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Can anyone explain why this would not work:

1. Modify the license for django to stipulate that companies using the software must display a highly visible 'powered by the free version of Django' badge on their website. 2. Allow that notice to be removed for x per year.

I get that it's a complex legal and accounting question and I must be missing something.




> 1. Modify the license for django to stipulate that companies using the software must display a highly visible 'powered by the free version of Django' badge on their website. 2. Allow that notice to be removed for x per year.

People would just stop using Django for new projects. That's a very silly requirement that would turn a lot of people away. That's basically a freemium model. Anyway if it's OSS I can just fork the project and do what I want with it. If I can't, it's not OSS.


Surely you can protect against a fork - other licenses do.


you however, cannot retroactively relicense already released into the wild code.

also such no-fork licenses are definitely not Open Source.


For one thing, you lose GPL compatibility.


this makes it lose the commonly agreed upon properties of "Open Source/Free Software", and even if you could get all the major contributors to agree to a license change, the insuing dramastorm would almost certainly lead to a fork.

(this was very similar to the cause of the xfree86 -> xorg fork)




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