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Comment on Ask HN: Software licensing excluding military use?parent

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The open source license doesn't have to discriminate if the author has 2 licenses from the start.

1) License one grants all open source rights to individual use.

2) Government and state-level entities require a commercial license to use it.

Just don't mention the military.

When the government requests a license, ask what it is ifor. If it's for hospitals or charity, give the license.

If it's for one more war waged for bankers, then tell them the license is 2 billion dollars.

1) License one grants all open source rights to individual use.
2) Government and state-level entities require a commercial license to use it.

"all open source rights" implies freedom 0: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose".

Does OP require the license to be OSI approved?

Why can't he have his own license like Qt has? They have free version for individuals and paid version for commercial use.

Why can't he have his own license like Qt has? They have free version for individuals and paid version for commercial use.

The free version of Qt can also be used for commercial purposes - otherwise this would violate freedom 0. The paid version is for people who prefer different license terms instead of the imposed open source terms.

He could make a non-free (i.e., violating the four free software freedoms), non-OSI approved open source licence that does this, but it wouldn't be as permissive as you would probably want it to be, and it wouldn't be compatible with licences that are.

IANAL, but I guess license one would still not be free software, and might still be incompatible with, say, the GPLv3. So you might still prevent non-military individuals from using your code.

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