Port restrictions: Redistribution for profit is not permitted.
Chuck Swiger
cswiger at mac.com
Sun Feb 8 13:37:30 PST 2004
Constantine wrote:
> As a university student, I am considering to be a FreeBSD maintainer of
> some programming language developed by my professor. He has certain
> restrictions on his work --- "Redistribution for profit is not
> permitted." --- he does not want anyone to be able to change a few lines
> in his code and sale it for profit. :-)
[ ... ]
> Is there any way to keep the original licence ("Redistribution for
> profit is not permitted."), but still include the software on the discs
> and ftp? Otherwise, there is really no reason to create this port...
Hello--
You and your professor might want to review the following license, and see
whether it suits your needs:
http://www.pkix.net/~chuck/Licenses/NRL.html [ ...or: ]
http://www.pkix.net/~chuck/Licenses/ENRL.html
This is BSD-derived, but not an OSI-approved Open Source license[1]. However,
this license explicitly permits FreeBSD, Linux et al, and CD vendors to
redistribute your software as a precompiled package.
--
-Chuck
[1]: Your requirement to restrict "for profit" redistribution is in opposition
to OSD #1. Without taking some care, such a restriction also prevents vendors
of "free" software and CD redistributors from redistributing your software.
Anyway, the approximate upshot of using the NRL or something similar is that:
a) you won't have to set RESTRICTED in the port or a Linux RPM,
b) people won't be able to resell your software without permission,
c) ...which means that some people may not use the software at all,
d) you won't be able to host such software on SourceForge or its ilk.
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