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What open source license to use to preserve commercial rights for yourself

I am starting an open source project. I want to allow the following: Free for non-commercial use, bunkers and source mods, for example, with the GPL, but I would like to keep the commercial rights for myself and provide another license for commercial use for customers who prefer this option.

The number of licensing options seems a bit overwhelming. So my question is:

  • Which open source license should I use?
  • What commercial license should I use if there is a standard license available? Or should I come up with my own here?
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2 answers

No double licensing issues. The GPL is great for the non-profit option and is widespread.

With commercial I do not know any standard. I would recommend you write one that really suits your needs.

Here's the Hanselminutes Podcast: Open Source Software Licensing with Jonathan Zuck of ACT Online . Towards the end, they talk about double licensing the MySQL database.

There is also a podcast transcript in PDF format , look at the end of the first column on page 7.

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No open source license (as defined by the Open Source Initiative) will prohibit commercial use of the software. You can use the GPL version to prohibit the use of your software; companies can still use it domestically or distribute it for their own purposes, but they cannot pack it and sell it like regular shrink software. Do not use a license such as Boost or BSD, as they allow unlimited commercial use without any restrictions.

You have to decide which commercial use you want to allow, and this will greatly depend on the software and what people want to use for it.

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