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handoflixuetoday at 3:40 AM1 replyview on HN

It seems like CC-BY-NC (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) works perfectly for this: Anyone is allowed to use it, but they have to credit you, and they can't use it for commercial purposes.

You're still free to license it out commercially on other terms, the open-source community gets to make use of it as they please, and it ensures you're credited.


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kleztoday at 10:31 AM

> the open-source community gets to make use of it as they please

Uhm... I wouldn't be so sure. Looks to me like such a license carries transitively to projects that depend on your software.

Suppose you're distributing a library on such terms. Then an open source project uses your library. Such a project can't then be used in a commercial fashion unless whoever distributes it gets a commercial license from the library's copyright owner. Now suppose the project uses multiple libraries with such terms. That's a burden.

Then again this may be a feature, not a bug, of the model you're proposing.

I suppose that it wouldn't work in practice, though. The AGPL license (and libraries with a GPL license instead of a LGPL one) aren't really widespread, probably because of the virality clause.