licensing open-source-software
Is it possible to have a software license that is free for people, but expensive for mega corporations?
<p>I've been searching for a software license that seems like it should exist.  The fact that I'm not finding it anywhere makes me wonder if it's just not possible.</p>
<p>This page has a pretty good list of licenses (<a href="https://choosealicense.com/licenses/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://choosealicense.com/licenses/</a>) none of which achieve something that seems pretty obviously desirable:</p>
<p><em>To have a software license where you can share your code, but you don't end up doing free labor for mega-corporations.</em></p>
<p>I've heard from my non-profit friend that <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sliding-scale.asp#:%7E:text=What%20Is%20a%20Sliding%20Scale,underlying%20variable%E2%80%94most%20commonly%20income." rel="nofollow noreferrer">sliding-scale fees</a> can be a bit of a legal hassle... so maybe that's why no such thing exists?</p>
<p><strong>Is it legally possible to have a software license which is in-effect open for individuals and small companies, without being free labor for large corporations?</strong></p>

<p>It is possible if and only if you can say exactly what you mean, and what you mean isn't prohibited by law.</p>
<p>Software licenses can have all sorts of conditions attached to them, such as use (commercial or not; educational) or a quasi-demographic (are a student at UX, are employed by Z; reside in Y). &quot;Mega-corporation&quot; is not at all defined, so you would need to specify what it means to be a &quot;mega-corporation&quot; (is it defined in terms of assets, or income, and what is the magic number that is not to be crossed). What do you mean by &quot;corporation&quot;? Your license might not achieve what you intended it to achieve, if you don't think about ways to legally get around the restriction (can a mega-corporation have an employee incorporate your code into a product, as an individual, and then sell the rights to the product to the mega-corporation for $1, or for $1,000,000? If not, what part of the license says you can't). Also bear in mind that a license might be for a fixed period (a nuisance), or perpetual (the usual case), but status as a &quot;mega-corporation&quot; is ever-changing (Microsoft was a garage operation a few years ago; Blockbuster was a mega-corporation a few years ago). Do you want people or companies to <em>lose</em> their license right once they make a certain salary / income?</p>
<p>The license would be discriminatory, but not all forms of discrimination are illegal – I don't think this would actually run afoul of any anti-discrimination laws.</p>
