Make:

"(It's GPL, but it says "don't make money with it")"

Then it's not GPL.

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Posted by: Phillip Torrone on November 18, 2008 at 5:31 AM

@The Oracle - yah, this is happening a lot - many project creators are calling things "open source" or "GPL" but then saying "don't make money with it" -- the direction and trend of hardware being open is good, the problem is it's all new and some folks want non-commercial use only. i've proposed that they consider "open hardware - with a non-commercial manufacturing license"... not sure if that will stick.

all we can do (mostly me it seems) is support the projects and also point out that someone is going to rightly assume GPL and open source hardware means you can make money with it.

i hope the makers of the various projects work towards clarifying the licenses / specifics of their projects so there is no confusion.

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Maybe it's time someone created a license for people to use if they want it to be like open source but not for profit.

In my opinion, the "don't make a profit" clause only adds confusion and makes it a lot harder for true open source to make any real headway. For starters, it makes it impossible for any for-profit business to legally use the product in any way.

Personally, I wouldn't like such a license. It's a restriction that, ironically, would interfere with the free use of the product. For example, what if I use a "free" open source program to develop a website, and then years later decide it's getting too expensive to run, so I want to sell ads to offset my hosting costs?

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