Feedback on open source royalty license?

I’m about to release a library, and do not want to use a normal free license like the MIT, Apache, or the GPL. I want to keep the license simple and easy to understand. It also would be considered a non-free license, as it requires a royalty payment. Though, the royalty would not be directly to this library, but open source repositories in general. This is what I had considered so far.

  • 5% of generated income (per profit generating product) paid as royalty yearly to “approved open source repositories” if income is above $1,000,000/year. It’s free if income is below that amount. The goal is to be similar to Unreal’s license.
  • All repostiories on GitHub.com that meet these requirements are “approved open source repositories”
    • They have more than or equal to 1000 stars
      • I’m aware that stars can be purchased, but this is against GitHub’s TOS and the case for fraud is more obvious. Intentionally purchasing stars with the intent of not paying royalty is similar to just not paying the royalty
    • The royalty must be paid between at least 10 repositories, with no more than 10% to a single repository
      • I might provide some lists with easy methods for averaged mass payments to like 100s or 1000s of repositories, but if they want to use discretion, it’s allowed. They are just prevented from contributing everything to 1 repository.
    • They cannot be the same repository or project that is paying a royalty, but the same organization is approved as long the individual repository meets the requirements
      • The intent is to partially reward companies with many highly starred open source contributions, but their use level is on their own PR. I also dislike the idea of verifying and tracking identities of different library authors, as I like to create repositories without them being associated with my name. Though, I do think that it makes sense for stars. (The developers providing stars would technically be voting on who should be elgible for financial contributions)
  • After 5 years, the license transitions automatically into MIT or public domain for the version used. Though, new versions could still be under the same license.
  • License is automatically compatible with licenses that use the same wording.
    • No extra royalty if another dependency also uses this license
    • If the other license raises or lowers the royalty rate, it’s still compatible, with the royalty rate being the higher of the two.
    • It’s also compatible if the amount of repositories is raised above 10 by limiting percentages more.
    • And, also compatible if the star threshold is raised.
  • If GitHub removes stars, the existing approved repositories at the time of removal will persist as royalty options, but no new options will be automatically defined. (As the copyright holder, I still maintain the right to increase approved repostiories at anytime by issuing under a new license)
  • No liability. The liability is still similar to MIT, Apache, GPL, etc.
  • Royalty is paid by taxable year, follows tax season for US.
    • Chosen repositories by the payer must be listed on the license
      • Inclusion must link GitHub URL, payment amount, year
    • The license must be distributed in the same location as all other distributed licenses in their application
  • Just like the MIT or Apache license, the license cannot be revoked unless the licensed company decides to break the law, sue the license issuer, etc. No expectation of support, etc.
  • The source can be modified. Usage of it does not need to stay open source.
  • (Maybe, if possible) - Provide GitHub the ability to sue companies in noncompliance for a 10% reward of the settlement after lawyer fees.
  • (Maybe) - Include Codeberg too. Though, I’m concerned other developers will be less likely to use a license of this type if they don’t recognize the organization.

The motivation is just that I believe it’s possible for a license like this to work. Tech companies frequently use a similar income model for their products and do not have issues paying Apple their 30% tax. There’s often a expectation that companies contribute back to open source repositories, so I view 5% as an easy amount to meet. (Companies should already be contributing back at a level to where this license is viewed as free) Though, I don’t expect any large company to move fast on a license of this type.

I’ve considered a license like this in the past, but thought about it again when Microsoft requested support for FFmpeg when their engineer hadn’t read documentation. When requesting a support contract, Microsoft offered $2000. This was viewed as insulting to the FFmpeg developers as Microsoft generates billions of dollars in income every year while using their software in their products.

Large companies, like Microsoft and Google, pay Apple 30% to list their products. (30% of a billion is 300 million, 150,000x more than $2k) I don’t think spending the money is the issue, they just frequently refuse until they are without options.

I haven’t consulted a lawyer for it. I’m just interested in understanding how it is perceived. I also am willing to consider significant changes, but I haven’t had better ideas for creating a license for funding open source.

As for my library

  • It’s unimportant, in a niche, and blockchain related
  • I wrote it for personal use
  • It won’t bother me if the license just completely fails or is impossible to enforce. (Though, Unreal Engine uses a 5% royalty license that seems successful)
  • It also won’t be elgible for part of the royalty until it meets the same requirements.
  • I expect developers who might use it will not be generating above $1m, so they won’t care that it’s not under MIT, Apache, GPL, etc.

Any suggested changes if I decide to do something like this? As an example, larger/lower star requirement? (I was concerned of excluding really high quality software that just hasn’t received notice by other developers) I also like the idea of changing the maximum contribution to 1% per repository as I think it could become difficult for companies to exploit. (Though, I was concerned that companies acting in good faith would be encouraged to not support really good projects that badly need financial contributions) I also think same organization contributions seem bad to approve, but my opinion for allowing it is because developers are rating these repositories as highly appreciated. (They’re contributing really high quality open source software) Is this a bad idea or seem too complicated?

  • CapitalistSusScrofa@lemmynsfw.comOP
    1·
    7 months ago

    All of my projects are on Sourcehut. So all of my projects are automatically excluded from your narrow definition of “open source projects” worth supporting. So are all projects on gitlab, or… anything but github. Your license sounds more like a mechanism for promoting a monoculture and incentivizing developers to host on github.

    I don’t disagree. I don’t really know how to fix the problem in what has been considered without an extra organization that does some form of identity verification and then collects votes on open source from anywhere on the internet.

    The only reason GitHub was selected was because it’s easily recognized and the metric is understood

    Say my library uses a library that uses your library. Is your license more infectius, like the GPL, or parasitic? Do all projects using your library have adopt your license, or include it?

    Anything that depends on it would be including it in something else later. I was considering anything that used it that made income had to pay 5% royalty. A library that uses a library that uses a library with it would had to pay 5% on income made with the final library. Though, I don’t necessarily have an opinion on requirements of the license of the final library. I also wasn’t considering open source restrictions like the GPL.

    • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
      1·
      7 months ago

      I don’t really know how to fix the problem

      This would be something that would be a deciding factor for me. I don’t have a solution, either, but it would need to be addressed before I’d consider something like this.

      A library that uses a library that uses a library with it would had to pay 5% on income made with the final library.

      But my library is MIT, and free. Can I use a library that uses a library that uses your license? Either your license considers itself incompatible with the other licenses, meaning it’s virulent like the GPL: my library must use your license, because it uses some library that uses your license; or there’s a clause that says it must be included with incompatibly licensed software, in which case it’s parasitic: someone could still clone my library, replace the dependency that uses your license with some other library that doesn’t - remove the parasite, so to speak. In the latter case, I could still BSD-3 Clause or MIT my library, with a big ol’ warning in the README about your license and the implications.

      • CapitalistSusScrofa@lemmynsfw.comOP
        1·
        7 months ago

        or there’s a clause that says it must be included with incompatibly licensed software, in which case it’s parasitic: someone could still clone my library, replace the dependency that uses your license with some other library that doesn’t - remove the parasite, so to speak. In the latter case, I could still BSD-3 Clause or MIT my library, with a big ol’ warning in the README about your license and the implications.

        A clause for being included with incompatibly licensed software would likely be my preference given the other doesn’t have more support. My first impression is that having people use it is more important. A goal of the license being to make it overwhelming to escape because it is everywhere.

        • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
          2·
          7 months ago

          This is the GPL philosophy, and it’s why people call it viral (and also why many people don’t like it). But there’s precident in the GPL, so if that’s what you’re looking for, the GPL might make a good model for your wording.