I would not care so much about the definition of open source.
My ideal scenario is that code is open, can be improved and reused among commercial and non-commercial endeavors. I also would like that some of the value created by users of the open code flows back to the creators.
Individual commercial licenses do not create this ideal as they are monolithic and does not reflect that open source is a network of many dependencies.
Companies would be willing to pay for open source but they do not want to manage each node in their dependency graph individually. Thus the need for some centralized tax and redistribution system.
Yes I think it needs to be centralized and aggregated.
I am sure many companies realize that they gain value from open source. Thus they are willing to pay something. However they do not want to handle transactions with every transitive dependency they use. Just like a radio station doesnt want a contract with every artist. This is why isolated commersial licenses wouldnt work for anything but the very largest projecys.
I think an open source compensation system could work similar to how artists are payed when their song is played on the radio.
Radio stations in Sweden pay a fee to an organisation which distributes the money to artists in proportion to the amount of playtime.
Imagine a new type of open source license that mandated paying a membership fee to a global foundation to use the code commercially. Non-commersial use would still be free.
Companies would have to pay royalty to this organisation in proportion to their size or some other metric. The organisation would distribute the money to projects according to some usage criteria such a download count or similar.
For it to work there would have to be one or very few such organizations to that it is easy for the companies to handle. It should also not be very expensive for the companies. But even if it gets every company to contribute just a few thousands to open source it would still inject a lot more money into the system.
My ideal scenario is that code is open, can be improved and reused among commercial and non-commercial endeavors. I also would like that some of the value created by users of the open code flows back to the creators.
Individual commercial licenses do not create this ideal as they are monolithic and does not reflect that open source is a network of many dependencies.
Companies would be willing to pay for open source but they do not want to manage each node in their dependency graph individually. Thus the need for some centralized tax and redistribution system.