if the FSF is going to insist on enabling awful people, what are good alternatives to GPL for releasing code freely to end users while putting at least some constraints on corporate use. MPL?
Conversation
just for when I want something that's not full-libertarian open source
1
1
7
(I have transitioned some MIT stuff to apache 2.0, for unrelated reasons, and to much wailing. I have a little bit of stuff that's currently GPL)
1
5
Replying to
Apache 2 is permissive while also essentially being an anti-patent license.
It explicitly gives users the necessary patent grants from all contributors to use the software. However, it's conditional on users not filing patent lawsuits against anyone based on using the software.
1
That's essentially a lot more friendly to corporations than using the MIT license, since they don't need to worry about you or other contributors having relevant patents.
Google loves Apache 2 and uses it or a similar license for almost everything they publish as open source.
In my opinion, if you don't want to permit commercial use, then don't permit commercial use and accept that it doesn't quality as either OSI defined Open Source or FSF defined Free Software.
Software is a tool and permitting everyone to use it for anything isn't inherently good.
1
I went through the process of trying to use increasingly restrictive licenses as a way to make my work sustainable and it didn't work out.
I went back to permissive licenses and funding it entirely through donations has been successful enough to fund developers beyond myself.

