Random idea: GPL all libs in a community, with a general contributor agreement for dual licensing.
The twist: you get a commercial license if your org donates to the foundation backing the community. As long as you’re a sponsor, you can use it.
No idea how practical that’d be.
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GPL is a commercial license, and using it doesn't disallow the vast majority of commercial usage. It doesn't require that companies contribute back in some way either, only making the sources for their derivative works available under compatible licenses when distributing it.
I know. Yet this is often too scary for them. The feeling I had was that if they’re too afraid to do that, they might as well get the option to pay to make it go away.
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Selling a commercial license to avoid copyleft concerns is indeed a business model. See blog.licensezero.com/2019/04/10/cas by . Your consortium idea above is different. I don't see how it works with OSI approved licenses.
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I don't think using GPL is a good way to try to make projects sustainable in most cases. It doesn't even require that companies make the sources for their modifications and other derivative works available to the public if they don't publicly distribute the software based on it.
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The reasoning and purpose behind it is giving users the ability to modify their software. It's what it was designed to do and it's reasonably effective at achieving it when software is publicly available and used by a substantial community including developers to use the sources.
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