> Can we create a license which allows source distribution and collaboration openly and is free to use for individuals and non-profits but companies have to pay if they use it for commercial purpose.

These kinds of licenses have existed for a long time. They're not open source, though.

Could you post some references I could read? I am quite interested why they didn't work.

As far as I see, popular licenses are: 1. Commercial source 2. Open source - copy left eg. GPL 3. Open source - liberal, do whatever you like eg. MIT

which are just handful, when software is eating the world ;)

QT famously had a dual, "non-commercial" and "commercial" licenses, before they switched to LGPL.

From wikipedia / web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20031005175911/http://www.trollt...

Highcharts.js has a free-for-noncommercial, paid-otherwise license system

https://shop.highsoft.com/highcharts

(Not affiliated, but using highcharts for a project @ a non-profit)

gSOAP has a separate commercial use license. They use a mix of GPLv2 plus a separate license for companies that want to avoid having to relicense their own products under the GPL (as a consequence of the viral nature of GPL vs something like LGPL).

You mean like the GPL?

You don't pay anything to use GPL licensed software. So that's the difference.

Right - usually, you have a GPL for normal users and "call us" for commercial use.

I thought that was pretty standard.

You can't restrict GPL to non-commercial users.

As long as you're willing to relicense your proprietary code as GPL