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Feedback on open source royalty license?

I'm about to release a library, and do not want to use a normal free license like the MIT, Apache, or the GPL. I want to keep the license simple and easy to understand. It also would be considered a non-free license, as it requires a royalty payment. Though, the royalty would not be directly to this library, but open source repositories in general. This is what I had considered so far.


  • 5% of generated income (per profit generating product) paid as royalty yearly to "approved open source repositories" if income is above $1,000,000/year. It's free if income is below that amount. The goal is to be similar to Unreal's license.
  • All repostiories on GitHub.com that meet these requirements are "approved open source repositories"
    • They have more than or equal to 1000 stars
      • I'm aware that stars can be purchased, but this is against GitHub's TOS and the case for fraud is more obvious. Intentionally purchasing stars with the intent of not paying royalty is similar to just not paying the royalty
    • The royalty must be paid between at least 10 repositories, with no more than 10% to a single repository
      • I might provide some lists with easy methods for averaged mass payments to like 100s or 1000s of repositories, but if they want to use discretion, it's allowed. They are just prevented from contributing everything to 1 repository.
    • They cannot be the same repository or project that is paying a royalty, but the same organization is approved as long the individual repository meets the requirements
      • The intent is to partially reward companies with many highly starred open source contributions, but their use level is on their own PR. I also dislike the idea of verifying and tracking identities of different library authors, as I like to create repositories without them being associated with my name. Though, I do think that it makes sense for stars. (The developers providing stars would technically be voting on who should be elgible for financial contributions)
  • After 5 years, the license transitions automatically into MIT or public domain for the version used. Though, new versions could still be under the same license.
  • License is automatically compatible with licenses that use the same wording.
    • No extra royalty if another dependency also uses this license
    • If the other license raises or lowers the royalty rate, it's still compatible, with the royalty rate being the higher of the two.
    • It's also compatible if the amount of repositories is raised above 10 by limiting percentages more.
    • And, also compatible if the star threshold is raised.
  • If GitHub removes stars, the existing approved repositories at the time of removal will persist as royalty options, but no new options will be automatically defined. (As the copyright holder, I still maintain the right to increase approved repostiories at anytime by issuing under a new license)
  • No liability. The liability is still similar to MIT, Apache, GPL, etc.
  • Royalty is paid by taxable year, follows tax season for US.
    • Chosen repositories by the payer must be listed on the license
      • Inclusion must link GitHub URL, payment amount, year
    • The license must be distributed in the same location as all other distributed licenses in their application
  • Just like the MIT or Apache license, the license cannot be revoked unless the licensed company decides to break the law, sue the license issuer, etc. No expectation of support, etc.
  • The source can be modified. Usage of it does not need to stay open source.
  • (Maybe, if possible) - Provide GitHub the ability to sue companies in noncompliance for a 10% reward of the settlement after lawyer fees.
  • (Maybe) - Include Codeberg too. Though, I'm concerned other developers will be less likely to use a license of this type if they don't recognize the organization.

The motivation is just that I believe it's possible for a license like this to work. Tech companies frequently use a similar income model for their products and do not have issues paying Apple their 30% tax. There's often a expectation that companies contribute back to open source repositories, so I view 5% as an easy amount to meet. (Companies should already be contributing back at a level to where this license is viewed as free) Though, I don't expect any large company to move fast on a license of this type.

I've considered a license like this in the past, but thought about it again when Microsoft requested support for FFmpeg when their engineer hadn't read documentation. When requesting a support contract, Microsoft offered $2000. This was viewed as insulting to the FFmpeg developers as Microsoft generates billions of dollars in income every year while using their software in their products.

Large companies, like Microsoft and Google, pay Apple 30% to list their products. (30% of a billion is 300 million, 150,000x more than $2k) I don't think spending the money is the issue, they just frequently refuse until they are without options.

I haven't consulted a lawyer for it. I'm just interested in understanding how it is perceived. I also am willing to consider significant changes, but I haven't had better ideas for creating a license for funding open source.

