Time Limit Functionality

[John.Cowan]

Anderson, Kelly scripsit:

> I know that one of the premises of open source is that you are allowed
> to do pretty much anything with the code you want to in terms of fields
> of endeavor. However, I'm wondering if there would be a way to craft a
> license that would simultaneously be open source, but would prevent
> others from implementing a specific feature for a time.
> 
> For example, suppose you wanted to release an email program as open
> source, but you wanted to prevent (say for two years) anyone from
> implementing a mass mailer using that source code.
> 
> I know this gets pretty close to item 6. No Discrimination Against
> Fields of Endeavor, but I'm not sure it's exactly the same.

It blatantly violates #3, which allows you to make modifications and
derived works.  Only the most lightweight restrictions on modification,
like "Don't remove the license, copyright notices, or author/contributor
names" are allowed.

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