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Ask HN: Open Source license to forbid commercial use?

2 points by mgkimsal ↗ HN
I'm working with an org who wants to open source their project but what they want is something like the 'creative commons no commercial use' license. I've not seen any open source licenses like that - the closest situation I can think of is a dual-license approach like MySQL uses. Any suggestions?

8 comments

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winter_blue
The GPL effectively makes commercial rule, since everything it touches must be free, opensource, etc.
davidw
True open source doesn't make any restrictions on who can use it. If you say that neo-nazis or Israel or North Dakotans or Fox News or whatever can't use it, it is not open source software.

What are their actual goals in saying for-profit companies can't use it? Not wanting competition?

mgkimsal
I get the 'true open source' idea at core, but am trying to come up with something for them which balances out their needs with wanting it to be somewhat open.

It's not competition... well, sort of. It's something being developed by a local government and they do not want the taxpayers money to be developing something that someone will take and resell back to the same constituents by simply using some advertising. At least, that's my current understanding (and as a taxpayer, I sort of agree).

Dual-license GPL seems sort of like the way to go, or potentially even the Affero/GPL approach?

Their idea is that this may be something other agencies in other states might be able to reuse, and they don't want to put restrictions on that, but are concerned that someone will take the code and 'sell' it, when it's been taxpayer $ funding it.

mseebach
If you do dual-license, then you'll have to go into the business of selling the closed license. As a tax-payer, I'd very much prefer my government not to venture into software sales. Unless you're going to do that, just regular GPL it, it'd have the same effect. It's pretty hard to directly sell GPL software, it's usually consulting, implementation etc.
mgkimsal
yeah, the dual-license and selling stuff is already something I mentioned and have counseled against (not that they were really considering doing it yet). Still exploring alternatives.
stonemetal
Is there something wrong with the creative commons no commercial use license? It is a copyright license much the same as the BSD license or GPL license are.

Or you could, you know, just not license it to commercial entities.