What is this?
An experiement in software license terms
Motivation
I believe that the Open Source and Free Software movements have delivered a tremendous amount of value.
I believe that enabling authors to capture a portion of the value generated by the software they write is highly desirable as it contributes to the sustainability of the ecosystem.
Unfortunately, in many cases most of the value generated by F/OSS software is captured by large companies that very rarely bother to share any portion of their winnings with the many open source contributors whose work they rely on.
What if we stopped thinking of open source contributors as volunteers, and instead considered them as akin to Public Benefit Corporations: generating public goods and reasonably expected to capture some of the value of their work?
Goals
This license is intended to achieve the following goals:
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Public Benefit software should be easy to inspect, for obvious educational and security reasons.
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Public Benefit software should be easy to use within the Open Source and Free Software ecosystems.
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Public Benefit software should be easy for private actors to try, so they can assess whether or not they can in fact derive a benefit from it.
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Public Benefit should come with usage restrictions such that there is a strong incentive to share some of the value it generates with the authors
Non-goals
This is not intended to be an air-tight legal document. It should be sound enough that it's difficult to violate the spirit without also violating the letter, and simple enough that most software practitioners feel confident assessing whether a possible use is permitted or forbidden.
Broadly speaking, I believe it is desirable for the authors of Public Benefit software to get a fair compensation, which could be calculatedd in any number of ways: be it some hourly rate for the amount of time spent, or a percentage of the value created or saved by users of the software. However, the details of how this might be achieved are out of scope for this license.
FAQ
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Are you a lawyer? Nope
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Is this any good? It's an experiment. I'm putting this out to get feedback and start a discussion.
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What is the intended target? Reasonably complex software tools, that have the potential to generate large amounts of value, most likely through speed or efficiency improvements over available alternative.
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Any glaring limitations? As written, the license works best with a single copyright holder, which is fine for projects owned by a single individual or a corporation, but might make it challenging to accept external contributions.
Changelog
- 2024/12/11 : v0.1