As for my library

  • It's unimportant, in a niche, and blockchain related
  • I wrote it for personal use
  • It won't bother me if the license just completely fails or is impossible to enforce. (Though, Unreal Engine uses a 5% royalty license that seems successful)
  • It also won't be elgible for part of the royalty until it meets the same requirements.
  • I expect developers who might use it will not be generating above $1m, so they won't care that it's not under MIT, Apache, GPL, etc.

Any suggested changes if I decide to do something like this? As an example, larger/lower star requirement? (I was concerned of excluding really high quality software that just hasn't received notice by other developers) I also like the idea of changing the maximum contribution to 1% per repository as I think it could become difficult for companies to exploit. (Though, I was concerned that companies acting in good faith would be encouraged to not support really good projects that badly need financial contributions) I also think same organization contributions seem bad to approve, but my opinion for allowing it is because developers are rating these repositories as highly appreciated. (They're contributing really high quality open source software) Is this a bad idea or seem too complicated?

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[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 5 points 6 months ago

Is this a bad idea or seem too complicated?

I think it's a great idea. Forcing commercial entities to contribute monetarily back to the opensource world? Awesome. If such a license existed, were legally applicable, and infectious like the GPL (as in code built on top of it should also be non-gratis opensource), I'd write all my code in it.

Of course you have to think of the loopholes e.g it shouldn't be possible to donate to something you own either directly or indirectly, that would defeat the purpose. I can't think of other stuff, but this is probably where a lawyer comes in.

Honestly, what you could do is:

  • set up a poll and share the link far and wide (here, mastodon, and if you use commercial services like reddit, insta, facebook, etc. then those too)
  • go to a lawyer
  • set up a patreon, liberapay, gofundme, or whatever with the purpose of getting this license written (I'd donate)
  • make a repo with the license and share progress (this is a perfect usecase for change tracking)

You could also contact the people at https://creativecommons.org/ . Maybe they could help you with finding a lawyer versed in this stuff. It's doubtful Free Software Foundation would help, but you can always take a shot.

Thanks for putting thought into this. I'm with you that commercial entities should pay for opensource if they use it. All of them.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[-] CapitalistSusScrofa@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I took a moment to think about my response.

If I continue, I would like to do something like the following

The group that this targets, software developers, I don't think we're difficult to contact. There's usually personal websites or email addresses associated with accounts. I think it could be possible to survey a large randomized sample, above 10,000 developers who have contributions to highly appreciated repositories.

There would have to be some cut off for who to select. I think I would like to focus on developers who are planning on licensing software, as in, they're already demonstrated they're writing licensed software. This is all to say, I don't want to haphazardly screen the general public opinion.

In this post, I noticed that those responding seemed to slightly skim over or misunderstand parts of it. This is partially a communication failure for me, but also seriously hinted to me that asking with text about licensing details seems like it could be a bad idea. I think like a video that first covers topics followed by a survey might be better, but I'm worried something like that will bias those that I ask.

Before all of this, before I talk to a lawyer, I want to think about all possible restrictions or options available. This is where I think comitting to a git repository would be a very good idea. Just making an attempt to determine everything that is relevant, because there are clear differences in how a license should work.

After that, I can consult to determine what is and isn't possible. And from there, I'm hopeful that it's possible to carefully survey and understand opinions on what more developers and companies would like to see in a license.

I don't want to accidentally create a license that becomes stuck and is extremely damaging. I want it to serve those that are using it in a way that makes them happy.

I'm still not 100% committed to this yet, but feel good about the responses here. I was worried the responses would be highly negative, as it's something that takes very unrestrictive software and tries to convince the authors to charge for it. I'll have to think about what I want to do some more.

[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 6 months ago

That's a good approach. Good luck :) I hope to see an update sometime.

Anti Commercial-AI license

this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
8 points (78.6% liked)

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