The Commons Clause doesn't help the commons
I&#x27;m probably not thinking this through, but here goes anyway...<p>Ignoring the &quot;free software developers&quot; for the moment and only focusing on &quot;open source&quot; developers...<p>There are essentially two classes:<p>1. Those who truly believe in the spirit of 3-clause BSD license, plus the small number who believe in the spirit of the GPLv2.<p>2. Everyone else who &quot;chooses&quot; 3-clause BSD license because that&#x27;s the default open source license and they just want to spend their time dev&#x27;ing.<p>I&#x27;m guessing group #2 is <i>vastly</i> bigger than group #1.<p>So for group #2, why not <i>default</i> to AGPLv3 plus selling proprietary licenses to companies that want to use your software?<p>The companies&#x27; lawyers won&#x27;t let them touch the AGPL with a ten foot pole. If they want to use your software they will pay for a reasonably priced proprietary license.<p>For group #2, this is not that much different than defaulting to 3-clause BSD, <i>except</i> for the following:<p>* companies will <i>pay you money</i> before using your software<p>* there might have been some companies which would have downloaded and used your software under 3-clause BSD which will not use it under AGPL <i>nor</i> pay for the proprietary license. But those companies are the ones <i>least likely</i> to support you under the 3-clause BSD license anyway, either by donation or even giving back patches<p>So if the premise is, &quot;I just want to dev,&quot; choose AGPL. Then when <i>anyone</i> tries to bikeshed about the license kindly offer to sell them a reasonably priced proprietary license instead.<p>If they accept, eat. If not, keep dev&#x27;ing.<p>If it doesn&#x27;t work at all, you&#x27;ve <i>still</i> got an open source project available to the public under an open source license.