Do we need new open-source licences for Windows?

[bilu]

As background for my post, read this thread:

People ripping people (2nd Round): DVDx versus DVDBackup
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47777

There are already many excellent open-source Multimedia and Office applications for Windows that frequently surpass in quality their closed-source equivalents, and there is demand for such applications.

This has brought many frauds, closing other's sources and selling is easy, and hard to detect - there are so many of this frauds around now.


I was looking here for license models

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

but haven't found the perfect one, maybe I didn't search well.


My concept is this: source should be freely available to subscribers with a Non-Disclosure Agreement forbidding any form of source distribuition to non-subscribers.

User and password to secure CVS would be sent by some way that would assure of subscriber's data. Hopefully a free method, requiring subscribers to pay for the access could make them quit.


Hosting and data verification would be done by some sort of SourceForge for this software category.


Maybe this could help tracking code leaks that could be used on this sort of frauds. :sly:


Opinions? Is it doable?


Bilu

[DaveEL]

Goes against the point of free software that EVERYONE should be free to do what they want with the program as long as they let others do the same. Of course if you don't want OS/FS then its doable but how do you stop people buying 1 license and selling hundreds they still make money out of someone elses hard work. Assuming the GPL holds up in court breaking this NDA will be no more illegal then whats going on with current OS software.

DaveEL

[bilu]

That's why I think the BSD license is more reallistic :)

Focus should be in improving open source and open standards, no one can really enforce anything in open-source.

But if someone steals (closes, improves, doesn't give back) it shouldn't be able to do nothing more than value added. Shouldn't be able to create a development dependency - the open community must be able to surpass it by doing superior improvements.

That why I think patents are more important than licenses in open-source: you can't afford to sue someone for stealing source, but it shouldn't be possible for someone to sue you for using standards or APIs, or generic concepts.

UNIX sounds like a standard to me :)


Bilu