Best License for Selling Open Source Software

Question

What's the best license to use for your software when you want to be paid for commercial use but are happy for non-profits/geeks to use for free?

Answer 1

If I may, I would like to expand on this question: Is there a single source for non-legal breakdowns of the major software licenses?

Answer 2

Look at the dual license ways TrollTech, MySQL have implemented. As long as you own the whole codebase you are free to choose different licenses for different uses.

Answer 3

You can always issue your code under two licenses. Some projects have a GPL version and a non-GPL version for commercial developers who are sensitive. It's not an ideal solution from a freedom perspective, but it is an attractive 'hack'.

The commmercial-'friendly' licenses are the LGPL and the BSD license.

There's a good guide to the new GPL from the free software foundation: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html

GNU have a great list of licenses to look at, and advice on how they might be used. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

Note that it's bounded by their philosophy, but nonetheless it's handy.

Another short guide: http://everything2.com/title/Software%2520license%2520guide

Answer 4

Here you go:

• Open Source Licenses Comparison
• Open Source Licenses Comparison (bare bones version of the above)

Also, found a good page which helps you pick a license based on the choices you make. (Link)

Answer 5

As epatel suggested, the dual licence is a tidy way to handle this. If one of the GPL, Creative Commons or similar licences handles the open source use, then you're set on that side. And you can probably find a commercial licence close to what you need fairly easily as well.

But, I'd strongly suggest you get a lawyer with software licence experience to help you. In my experience, it's money well spent.

Answer 6

If you're licensing a technology, I say GPL. I say this because if the licensee isn't happy giving away their modifications, they have to talk to you and give you $$$.

Answer 7

Just to make this clear: Open Source software by its definition is free for any kind of use, without any fee (esp. clause 1 and 6 of the definition).

So if that was your intent,

• no Open Source license restricts commercial use of the software
• no Open Source license enforces mandatory license fees

Dual licensing tries to encourage companies to pay for a non-Open-Source license that has some additional/other incentives compared to the chosen Open Source license.

Note that even for commercial purposes your customers are still free to use the software under the Open Source license without paying any fee, so you have to give them some real incentives to get them pay for it.

So in fact, if you want to really force your customers to pay for commercial use, you won't be able to do that with an Open Source license.

An alternative approach to making money developing Open Source software is to make commercial customers pay for enhancements to the software (which might or might not later on be enrolled into the Open Source tree) or for services around the software like consulting, customization or installation.

Note that in this case, the customer pays for the service, not for the software. This is in contrast to dual licensing, where the software is the product that is paid for.

Answer 8

You cannot restrict commercial usage of the application with a valid open-source license (OSI-approved).

Dual-licensing works for developer-tools/code libraries that have to be linked/distributed with commercial software. Trolltech and MySql are good examples.

If you want to make money out of open-source software, your open-source product has to be a complement to something that can be sold. For example you could have a core with basic functionality, and for extended features you could sell a commercial license. This worked for PyDev (an Eclipse plugin for Python development). And if the product is complex and enterpriseish, you could sell support.

Answer 9

First: an open-source-license doesn't restrict the field of usage, so commercial use is always possible. But if you sell a library the GPL may help, because it demands, that all programs using this library are GPL too. That's the way Trolltech selled Qt (until Nokia buyed it and made it LGPL, because they have a different agenda).

MySQL is an example of dual licensing of a non-library-program. But the GPL allows also commercial use of MySQL. People are paying for support.

If you want to sell a library use GPL then, if it is a 'normal' program use any license and sell additional compoenents, support, training courses or something similar.

Answer 10

I know that this is "closed" but I thought that @flights answer was a bit ambigious so here is the text from the GNU people about "Fees" it is quiet clear.

Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible — just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.

Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.

The word “free” has two legitimate general meanings; it can refer either to freedom or to price. When we speak of “free software”, we're talking about freedom, not price. (Think of “free speech”, not “free beer”.) Specifically, it means that a user is free to run the program, change the program, and redistribute the program with or without changes.

Free programs are sometimes distributed gratis, and sometimes for a substantial price. Often the same program is available in both ways from different places. The program is free regardless of the price, because users have freedom in using it.

Nonfree programs are usually sold for a high price, but sometimes a store will give you a copy at no charge. That doesn't make it free software, though. Price or no price, the program is nonfree because users don't have freedom.

Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price doesn't make the software free, or even closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.

Free software is a community project, and everyone who depends on it ought to look for ways to contribute to building the community. For a distributor, the way to do this is to give a part of the profit to free software development projects or to the Free Software Foundation. This way you can advance the world of free software.