I think it would still count as a free and open source software license, and it would allow small and independent developers to use the software without worrying much about the license, while requiring big companies to release the source of the derivative work.
I think it would still count as a free and open source software license, and it would allow small and independent developers to use the software without worrying much about the license, while requiring big companies to release the source of the derivative work.
It would not count as free or open source
It goes against freedom 0, and criteria 5 and 6 of the open source definition
It's GPL plus an additional permission that noncommercial derivative works don't have to share the source code.
Anyway it's probably not actually a good idea.
As it always resolves to an open source license after a set amount of time + is always free in many other ways.
[a]: The LGPL allows proprietary usage, but only when the LGPL library is dynamically linked in. The reason being that if it’s a separate binary file (.so, .dll, etc.), the user can replace it with their own version. If you statically link it (embed it in the program binary), the full GPL kicks in (IIRC).
It felt like Qt was (relatively speaking) all over the place when they were owned by Nokia, but have been in a slow decline of mindshare for years. Of course, that's concurrent with the rise of Electron as the cross-platform app wunderkind.
Plus, from my friends who still do Qt, they're trying to turn it into an Electron-like platfom with Qt Quick and QML and the result isn't exactly the dependable platform that we used to know and love.
As long as as developers are willing to develop something 80% as good or a company open sources something that good, the one with the messy license will never get the same traction.
I agree it's your choice. I will say, however, that we need to band together as a community. This of course depends on your views on the future of OSS but if you want corporations to also participate and maybe have a chance at a completely open source future, we need to collectively insist on GPL. Doing otherwise minimizes the efforts of those who want more OSS participation from corporations.
They certainly could mandate that all new contributions are licensed as GPL2+, not the GPL2-only a lot of it is under. Then, after an eternity, when every bit is now GPL2+ (either by relicensing or rewriting), mandate all new commits are GPL3+. Then the only way to use it would be to rip out the GPL3+ parts (if you want GPL2 terms) or to use the GPL3.
Simple!
Except not really...
The theory I guess is that, even absent a contributor license agreement, contributors to the kernel are effectively contributing to a collective work and that the project as a whole could make changes even if individual contributors did not agree.
Edit: And this is somehow controversial! Do tell me more!
GPL your shit people.