[libreplanet-discuss] DVD-PL license feedback

[Patrick]

I have a for profit scientific instrument control application I have 
been planning for several years. I am between 3 months and 1 year from 
being ready to ship.

I read about the profusion of free software licenses and wanted to heed 
the call to not create another.

However GPL just does not make business sense for my particular 
situation. The software would be low volume, high dollar, competitors 
will just fork the code and roll it into proprietary software. Much of 
the industry is now overseas, competitors are well out of my reach for 
legal action, effectively nullifying the topic of licenses once it's in 
their hands.

The benefits that let's say a Red Hat like operation will not apply to 
me. I will receive no code in return and there isn't the same sort of 
mass market as there would be with other industries, as server software 
for instance.

I was planning on building a custom interface board for the software and 
controlling the distribution of it through hardware and licensing the 
software under GPL.

The thing is the board I would fabricate would not do anything that 
other boards available off the shelf would not do already and there is a 
large investment of time and money to do this.

I now feel that it is better to use off the shelf hardware and the just 
the right license for the job.

People talk about the profusion of software licenses but to me there 
seem to be only 3 categories. GPL, the software is never proprietary. 
OpaC where it is never proprietary and never for pay and then a whole 
bunch of licenses that allow co-creation of proprietary software.

I never want my software to become proprietary so this rules out most of 
the licenses. GPL won't work for me for the above mentioned reasons. 
OpaC might work.

I was thinking about creating my own license. I got most of the idea 
from someone on another mailing list. They mentioned they have an 
additional GPL clause like what I will mention next.

I wanted to create a license that was identical to the GPL but required 
that the software only be redistributed in DVD format.

This would allow users to resell, modify and do everything they can with 
the GPL. I don't see how it would harm the end users. It would however 
slow the distribution and keep the software moving between end users 
more so then between competitors. It would allow me to get new revisions 
out before my competitors fork it into proprietary code. I would loose 
these benefits if it was posted as a link on the net.

I suspect this will be GPL incompatible but does it sound like it could 
be FSF approved?

is their already a software license like this?

I probably won't be able to fork GPL code but does it sound like I could 
fork LGPL/BSD like code?

I would love some feedback on this but please don't beat me up(too 
much). I know that people will want me to choose a preexisting license 
and people will argue for the GPL too.

If I can get this right it will be good product line but will also be 
good for free software as this industry is entirely dominated by closed 
source software.

Thanks for reading my long post-Patrick