[License-discuss] Query on "delayed open source" licensing

[Richard Fontana]

On Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 9:44 PM Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> wrote:
>
> Hi license-discuss members,
>
> I'm working on a research project with Open Tech Strategies and the Open
> Source Initiative, on the topic of delayed open source licensing.
>
> This refers to licensing models where a project is initially published
> under non-open-source terms, but with a promise that the code will be
> relicensed as open source, with some delay or under some conditions, in
> the future.  In some cases this may be a recurring practice where
> updated versions are continually relicensed on a specific schedule over
> time.
>
> Of course, license instruments that implement this strategy are not
> themselves open source licenses.  But we thought it was likely that
> subscribers of this list would be familiar with examples of this
> practice and might be able to suggest some that we haven't identified
> yet.  As Karl Fogel writes,
>
> > We’d like to gather as many examples as we can, both historical and
> > modern, for a whitepaper that will examine the effects of DOSP on open
> > source projects and on open source as a whole. The paper will take no
> > position in the paper on the desirability of DOSP; its purpose is to
> > provide accurate historical description and objective analysis.

Here's Ted Ts'o's idea for a "Temporary Proprietary License", from 2003:
https://thunk.org/tytso/TPL.html

Richard