How Commercial is Commercial?

[Amorymeltzer]

Following the license stanza docs, gratis is pretty straightforward as a specific sublicense of closed. Likewise, for a closed piece of trial software, which shuts down after a period of time, commercial is pretty clear.

What, though, about closed software that limits certain abilities to those who pay? Is the intent for the generic closed be used as a catch-all for the spectrum of closed-source software that allows a modicum of functionality for non-paying users as long as there is no time limit, with commercial limited to only that software that eventually requires payment to do anything?

Some moderately related discussion: #6426

[vitorgalvao]

Good question. I’d say yes, your thinking is good. :gratis doesn’t ask for money (donations excluded, naturally); :commercial ask for money (eventually) to continue to work at all; :closed for the rest.

[rolandwalker]

@Amorymeltzer that sounds right, and you are welcome to update our docs. I'd also say it is always OK to say :closed, if you know :closed is true. Someone can make another pass later and try to make it more specific.

Currently the license values are not nearly as specific as they can be because the stanza is so new, and many are :unknown. But to my knowledge none are incorrect.

Good you found the earlier discussion. We will be raising that again relatively soon to either include more :closed values or delete them from the plan.

It is a priority for the maintainers that the license values be clear, straightforward, and objective. If we have to spend energy debating subjective points on a Cask, that means the spec is bad.

[tapeinosyne]

@Amorymeltzer's observation follows previous discussion on the subject of license :trial and :freemium, the outcome of which is described in #6426 and #6357. At the time, we felt that the distinction between commercial licenses could be confusing, or redundant, or insufficiently accurate, and postponed further debate.

This might be a good occasion to revisit our :license values, as @Amorymeltzer correctly points out that the current set is confusing. Perhaps @vitorgalvao's original suggestion of including :freemium would be sufficient?

[rolandwalker]

To clarify my comments, I'm not against debating on the spec itself. I'm only against per-Cask debates (on scalability grounds).

Re-opening #6426 is on my 1.1 roadmap #5586, but anyone else can initiate that at any time.

[Amorymeltzer]

Thumbs up on that.

For what it's worth, :freemium might help the

clear, straightforward, and objective

goal. If :gratis is free to use, and :commercial requires payment, :freemium (or similar term) could fill the gap between those two while :closed remains the higher-level parent/generic category. That seems to me to more closely parallel the usage of :oss. That might make the stanza more useful in the future (e.g. searching).

[jawshooah]

Agreed on the above. There's a pretty clear subset of closed-source applications that are free to use indefinitely, but have certain features limited to paying customers. Adding a :freemium or similar specifier can only reduce ambiguity.

[vitorgalvao]

Closing, as we’ve already clarified this one in the above issues.