My I (hopefully humbly) suggest that what MAA (and others like him as the same request for an "open source" license that allows collecting royalties appears regularly and not infrequently) is looking for is a "sligtly" different model. For lack of a better term let me call it the "open royalties" model. (Perhaps someone like Eric Raymond has aldready supplied a better name for this model, as I haven't read his works in a while, in which case using the established term would be prefered to my off-the-cuff term--please inform me.)
It is a model that preserves some of the attributes of open source (most particularly the ability of recipients to receive sources for such software at their whim, modify it, and redistribute it). It has one important and significant difference, of course, the requirement that certain use of the software, whether received from the original author or through an intermediary, still accrue royalties to the original author(s). That difference, of course, is a wide chasm is some peoples eyes and a narrow one in others (hence "slightly" in quotes). And, while I don't think this is the forum to discuss such a model, as it potentially steals adherents from the open source and free software models, I hope it is not an error on my part to point out the obvious (and I believe well-know to some) fact that this is what they are looking for and that it is NOT OPEN SOURCE NOR FREE SOFTWARE. If such licensors formed their own coalition, such questions posted to this list could be redirected to that coalition. Whether members of this list would want to do such redirection, I don't know--perhaps such coalition already exists and being only exposed to this list I'm not aware of it. -Chris Clark -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
