Open Source licenses are flawed. There, I've said it. I didn't say "Open Source" is flawed; I just said the licenses are flawed. There's a difference. Open Source, as a concept, came from a bunch of programmers (mostly in academia) who thought software should be open and shared. I don't have a problem with that. But who wrote the licenses? The licenses were written by people who didn't have to worry about putting bread on the table or paying for college. I don't think they ever even considered that people might want to write software, open source it, and somehow still not starve. Most people seemed to have given up on trying to make money from Open Source software development. But I don't think it has to be that way. In fact, if open source is to continue its growth, a better economic model (and licensing model) is needed.

I posted an email to a mailing list hosted by the Open Source Initiative intended for discussing licenses, with an idea for a semi-commercial license that preserved the important aspects of the open source spirit. It appears that my initial proposal goes against the Open Source Definition. But having read the Definition carefully, I don't see how a license which requires users that deploy modified versions of the software to either make modifications public, or pay a license fee, would violate the Definition.

It's rather simple. It's a lot like the GPL, except you must make your modifications public if you deploy the software. With web-based apps like IlohaMail, deployment is analogous to distributing binaries for desktop software, so in spirit, there's not much difference. But it has an optional BSD-like provision, because if for some reason you don't want to publicize the changes you made, you have that option too, if you pay a fee.

Although the license wouldn't specifically say so, it would mostly affect commercial entities. After all, who else would be secretive enough to not want to publicize proprietary changes they've made (and be willing to pay for that as well)? For anyone else, it's just a matter to sending an email to a mailing list saying "I've made these changes", or simply posting the entire modified source on their site. And for the vast majority of users (commercial or private) who don't make modifications, it'll be life as usual.