I had an idea some time ago for a website. After much coding and banging out the idea, I've got it to a decent stage.
If I were someone else, potentially a more commercially-minded person, I might want to sell it, or slather it with advertisements. However, I've fallen somewhat in love with open-source, and I'd like to host the project on GitHub and give it a nice open-source license.
However, the project seems to be getting better all the time and, in fact, I think that it'll quickly grow to be fairly popular. So I'd like to put a small text ad on it that benefits charity.
However, this means that someone might just come along and set up a clone of it with no charity-benefiting ads - and, of course, the clone might eclipse the main website in popularity. Thus, I'd like to give it a special license.
I've determined my requirements for a license:
Does anyone know of a license that would enable me to do most, or all, of the things mentioned above?
[edit: Okay, I've decided to go the completely open-source route, with attribution. Thanks to everyone for changing my mind - I seriously doubt the viability of an alternative option. I'll leave this question here in its' current state, but for anyone with the same question: Please reconsider, as I did]
I'd suggest taking a look at the license differentiator by OSS Watch to get a better feel for the real options you have.
Such a license probably does not exist. It is very straightforward, however, to write your own license (or hire an attorney to do it).
The far bigger problem is enforcing the license. People will ignore your license and do what they want with your code. Unfortunately, most people do not share your ideals. I don't think you can run a successful business on this plan.
What I understand is that basically you want to other people to be able to see the code or use it privately, but not commercialize your code on their own.
Unless I am wrong- the fact that you have written the code gives you all these rights anyway - it is called Copyright. To be sure, put a standard copyright statement on it. a License is your public way of letting other people know the rules around use of your code, rather than each one having to call you and get a specific permission from you. Contribute code to it via github? sure. But their contribution would be their copyright, they will be you as far as the new content is concerned.