OT: non-commercial open source license?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 12:11:20PM -0500, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Christopher is absolutely correct. By both the GNU definition of free 
> software and the OSI definition of open source, you may not restrict the 
> "type" of use (ie, non-commercial, education only, etc.).
> 
> This is indeed the fate of Minix, the pet project of an operating 
> systems professor where Linus went to school.

Are you sure?  I thought Linus did his school stuff in Finland, and Andy
Tanenbaum is I believe from the Netherlands.  Minix was available for
educational use with a book that was quite well known at the time.

> It wasn't until April 2000 that Minix (whose history dates back to the 
> 60s) removed the "educational use only" restriction, but by that time 
> Linux was well established. Arguably had Andrew Tannenbaum not had that 
> restriction, and allowed Linus to build on the what existed rather than 
> re-invent a Unix-like OS under the GPL, things might be quite different 
> today.

Minix was released in 1987.  Hardly the 60s.  Given it runs on x86
systems, the 60s would have been difficult.  Not sure how old the
microkernel idea is, but that's as far back as it's history goes.  Being
a unix like system certainly also limits it's history to the 70s.

> Instead of being known as one of the co-creators of one of the world's 
> most popular operating systems or at least remembered for all the system 
> software research he did, Tannenbaum will likely be most remembered for 
> his 1992 "Linux is obsolete" flamewar provocation in the Minix Usenet 
> newsgroup.

People that know anything about computers know him for a lot more than
that.  He has written some very good books on operating systems and
other computer system topics.

> Well, there are some subtle exceptions. The Mozilla license is open 
> source, yet retained extra rights to its creators. As the original 
> author you can't control the use of the code you release, however you CAN:
> 
> - Prevent others from distributing proprietary modifications (ie, the GPL)
> - Reserve for yourself the right to make proprietary modifications (ie, MPL)
> 
> While being open source does not prohibit others from reselling the 
> software, using the GPL prevents anyone from selling a closed 
> enhancement. And it's hard to charge a lot of money for something when 
> your neighbour can freely download and copy the SAME thing.

Well there certainly are companies that take GPL code and modify it and
sell the result without giving source code to the customer.  Certainly
violates the license.  They can be sued of course, but someone with the
rights to do so has to do so, and be able to afford to do it.

Len Sorensen
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