Release comercial application's sources as GPL but with restriction in usage

[Evan Prodromou]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 11:07:47PM +0100, Raphael Bossek wrote:

> > 2. No. You can't discriminate against commercial use using the GPL.
> > You'll have to make up your own no-commercial-use license. You will
> > have a hard time trying to get license-discuss list members to help
> > you do it.
> 
> The same way http://sleepycat.com does it for it's DB implementation ?

No, that's different.

What Sleepycat does is called dual licensing. Anyone -- businesses,
individuals, profit-makers and non-profits -- can use the software
under the conditions of the Open Source Sleepycat License.

If for some reason, you don't like the terms of the Sleepycat License,
you can work out a separate license with Sleepycat Software.

I can see how you'd get confused, though. One reason some people don't
like the conditions of the Sleepycat License is that it requires
people who use it to make their source code available. People who
don't like making their source code available are often businesses. So
it might *seem* like Sleepycat Software is discriminating against
businesses, but in reality, they're not.

~Evan