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Is there a License that requires the user to donate if they make revenue? (lemmy.giftedmc.com)

submitted 7 months ago by haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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I tried a couple license finders and I even looked into the OSI database but I could not find a license that works pretty much like agpl but requiring payment (combined 1% of revenue per month, spread evenly over all FOSS software, if applicable) if one of these is true:

the downstream user makes revenue (as in "is a company" or gets donations)
the downstream distributor is connected to a commercial user (e.g. to exclude google from making a non profit to circumvent this license)

I ask this because of the backdoor in xz and the obviously rotten situation in billion dollar companies not kicking their fair share back to the people providing this stuff.

So, if something similar exists, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for reading and have a good one.

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[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Lots of foss use dual license: free for individual or non-profit use, but pay for commercial use, or even commercial use above a specific threshold. As part of my job, I’ve had to remove several of these, where the developer thinks it’s free but the corp can’t comply with the free licensing. It works.

Here’s an extremely well known example

https://docs.docker.com/subscription/desktop-license/

I still haven’t decided what kind of company mine is with respect to foss. Its a good thing that they put effort into complying with licensing terms, they do support developers making contributions back, and historically they’ve “bought” a few foss projects (hire the developer, include that in his job responsibilities)! However I haven’t yet seen them make a corporate contribution and the first response with being out of compliance is to remove the dependency.

So it’s good that we take it seriously, and good that we historically contributed, however we don’t seem to co tribute much anymore and clearly get more benefit from foss than we give back