The Problem

What's the point of another software license? Don't we have enough already. Though there are numerous licenses to choose from, they generally fall in one of two camps. Proprietary or Free. Some typical characteristics of a proprietary license are:

1. Closed source.
2. Can't be modified. This kind of goes along with the first point.
3. Redistribution is prohibited for the copyright term (essentially for life).

And Free software licenses:

1. Open source.
2. Can be modified.
3. Redistribution is granted.

Consider points one and two. With proprietary software, the user is unable to make changes to the code including bug fixes and enhancements. If the software distributor were to cease support for whatever reason (gone out of business, etc.), the software cannot be maintained by its "owner" or any third party. The third party bit is VERY important in an economic light. If the source were open and modifiable, a competitive market could exist to service the software, but as it stands now, there is a monopoly on service while the distributor exists and agrees to provide service and no opportunity for service otherwise.

The redistribution limitation of proprietary software, though arguably necessary to provide incentive, has a few negative effects. One effect is that it can discourage further creativity and improvement. With copyright terms being over a lifetime, the author or distributor can continue to charge for the work and thus has a reduced incentive to improve the work or create a new work. Another effect is the death of the software. In the event that some valuable software is taken off the market, it may disappear forever, even if it could be of value in the software ecosystem.

Redistribution is a double edged sword. Free software allows redistribution from the start. This has some wonderful advantages and can work well as seen with Linux, BSD, Apache, Python and thousands of great Free software, but it does not work well in some areas. One obvious shortfall is that it becomes impossible to profit from selling copies of the software. It's for this reason that many areas are unserved or underserved by Free software. Examples include:

• games
• educational software (A.D.A.M.)
• financial/accounting software (QuickBooks)

A Solution - The Term License

What I'd like to do is combine the freedoms of a Free license with the economic incentive of a proprietary license. The license I propose is similar to a BSD license except for a time limited redistribution clause. So it's both open source and modifiable. After that time limit has expired (say 7 years), the user may redistribute the software. This addresses all of the problems I outlined above.

But there's more. Once the original time limit has expired, the code may be forked by a third party and that fork may contain a term license of the same duration as the original. So what we have now is that the code originally released is still Free AND a third party is financially motivated to fork and improve that code further.