License choice for PHP software

Question

I am thinking of selling a piece of PHP software (set of scripts). Naturally, since it is PHP the source code is freely available once people obtain the code, so I am looking into how I can "legally" protect it from just being shared and distributed without me making any money. I know this is not going to protect it in practice, I just want to make sure I send the right signal.

I don't mind if the buyer changes, modifies and expands the souce code - as soon as they buy it, they are free to use it for whatever. They just cannot freely give it away.

From what I see, most open source licenses allows the software to be freely redistributed and this is not in my interest. I just want the buyer to enjoy the freedom of doing whatever he/she wants with their software, while still allowing me to make money selling it.

In a sense, it is open source (since the source is provided and can be used), but not "free", as in freedom, software.

Hope it makes sense :)

Answer 1

This is commercial software, regardless of the fact that you're giving your customers the source code. Thus, it would be best to find a lawyer to help you write an appropriate license.

If you don't want to hire a lawyer, I suggest looking at existing commercial software licenses out there (e.g., google 'commercial software license') to get some ideas of what to write. I don't offer any specific terms to put into your license because 1) I'm not a lawyer, and 2) the exact terms you use are highly dependent on your business requirements.

A couple of things you may want to consider while writing your license:

• How many copies of the software can the end user use with one license? Maybe it's not a big deal if they have a single web site and they just need to drop your set of PHP scripts into their one little web site. But what if their site is complex and they want to do some clustering, running your software on multiple servers to support one web site? What about one customer using it for multiple web sites?

• Can they transfer (i.e., sell) their license to someone else?

Answer 2

I'd recommend consulting with a lawyer on that.

Oh, and Open Source refers to the legal ability to be free to do what you wish with source (with possible limitations). Just because you are providing the source code does not make it open source...