• qaz@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    What about a license that would require every company with a market cap above 25 B that (indirectly) uses the software to contribute X amount (like $1000 a year) of revenue back?

    • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I think if that caught on then companies would call it undue burden to sift through all the dependencies they use to make such small payments.

      It is a difficult problem. But on the face of it your suggestion seems very reasonable.

      • qaz@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        GitHub has a tool built-in to show all dependencies, it’s not that hard to write a little script to check the LICENSE files in the repositories. I’m sure one of the biggest companies in the world has the ability to do that.

      • Lmaydev@programming.dev
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        9 months ago

        If dual licensing was standard the software that uses things like xz would pay down the line so everything was funded.

    • Astongt615@lemmy.one
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      9 months ago

      I mean this is already a thing to certain degrees right? Virtualization platforms I use both are free for personal use, but not business use, or at least certain feature package use isn’t permitted. What’s the difference? Putting the software under a different license/eula?

      • qaz@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Yes, but the proposed license would also be free for businesses except for the largest in the world.

        • Astongt615@lemmy.one
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          9 months ago

          Why limit it? If you’re actively making money, or you are a licensed business attempting to do so, people actively helping you build business deserve to be compensated. If a developer just happened to live in your area and said “I could make your business better by making this thing for you,” would they be worth hiring? What’s the saying, socialize the resources, privatize the profits? Size << Intent