Community License Agreement for Commercial (SaaS) software?

Question

I've got a commercial SaaS application, an online collaboration/lean project mgmt tool. I want to offer a "Community Edition", with specific limitations on how the software can be used, for free. For example

• free for groups using it to manage open source projects
• free to K-12 teachers to use in the classroom
• free for authors collaborating on Lean/Kanban/AgileSoftwareDevelopment books and research papers.
• free for community conference organizers, user group organizers, etc.

The license would grant use of the software with limitations. The software itself can enforce limitations on the number of users/projects. I'm looking for a license agreement / EULA that I can use to specify what uses the software can be used for (see above). It would restrict the users from using it in different ways, such as for commercial use, managing consulting projects, client work, etc.

I've been combing the web for good examples of such agreements, and so far coming up short. Any ideas? To be clear, this would not be an open source license of any kind. It would cover the use of commercial software, for specific "community" uses, as we define them.

Answer 1

I'd pay a lawyer and have him write up the EULA.

You'll forget something, or have some sort of loophole you won't notice.

It's always best to ask for legal advice from a lawyer.

Answer 2

You could do worse than start with a terms of service document. Some companies and products have put their TOS under the Creative Commons license, so you would be free to use that to get started. You could have a look at the one from Wordpress for instance.

Answer 3

Have a look at how Atlassian or JetBrains do it. They offer Jira instances/IntellijIDEA licenses for open source projects and project committers and have been doing so for a long time with great success.

Answer 4

If you start without a fully prepared license agreement, at least do not forget to state that the license is subject to change at any time and the user agrees to any future change or has to stop using the service immediately.