no
choose a strike price. this is the maximum that anyone will ever need to pay you to use your software on 1 core for 1 year. add a header to your software stating the license and strike price, eg “this software is licensed under the terms of the PUPL, with a per-annum strike price of $100”. the strike price may also be specified in american dollars by appending it to the name, eg PUPL/100 implies a strike of $100. you should include a copy of license in your documentation and you should be prepared to meet the assurances, eg to publish full prices and issue licenses
the number after the slash is the strike price in american dollars, so it means the PUPL license with a strike price of $100 american. it’s an easy and succinct way to specify the strike price
no. please don’t refer to this license, or to software licensed under it, as either. it’s possible that with a strike price of zero it would be, but in this case it would be better to use an established FOSS license instead
no. when i get the general idea hashed out i may pay a lawyer to look at it. i guess my inspiration is the json license - it’s plain english (“The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil”) was good enough to get IBM to “negotiate”
i wrote a database engine and i’m hoping to use this license for it
i invested and continue to invest a fair amount of time and money in creating the database, in the hope of making money. for some products, open source can be a profitable path, eg by charging for support or hosting the software or as marketing for consulting services. however, for some useful products, these paths don’t seem to work well even though the software product is widely used. this license is an assurance that if my software is widely used, i’ll make some money
further, it enables me to develop the software to maximize usefulness, as opposed to maximize the need for support services or some other indirect path to profit
i don’t know that this license is the right one, but i feel there exists potential for a license in this space that balances creator profits with user freedom and would be mutually beneficial
this topic has been discussed at length in the FOSS literature so i won’t rehash it all here. but personally, i avoid software under such terms because of the danger of lockin and the lack of source code. in spite of these risks, i did purchase and use jetbrain’s Webstorm, and wasn’t happy when they changed their terms. part of my inspiration for this license was shaped by trying to prevent the sort of thing that happened with jetbrains
there are no limits on the use-license terms that the BSL requires. this hurts developer collaboration and allows the Licensor to take advantage of customer lockin
if you wish to hedge against price increases, you may wish to purchase a number of full price use-licenses, which you can then resell. either way, you and your customers are protected by the strike price
you can also contact the developer and negotiate other terms for your specific case
in general, the price may increase. however, a few rules exist to protect you if you scale
if you think that you’re likely to use the software long term, then you may want to pay full price. your investment in learning the software and building tools upon it is probably higher than the full price, and paying full price means your price won’t increase and hedges against future scale. it will also help pay for future development, which you may want to encourage
much like FOSS, 3rd parties can develop similar functionality as those future versions based on the current version and compete with the original. this competition should help limit the price increases to real value added in future versions
a full price use-license can be credited toward a later version. the greater of the price you paid and the current price of your version will be credited towards the full price for the new version
again, much like FOSS, 3rd parties can develop (and profit from) more efficient implementations and compete with the original software. this competition should result in efficient implementations
you can apply an existing use-license from the developer to your use-license requirements for a derivative work if any of the following are true:
note: 3rd party can charge for their version
in 2016 you pay $10 each for full price per-annum use-licenses. in 2018, that price increases to $50 and a new version is released with a full price of $80. you upgrade to the new version and pay $40 each - $10 for your lock-in price, plus $30 for the difference between the old and new version
in 2016 the (sale/full/lifetime/strike) prices are $0/$10/$100/$100 and you pay $10 each for 100 cores, locking in that price. in 2017 you pay $1000 to renew those licenses. in 2018 your company grows and you need 200 cores, but the prices have increased to $50/$50/$200/$100. you’ve had no lapses, so you’re able to purchase the additional cores at $10 (your lock-in price) per-annum. if you’d used the sale price (paying $0 in 2016 and 2017), you’d have to pay $50 per core in 2018
note: this is an extreme example and i don’t expect to increase prices this quickly
initially, the ecosystem for this software is limited and early adopters are taking risk. the non-fixed price allows me to offer the software at a price that reflects the current utility and risk without limiting my ability to charge a higher price (more reflective of the total investment and true utility) later as the utility increases and the risk decreases. it also rewards early adopters
it’s an arbitrary line, but:
there’s no perfect answer on where to draw the line, but this is a decent compromise
The central idea is that the software is used for the sake of the data that it produces, manipulates or stores. examples include a web server accessed on the internet, an internal app employees use to record timesheets, and a GUI that helps visualize data from a database
some examples of non-production uses:
note: this refers to flaws in the license, not flaws in software that has been licensed with it
what are the goals of this license ?
copyright nqzero 2016