Ask HN: Licensing terms for self-hosted product

by indexerror on 11/20/2016, 11:00 AM with 1 comments

I am working on a product that I want to provide in three pricing categories: basic-free, premium-hosted, and premium-self hosted. I wish to use AGPL.

1. Can I put additional terms on top of AGPL? 2. What terms should I use for the self-hosted category? I wish to provide the license for 1 year.

  • by brudgers on 11/20/2016, 5:28 PM

    I am not a lawyer. I recommend speaking with one regarding any sort of customer software license.

    1. A license is as good as someone's willingness to lawyer up and enforce it. With software, that enforcement is likely to require action in distant jurisdictions, e.g. international legal actions.

    2. A reluctance to lawyer up when creating a license may correlate with a reluctance to lawyer up to enforce it.

    3. Restrictive licensing is likely to create a marketing disadvantage. Custom licensing even more so.

    4. Whatever licensing terms are applied must be compatible with the licenses of any software used to create the application...i.e. a time limited AGPL license might violate the license of components licensed under GPL. Again talk with a lawyer.

    Good luck.