Slowly Opening License
Discussion
Bayle Shanks:
"I'm considering the idea of a copyright license as follows:
- Initially, code is released under terms similar to CC-BY-SA-NC.
- Each contribution to the project will automatically relicense to GNU AGPL upon its second birthday. That is, anyone will be free to use a 2-year old version of the codebase (this includes any particular 2-year old commits within the codebase) under the AGPL (which allows commercial use).
- Each contribution to the project will be relicensed to BSD upon its seventh birthday (which essentially removes almost all restrictions, essentially placing the contribution in the public domain).
So, in short, anyone in the world will be able to download the code and use it for non-commercial use, but if they want to use it to make money, they either must use a 2-year old version, or they have to pay the authors.
One might think of this as traditional copyright except that the source code is always available, that noncommercial use is always free, and that the copyright term is 2 years instead of a gazillion years.
The goal would be to allow the authors to make money off of commercial usage of their work, without impeding noncommercial use and with a guarantee that the work will become part of the commons within a reasonable amount of time.
Thoughts?"
BayleShanks 07:39, 1 November 2011 (UTC)