New license request: GMS-GA [SPDX-Online-Tools]

[fthobe]

1. License Name: GMS General Source Code Availability License
2. Short identifier: GMS-GA
3. License Author or steward: GMS
4. Comments: While the license is new and therefore has not found wide adoption yet, we encountered following problem compelling us to create a new license:
The current license landscape does not provide lightweight license for unrestricted usage by end users but restriction on distribution by software as a service providers such as cloud hosting services. For this purpose the BSD license has been extended containing additional conditions.

Where it differs from existing 4 Clause BSD Licenses:
While this license provides general availability of source code and no restrictions in usage for personal and commercial use by end users, it restricts the commercial viability of the source code for resellers of the source code (for example offering the source code as a, service offering in cloud), also as combiled binary in any form (such as HTML representations).

The current license options with such restrictions are either very long (eg Affero License) or proprietary (such as the redis license, https://redis.io/legal/licenses/).

We are trying to solve these issues by providing a license that:

• is (non-legal) human readable
• is easy to understand
• allows unrestricted end user ownership of the code
• prohibits redistribution as paid service without added value
• allows modifications

OSI approval given the restrictions was neither desired nor possible as OSI does not allow posing such restrictions.

The license itself comes inside a github repository with:

• Full explanation (https://github.com/gms-electronics/GMS-License/);
• A matrix to understand better what can or can't be done with it;
• A full markdown template;
• A full XML representation.

While we are aware that this license stretches the admissibility standards, we hope you can get on board with us given that exclusions became more prevalent over the past years and a more digestable license

To my current knowledge such as license does currently not exist.
I would therefor kindly ask for inclusion or a feedback if shapewise modifications are requested.

5. License Request Url: http://tools.spdx.org/app/license_requests/425
6. URL(s): https://github.com/gms-electronics/GMS-License
7. OSI Status: Not Submitted
8. Example Projects: https://gms.green/

[fthobe]

@jlovejoy any chance a short and distinct source-available license can pass? I feel there’s a lack of that. Affero is terribly long and we are sponsoring multiple open source projects which we would like to fork with our branding into separate repositories for customisations that are destined only for end users and not vendors. We felt a license that reflects that in reflects that in short and more and comprensibile language was better than what’s on the market right now.

We tried to find something that comes close in spirit to Affero without being 20 pages long.

[karsten-klein]

{metæffekt} Universe
canonical name: GMS Source Available License
short name: GMS-Source-Available
markers: Display Obligation Marker, Do Not Promote Marker, Extended Source Obligation Marker, General Terms Matches Marker
category: The GMS Source Available
OSI status: none

Comment
No comment; just opinions.