I can’t vouch for it myself because I’ve never used it or read any of its code, but its open-source. Its mostly TypeScript which is apparently not a dealbreaker. Its license is short but odd. It seems to be against commercial use of the software, but not sure how they intend to regulate that, being a payment app, how do they know whether the user is receiving funds for music lessons or for paying back a debt between friends or family? If they mean larger businesses with say multiple employees then, first of all based on the above interview/video, I’m not sure the app is even designed to be safely used for businesses with multiple employees. Again, I don’t have the app so I can’t judge.
The GPL3 license already has protections against the code being “sub-licensed”, if that is the main concern.
The app may use a bunch of non-free or highly centralized network services. Don’t know.
Can’t vouch for the security model being suggested in the interview, either.
There may be a benefit for the developers to provide a proper libre license, in terms of the more people using the app (and bitcoin) the better for the developers involved.
I can’t do Github these days, so leave this in the capable hands of someone else to engage with them. Maybe the license is standard for this type of thing and its not worth considering.
Triple thumbs up, @Licaon_Kter . Wow. There are a lot of different software licenses out there, thanks for the resource.
The license appears to be a customized MIT license. Judging by the commit message here the developers seem to be open to derivative works. Not sure that the actual license really reflects that sentiment though.
If someone wants to help these developers resolve any possible dissonance in this area, and thus create a flavor without elements Licaon has mentioned, that might be a positive thing.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person (“You”) obtaining the software in this repository (“Software”) to read, review, analyze, suggest changes to, and run the Software as-is for personal and educational use. You shall not transfer, assign, share, or sub-license the Software for personal, commercial or educational use without an explicit grant of permission from BitHyve (“Us”) to do so.
is definitely not a free software license, as it does not afford users all of the four freedoms:
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0): no, only for “personal and educational use”
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1): no, permission is only granted to “suggest changes to” and run the software “as-is” (i.e. verbatim).
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2): no, permission to share the software is explicitly denied
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3): no, neither permission to modify nor share is granted
I notice the license was changed from “You shall not modify, transfer,…” to “You shall not transfer,…” with the intent of allowing derivative works, but I see no such grant of permission (either to modify or share the software) in the actual license text. Therefore, I feel this is a misunderstanding on their part and they should switch to a standard free software license if this is their intent.