Ask HN: Open sourcing my project, how to enforce the “social” license I chose?

[nfc]

I've created a suite of products for restaurants. I started this project to try new models of development with a positive social impact.

I'd like to license everything (code, marketing and legal materials...) under an open source license which with a clause by which the restaurants that use them have to donate at least 5 dollars per month to non profits. The non profits should help finance similar projects, hopefully creating a virtuous cycle of socially responsible code and businesses.

There are more details to how this would work but that's the gist of it, to create a "social open source" project that would encourage the creation of others

What is holding me back is that I do not know how I could enforce such a license. I have created the project on my own with little means and I would have no way of knowing who is using the code to create their own products. I've thought about several alternatives:

1) Giving the ownership of the code to an organization that would have the means to enforce the license. I suppose there could be organizations interested on fostering this kind of project.

2) Keeping the backend code closed so I could know which restaurants are using it and make sure they do the donation to the NGO. There are downsides to this approach from my lack of previous reputation to server costs.

Are there other ways to make sure a license is complied with?

* The product is described in www.alfiv.com, it is used by restaurants in Spain and France and everything (UI, legal terms, marketing...) is translated to English, French and Spanish

I've used a common software stack (react + redux + ramda) in order to facilitate collaboration

* I chose the restoration industry because of its size, if a "social open source" project could become an important player in this field with this kind of license it could allow the creation of many other similar projects

[mtmail]

If you make it a requirement to spend 5 dollars per month for using the product, then I'd say it doesn't fit open licenses. If you want to enforce the license in a structured way you might as well sell (a subscription to) the product. You can of course donate any profit you make.

[nfc → mtmail]

well, I was calling it open source in the sense that it could allow the same kind of collaborative development that open source allows.

Any company or individual could see it, modify it and sell it.

Perhaps it's not open source by some definitions of it but it seems to me that it shares some of its characteristics

[endswapper]

I agree that if there is a monetary requirement it fails to be open source. That said, I appreciate the intention.

What about requiring a "powered by" type of mark that includes the organization that they support. Then you can let the organization audit that. They would know whether or not they received the $5.

[nfc → endswapper]

That seems like a good idea, and is along the lines of things I've been thinking about to verify the donation. However if a business did not want to comply with the license they would probably just not include this "powered by" mark and we would be where we started.

[endswapper → nfc]

Sure, and all sorts of systems are hacked one way or another. I suggest giving up on the idea of policing it and release that idea of control.

If your intention truly is social impact then focus on what can be accomplished by the participants. Forget about the bastards, they aren't worried about you.