I do something similar in the licensing of my Objective-C accessibility frameworks (at pfiddlesoft.com/frameworks). You can use my frameworks for free if you use them in an application that you distribute for free, but you must pay a one-time licensing fee if you charge for your application. The fee is modest if you are a "small developer," but it is reasonably substantial if you are a "big company" (but it is still small enough that a big company could not hire somebody for less to write the same code from scratch).
So far, I have relied strictly on the honor system to enforce the license, although I imagine the fact that I am a well-known trial lawyer with substantial experience in intellectual property law might influence some potential users. Apart from that, the fact that my products are frameworks gives me a little advantage because I can generally examine a publicly available application to see whether its developer used my frameworks. I find that the most important and effective use of the honor system is with "big companies." Despite what you read in the news every day, I have found that big companies are generally not interested in risking copyright litigation by stealing code that they can license legally for a few thousand dollars. Honor aside, the risk and cost of litigation is simply too high to make that a good bet. > On Jul 24, 2015, at 8:41 AM, 2551 <2551p...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Aim: I want to distinguish “ordinary users” of my app from “commercial > users”, where the latter might be defined as anyone installing my app on 5 or > 10 (pick a number) different macs. > > Rationale: I want to offer my app for free to home users, but have those who > use my app for commercial purposes (encouraged to) pay something. I know I > can stipulate that in the licence, but since I’m a small, indie developer > there’s no way I can enforce a licence in any case. -- Bill Cheeseman - b...@cheeseman.name _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
