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Enforcing an OSS Licence with a Restriction
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| Arnold Shore 2006-03-20, 7:00 pm |
| Folks, I'm putting together an OSS product but haven't really selected the
licensing model. I'm planning to make it available only to
public/government emergency service organizations (police, fire, 9-1-1, EM),
and I'm wondering if I have any practical way of enforcing that
restriction, short of providing some sort of unlock key, or password, or ...
..
I'd like very much to hear what others have done to restrict usage, while
staying within the bounds of some license. Thanks, all.
AS
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| Michael B. Johnson 2006-03-21, 10:07 pm |
| On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 14:19:49 -0500, "Arnold Shore" <Nuthn@away.far> wrote:
>Folks, I'm putting together an OSS product but haven't really selected the
>licensing model. I'm planning to make it available only to
>public/government emergency service organizations (police, fire, 9-1-1, EM),
>and I'm wondering if I have any practical way of enforcing that
>restriction, short of providing some sort of unlock key, or password, or ...
If it's open source, you're going to be supplying the source code along with
your project. Any programmer, private sector or public, would be able to read
the source code and work around the restriction.
>I'd like very much to hear what others have done to restrict usage, while
>staying within the bounds of some license. Thanks, all.
You cannot keep anyone from using your source code if you release it under the
GPL 2.0+, you would need a custom license. For that, you probably want to
consult an attorney. Also, consider whether you want to restrict it to
government organizations in a given country, or open it to any country in the
world.
Why are you concerned about its usage, if it is an emergency service?
_______________________
Michael B. Johnson
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