[piedar]

That's a fine idea, but this would not be an open source (https://opensource.org/osd) license.

> 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

> The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

[amelius]

Depends on what you call open source. In my view, it's open source if the source code is open for viewing by anyone. That doesn't say anything about the cost of using the code in a commercial situation. Anyway, you could start a new movement and call it "fair source", where programmers are properly compensated for code used by large companies who make millions using it.

[npteljes]

>if the source code is open for viewing by anyone

That would be _source-available_. Open source is well understood to also enable modification and redistribution - see Wikipedia's[0] or Merriam-Webster's[1] entry on open source.

Also, open source says nothing about using the code in a commercial situation to begin with. The most popular open source licenses (MIT, Apache, GPL, ...) don't distinguish commercial and noncommercial usage.

I agree that the situation with large companies is not easy. Either you pick a stricter license like GPL, and risk your software being left unpopular, or pick one that enables popularity more, like MIT, but then risk being taken advantage of by the lack of restrictions. I think it's a tough call.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source

[gjvnq]

How about an open core under something like GPL and a set of extensions under something like MongoDB's SSPL (server side public license)?