[License-discuss] Idea for time-dependent license, need comments

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Qian Hong (fracting at gmail.com):

> Just want to share a link of 'business source license', it sounds
> closed to my original though about 'delay-able open source license',
> but it is known not OSD-compliant.
> 
> http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/06/26/1552215/monty-suggests-a-business-friendly-license-that-trends-open
> 
> Hopefully you would like it :)

Thanks, Qian.  I've only just skim-read Monty Widenius and Linus Nyman's
two pieces[1] on the subject, so:  

There's actually a long history of this, and I'd say it's already at
least a familiar if not well-accepted general concept, i.e., Aladdin
Ghostscript was produced under just such a licensing regime for many,
many years[2], and resulted in release of improvements to GNU
Ghostscript that might never otherwise have occurred.  

(Peter Deutsch's Aladdin Software used for that purpose what he called
the Aladdin Free Public License, which, it should be pointed out, was
_not_ a free-software licence, explicitly denying conveying of a
licence for commercial use.  Deutsch maintaining that proprietary
branch from around 1990 to 2006.)

Like Deutsch's naming scheme, there is some whiff of propaganda about
Monty's, i.e., the assumption that business implies proprietary, but,
hey, that's Monty for you.


[1] http://monty-says.blogspot.fi/2013/06/business-source-software-license-with.html
http://timreview.ca/article/691

[2] http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Printing-HOWTO/ghostscript.html

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