With some external guidance, I have come to this perspective: Any license that is not already in wide use is unhelpful to us. Prefer a license that has been subject to litigation so there exists judicial interpretation of part of it.
Almost all licenses meeting this criteria that are freely available are inappropriate. Most either favor the non-commercial user by restricting some commercial flexibility or push commercial rights by pulling ease of relationships with non-commercial users. The most satisfactory approach uses creative commons' Attribution-NonCommercaial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) and the creative commons' license's notice mechanism to further clarify what "non-commercial" means. And to use "With the exception of" to ameliorate potential conflict with OpenSource licensed code. And to make explicit that other uses require prior written agreement, at the place where the license is marked. There is sound reason here. And, it is contrary to Creative Commons' recommendation: Creative Commons does not recommend its licenses [for] computer software ... Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses .. available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative. .. CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights ... Additionally, our licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. Why does this make sense? The reasons that drive the recommendation to avoid using CC licenses with software are all based upon the presumption of furthering unfettered use of the software -- avoiding impediments to its utilization. For example, "not addressing patent rights" means that there is no assignment of patent rights. In the situation at hand, while that is desired for non-commercial users, it is not the central intent. Given no better alternatives, this one becomes the preferred choice. Note It would be good to obviate potential conflict in "integrating with other free software" for non-commercial use. The difficulty is that kind of dual-use license would open up a gray area for another party using the work of a non-commercial user. On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 7:15:13 PM UTC-5, Jeffrey Sarnoff wrote: > > So there is no misunderstanding -- I deleted the prior post. > I will relate whatever the lawyer I ask has to say about this. > > On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 7:11:36 PM UTC-5, Jeffrey Sarnoff wrote: >> >> Well, maybe maybe not -- irrelevant, though. I was not advocating its >> use, just relating something. >> As I said, this is a legal question. I am going to ask an intellectual >> property lawyer. >> >> On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 7:04:06 PM UTC-5, Steven G. Johnson wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 6:17:14 PM UTC-5, Jeffrey Sarnoff wrote: >>>> >>>> The question is a legal question. This is* not* legal advice. >>>> >>>> I have not done this with any Julia code. I did do something similar >>>> some years ago with other source code. >>>> Understanding that permission may be contingent on an agreement to pay >>>> money, the gist of it was: >>>> >>>> LICENCE: >>>> For strictly non-commercial use, including education and research, the >>>> MIT licence applies. >>>> >>> >>> This is incoherent — the MIT license does not limit licensees to >>> non-commercial use. Effecitively, you are trying to use MIT license + an >>> additional restriction (or minus some permissions), but written in a very >>> confusing way. You are basically saying: "you can do anything with this >>> code [MIT license], except that you can't." >>> >>> The general advice from most sources is: don't write your own license; >>> the odds are high that you will mess up and say something whose effects are >>> not what you intend. >>> >>
