Free for personal use license?

views:

100

answers:

+3 Q:

Free for personal use license?

I'm trying desperately to find a software licensing model that would allow me to make my product completely open to the public domain for personal use/modification, but would be able to be sold commercially.

I know such a beast exists, and I'm sure in many flavors. I just can't find it. ;(

What I'm hoping for is a way to allow people the opportunity to benefit from the product in an "open source" fashion, while still allowing me to have a revenue on it to be able to continue development full time.

Edit: ... and can you guys recommend good licenses for this purpose?

Thanks much in advance.

+4 A:

You could make it public domain. But then other people could take your product and sell it too.

Otherwise you can dual license it - an open source license for non-commercial use only and a standard license for commercial use.

Mark Byers 2010-05-20 20:57:39

@Mark: Wouldn't dual-licensing negate a public domain's license regarding the fact that the license says "may be ... for any purpose"?

Lance May 2010-05-20 21:00:12

@Lance: Not if your free license says for any *non-commercial* purpose.

Robert Harvey 2010-05-20 21:01:58

@Robert Harvey: Yes. I have clarified my answer, thanks.

Mark Byers 2010-05-20 21:08:33

+2 A:

You'll have to use a dual license. Eg. use GPL or Mozilla license for a free use to ensure that all the changes given back to you and proprietary commercial license for a non-free version.

Eugene Kuleshov 2010-05-20 21:00:39

@Eugene: Oh! So I wouldn't have the one product per se. Even though they would be essentially the same thing, I would need to block the commercial use by choosing a particular "free for personal", and then offer the same product "commercially" under a regular license?

Lance May 2010-05-20 21:05:31

Note that the copyright for the changes made by other people using the open-source non-commercial use license are owned by the authors of the change and typically are redistributed using the same license. This means that unless your license specifically says otherwise then those changes are for non-commercial use only and putting them into your commercial product and selling them would be a violation of their copyright. You might want to consider this aspect when deciding on the exact terms of the license.

Mark Byers 2010-05-20 21:13:30

@Mark: Well, my intent is more to provide the source for non-commercial so if people would like to change it to suit they can do that. I'm hoping to be able to write this product and share with non-comm and sell to those who actually have the money to buy. I wasn't planning on attempting to re-integrate others' forks or anything if that's what you mean. (I hope that made sense.)

Lance May 2010-05-21 01:25:23

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

Free for personal use license?

related questions