What the world needs now is NOT another open source license. I'd rather never touch another line of software again that had a custom license.<p>All that does it make it difficult to interoperate with other packages, and Make it difficult to build my project, because I need to worry about 15 types of overlap.<p>It's 5AM and I haven't slept yet but here's the 3 second version of how licenses work-<p>GPL- You post your code. If I release changes, I need to post my code too.<p>aGPL- Same as GPL, but applies to web services.<p>LGPL- You post your code. If I change YOUR CODE, I need to release THOSE changes, but not my whole app.<p>MPL- Like the LGPL, but incompatible. Adds a line saying that people who use your code need to license the Patents, not just the code. The FSF says this is implied in the LGPL, but MPL makes it explicit.<p>BSD/MIT - Feel free to use the code. You don't have to contribute back.<p>Apache- Like BSD, but contributors must agree to license any patents.<p>WTFPL- Do whatever the fuck you want.<p>Just pick the one you like.
It sounds like you want LGPL or MPL. LGPL is the more often used of the two.<p>Even Firefox (The M in MPL stands for Mozilla...) now offers it's code under the LGPL in addition to the MPL, so there's little incentive to put new code under MPL-only.
I believe that the right way (TM) is to just publish the source code, no strings attached, no guarantees given. If anything, register the name as a trademark. If that is too radical for you, LGPL might just be what you want.<p>You already outlined your business model: "make money by helping other companies making money with our software; comprising training, enhancing our software, writing custom data apps, etc."<p>Nothing of that requires any licensing. You demonstrate that you can write good code, keep it up to date, invent some new things. You will have written a very useful toolkit, and no one knows it better than you. Do you really fear that someone trusts other people more to build on it? Do you really fear that you will be out of work, when you have demonstrated these skills for all the world to see?
Basiscally, his problem is that he does not want to 'open source' his code without keeping the exclusive rights to cash in on it.
There is such a license: Creative Commons, non-commercial.<p>But I see a deeper problem: why should he "open source" it then (in contrast to just providing the source)? The problem is: how does he handle contributions? They would all have to waive their commercial rights on the software _to the author_. I see this as fundamentally non-open. It may be honest, but not open-source.