Re: Is there a free license which prohibits commercial derived works?
Thank you all for your patience with my poor choice of words...
Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit Peter S Galbraith
>
> > Okay, let me rephrase. Commercial use of the software is allowed
> > by scilab, but they want to limit the ability of making derived
> > commercial works.
>
> > http://www.debian.org/intro/free says:
>
> > : - Not allowing use of their code in commercial software.
>
> I think you misunderstand the distinction between "commercial
> software" and "commercial use". The thing spoken about on the
> web page is software which you have to buy and pay for before
> you can use it. That is completely different from the commercial
> use in DFSG which is the use of the software by a business.
I agree that it's completely different. What I meant is that
scilab may have taken us at our word about the ability for
software to be free and still not allow use of the code in
commercial software. In fact, we probably meant `proprietary' or
`closed sourced' instead of `commercial'. So now I have to
explain to them how their license is non-free even though it's
goal was acknowledged in http://www.debian.org/intro/free
Other have since agreed it's poor wording in
http://www.debian.org/intro/free so I'll file a bug report about it.
> > : Since
> > : they are releasing the code for others to use without any
> > : profit to themselves, they don't want someone else to be
> > : able to come along and make commercial software out of it.
>
> > Is there a license which meets this goal?
>
> Yes. It is the main point about the GPL to do this.
Only tangentially. I was asking if there was a free license that
specifically disallowed it. The GPL doesn't (it allows it but
makes it moot). I didn't think there was such a license, I was
only checking. I'm sure scilab authors would be happier with a
DFSG-compliant license that did disallow it.
Thanks,
Peter
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