License question

[ocdtrekkie]

I almost hate to ask this, but:

• Your readme states that this project is only for noncommercial use without permission, which is not open source.
• Your NuGet manifest says the project is licensed with Apache 2.0, which would not prevent commercial use.

In my case, I have a piece of software that is currently solely for me to use noncommercially, but is open source. I guess I don't technically run afoul of an issue either way, but I'm not sure I want to include dependencies which are ambiguously licensed.

Would you be willing to clarify which license this (and I think ObjectDumper was similar) is under?

[thomasgalliker]

You're totally fine, @ocdtrekkie. I just ask people who use this software commercially to contact me so we can find an individual solution. Mostly, I'm just interested in what kind of software it is and what company is behind (just out of curiosity)... but that's very individual.

I see that this is a very confusing topic - and I'm sorry to contribute my part to the confusion. I'll talk to a licensing specialist soon to clarify the situation. My goal is to have these nugets widespread for non-commercial projects like yours. But I also see no reason to giveaway thousands of developer hours to commercial companies for free :-)

[thomasgalliker]

If you - or anyone - should have an inquiry for commercial use, I'm always open to connect and talk via https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasgalliker/

[ocdtrekkie]

Hmm... it would be really hard to do an actual open source license and also prevent commercial use. Maybe something like the Business Source License might be appealing to you? It basically says a project is proprietary (with whatever usage restrictions you like, such as noncommercial, limited amount of usage, etc.) but after a set number of years after a release, it becomes GPL-licensed open source. (MariaDB, the creator of the BSL, uses a four year timer for this.)

Essentially it would make everything open source... eventually, but any new fixes or features would be unavailable to commercial users unless they had an arrangement with you.

Consulting with a specialist may be a good idea, just throwing my thoughts over the wall. I'm not sure, but I think having the Apache 2 license linked in the NuGet metadata might effectively be permitting commercial use of your libraries where applicable.