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.
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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.
I know that too. It’s often not sufficient. It was a random idea to turn some ever pissy corporations to maybe contribute to a community in other ways than using them as a free lunch by playing on their fears of having their lawyers look at licenses.
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Companies like Amazon and Google are smart enough to understand the licenses and know that they don't need to contribute anything back or pay for a license though. I guess providing a license can work in some weird cases like the useless $6000 SQLite license that's available.
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