Should grandfathering in competing uses under Noncompete require giving notice to the licensor?

[kemitchell]

In private feedback, we've heard some concerns about licensors' ability to police Noncompete, and especially products and services "grandfathered in" because the licensor didn't offer a competing product or service at the time.

If that balance tips too far in favor of licensees, we might require licensees to give licensors notice in order to keep using old versions to provide competitive products and services. That would give licensors intel on who they need to watch, and for which products and services, lightening the enforcement burden. If they find a competing product or service offered with their code that they don't already know about, they know they have a claim.

[lindenksv]

@kemitchell where can I get a copy of the Noncompete license? The only one I have is the polyform-v1.0.0-re.1

[kemitchell]

@lindenksv, we are planning to release other variants soon, and Noncompete somewhat later, since it needs more work.

That begin said, the current language on master here is: https://gist.github.com/3164fe98b74e64824acb937fa1961d41

That's mostly my language.

@heathermeeker has an alternative proposal in #35.

[heathermeeker]

Sorry to be a broken record (on two threads), but non-compete should be about offering an economic substitute product, i.e. competing with the software, not about competing with the licensor, so the future products of the licensor should not be relevant. A licensee should not have to monitor and anticipate licensor products -- that is impossible. I have been told that the idea of an economic substitute is incomprehensible, but it is a common sense concept, and the current language is far harder to understand. If the price of Coke goes down, demand for Pepsi goes down, and thus price for Pepsi goes down. If you want to reduce this to objective evidence, you can do it mathematically. A substitute is described in a demand curve, which is literally a single line. Licensee product price correlates with licensor product price.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitute_good#/media/File:Cross_elasticity_of_demand_substitutes.svg

[kemitchell]

@heathermeeker don't mean to talk past you! In my mind, Noncompete is tabled for now. There's some language on master, so we have something, but it's not finalized, and I'm basically ignoring everything about it until we get 1.0.0s of Polyform-Noncommercial and the other more straightforward licenses released.

[heathermeeker]

Got it -- I just comment on what my GITHUB emails tell me to! Sorry to pile on.

[kemitchell]

@heathermeeker Don't apologize! The Noncompete variant is maybe the most interesting, and potentially the most important, short-term, given recent events and conversations. I don't want to give anyone the impression that what's on master right now is final.