Monty Suggests a Business-Friendly License That Trends Open 43
An anonymous reader writes "Want to gain some of the benefits of open source software development but not sure how to finance it? According to Monty Widenius, creator of MySQL and MariaDB, one solution could be the 'business source' license. While 'open source friendly' rather than open source, Monty blogged, it is intended to offer a viable alternative for companies that want to 'do development and compete with closed source companies on similar economic terms.' Business source starts out with similar benefits as an OSD-compliant license: the source code is visible and can be used freely by all but a small segment that has to pay (the developing company chooses the segment). Then, after a few years, the license automatically changes to an open source license. Monty recently explained the details of business source, and gave a sample license. (Oh, and not to worry, he notes – MariaDB is and will remain GPL.)"
dual license, GPLv3 and commercial (Score:0, Insightful)
the FSF will shit their pants, but dual license GPLv3 and commericial for paying vendors. Or custom tailor a license for whoever pays you enough, while making it freely available as GPLv3.
Ubuntu is doing this, You will draw some ire from the Free software community as it violates the spirit of Free software.