Big Time Public License
I like Mr Mitchell, and I am glad that he is <i>attempting</i> to do something that so many people shy away from for obvious reasons. As a developer of a fairly popular open-source tool (Aether), I have an interest in following the software licensing discussion in detail, though I am not a lawyer.<p>My general impression is, if you excuse my flippance, this license has holes so big I could drive the fully unfurled James Webb telescope through it. I don&#x27;t mean to be dismissive, so here&#x27;s an example:<p>&gt; `... indefinitely, if the licensor or their legal successor does not offer a <i>fair</i> commercial license for the software within 32 days of written request&#x27;<p>This is the escape hatch condition inserted for the safety of big companies that stop qualifying for the small-business section of the license. Except ... what is fair? More importantly, are you willing to spend six years in court arguing what &#x27;fair&#x27; means? Because that is how you end up arguing what is fair in court for six years.<p>To be fair (ha), the license tries to firm up the term somewhat  by defining the term later on as:<p>&gt; A fair price is a fair market price for a fair commercial license. If the licensor advertises a price or price structure for generally available fair commercial licenses, and more than one customer not affiliated with the licensor has paid that price in the past year, that is fair.<p>Great, but what happens if the software has not been purchased before? How is <i>&#x27;more than one customer not affiliated with the licensor&#x27;</i> going to be resolved? What does &#x27;affiliated&#x27; mean and how broad we are talking about here? Unknown, until there is a software product that uses this license, gets very popular, and <i>then</i> we get to see the answers in court, through the poor developer dragged through hell.