>
> 2. If it is incorporated into software that is sold, then you must
implement
> 100% of the ideas contained within it if written in another language or if
> the same language, you cannot remove functionality.
>
> 3. It is free to use in any context for the industry vertical it targets
but
> if modified to support other verticals then a royalty should be paid.

Assuming the first item means "Use of the software is free of charge,"
that is implicit in Open Source.  The double negative leads to two
other possible interpretations: "You may incorporate the software in a
system that is distributed for a fee," and "You may incorporate the
software in a system that is distributed free of charge."

The second restriction is not compatible with Open Source; if I had to
pick one part of the Open Source Definition that it violated, it would
be "3. Derived Works," but it may also violate #6.

The third restriction is not compatible with Open Source; it violates
"1. Free Redistribution" and "6. No Discrimination Against Fields of
Endeavor."

Michael Poole