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Commons Clause

redislabs.com

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Re: Commons Clause

#381

Post by yebyen »

another-cuppa wrote: post #344
rplnt wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just fashion. It's a question of "Do I want someone to use my software?", because with GPL the answer would be no for a lot of projects.

Why do you think that? Linux is the most widely used operating system in the world and it's licensed under GPL. People don't choose not to use software because it's GPL. Why would they?

You're mistaken. (Well, maybe not mistaken if I read exactly what you said literally, but people/companies most certainly do choose not to use GPL software if they're looking to build a system that they can exploit for profit-making purposes.)

It takes a very forward-thinking person to understand that they have more to gain from the thousands of eyes and the support of the community, than from a paywall that gates access to their creation. (And that person could reasonably choose to license their software as GPL or any other open license, there are lots of trade-offs.)

But if you're not building the system from scratch, you need to be aware of the licenses you've accepted, and for many businesses the addition of GPL software to the stack will be a non-starter. Do you think we'd have Apple as it is today if it wasn't for BSD Unix and the BSD license?

Re: Commons Clause

#382

Post by yebyen »

lmm wrote: post #332
carlmr wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a separate program though, so you're not repackaging, modifying or redistributing. Let's take for example TortoiseGit, should they decide to sell TortoiseGit now, they wouldn't have a problem with the GPL because they're not redistributing git. They just say, download git and our program will connect to it. Git does not become part of TortoiseGit at any point. You could replace the git client with one that has t…

Whether TortoiseGit is a derivative work of Git is ultimately a legal question. Certainly just being a separate binary doesn't automatically make it not one. "You could replace the git client with one that has the same interface and it would still work." - that's true of any library used in any program.

It seems like the point has been lost.

Unless you're building (as your company's product) a Git client based on Git, then the license of Git is irrelevant. It does not enter into the question of how you must license your product when you publish it.

Most people who have chosen to include Git in their development stack don't suffer any consequence from the fact that it is licensed as GPLv2. TortoiseGit is another matter altogether – ~in fact it must be licensed as GPLv2, because it links to libgit2. If it was changed to wrap the Git binary instead, then what you say is probably true.~ (this is false, [1] libgit2 is licensed as GPLv2 with the Linking Exception. So clients that link to it need not be licensed as GPLv2.)

But most of us Git users are not actually building Git clients.

[1]: https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/issues/3046

Re: Commons Clause

#383

Post by colejohnson66 »

filmor wrote: post #375
jaredklewis wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are probably right. When starting the project, creators value their work very little, but value any attention given to their project very highly, thus a permissive license makes sense. Only after success hits do they regret it. Even so, if someone was seeking fame and fortune through OSS (a somewhat foolish mission, but whatever), I would still probably recommend they release their software with a permiss…

Facebook got hate for making the patent grant skewed, i.e. you have no right to sue them for /any/ patent of yours that they use in return for not being sued for the /specific/ patents that cover React etc.

Are those clauses even enforceable?

Re: Commons Clause

#384

Post by geofft »

mattdeboard wrote: post #129
justinjlynn wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're concerned about brand dilution via resale of "Redis"-as-a-Service RedisLabs could easily trademark the term Redis and prohibit its use in this way. This mechanism is much the same way Mozilla controls the Firefox trademarks. I do wish they hadn't made their Open Source licence a confusing mess and effectively proprietary for certain modules. That's their right, of course - as copyright holders. However, it…

I mean.. I'm sure they're concerned far more about corporations making money off their unpaid work by hiding it under many layers of abstraction. "Use our stuff for free to do new stuff. But if you're making money off our stuff by selling our stuff's features, then we need to talk licensing first." If this is an accurate summary, I really don't see anything scandalous about it.

I don't think there's anything scandalous here. I'm not Stallman; releasing non-Free Software is a perfectly legitimate and unscandalous thing to do IMO.

Just be honest about it. Don't call it "Apache with this tiny little change that won't affect most people." Call it freeware (or shareware) with source available.

And if you don't want to do that because FOSS has trounced shareware in the enterprise sales market... well, that's for you to figure out. I'm just here to say that it's actual FOSS that can be fully part of the FOSS ecosystem, like being in Linux distros, that trounced shareware. FOSS-but-not-really hasn't. Be honest with yourselves too, as well as honest with the world.

Re: Commons Clause

#385

Post by dragonwriter »

skrebbel wrote: post #331
another-cuppa wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really sad that the GPL has essentially "gone out of fashion". It's sad that developers would be driven merely by fashion rather than careful consideration. The fact that we have free software at all is largely thanks to the GNU and the GPL.

I've always wondered why GPL dual licensing isn't more popular. In particular, I've always wondered why "GPL or ask me for permission" isn't being explored more. That still allows you to be extremely permissive but you get the make the call. Eg if I were coding a database like Redis, maybe I'd be totally cool with people freely using it in their moonshot VC-funded trike sharing site, but not with cloud providers offe…

> In particular, I've always wondered why "GPL or ask me for permission" isn't being explored more.

Because handling “ask me for permission” is expensive, even if you say no, and you can only do it if you sacrificing much of the main benefit to using open licensing, which getting free work from downstream, since people having to give code ownership to you makes them less likely to contribute back anything that you can use with your licensing model, even if they are doing GPL derivatives that the rest of the world can use without the “or ask me” part.

Re: Commons Clause

#386

Post by mindcrime »

detaro wrote: post #371
mindcrime wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article, it implies that people like Heroku and others offering hosted Redis is EXACTLY the kind of thing they are trying to prevent with this clause. The thing is, the AGPL already existed for dealing with the whole "cloud vendors turning things effectively proprietary" issue.

But the issue doesn't seem to be "cloud vendors turn things effectively proprietary", but rather "cloud vendors offer the same services we want to offer, so we don't get the income that's paying for our development work". A cloud vendor can just run AGPL software and offer it as a service if they share their modifications (if any). They can't do this with software under this new license.

True, but in practice, may companies seem reluctant to offer commercial services with AGPL software. And at least with the AGPL, they are required to give back their changes, which helps the project. Granted, not all firms will be making changes, but still, I think the AGPL is better than this "Common Clause" thing, which is basically pretending to be something its not.

Re: Commons Clause

#387

Post by mindcrime »

XiZhao wrote: post #252
mindcrime wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on bringing the Commons Clause to life Why would you intentionally give birth to such an abomination? This adds no value to the world whatsoever and is just going to confuse people and harm the overall Open Source ecosystem. I'd encourage you to retract this whole idea, stuff it in a hole, "salt and burn it" and try to pretend this whole thing never happened. If you care about putting pressure on Cloud provi…

As addressed in the FAQ, AGPL doesn't satisfy many requirements -- one of which is that it's often too restrictive in the wrong ways. If not the Commons Clause, a very viable "v2" is just to draft a more cohesive source-available license, or in the worst case move the project to closed source.

Using the "Commons Clause" is already effectively making it closed source... at best that's equivalent to "Source Available". Just use the MS Commons Research License or whatever it was called. This "OSS License + garbage extensions" stuff is nonsense.

Re: Commons Clause

#388

Post by dragonwriter »

etatoby wrote: post #352
Boulth wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The GPL exists for a reason. AGPL would be more appropriate for Redis IMHO as Redis as a service is not "distributed" to users so GPL alone wouldn't have desired effect. On top of that commercial license for people that don't want to share their modifications.

So why aren't they simply re-licensing under AGPL? That's what I would do.

> So why aren't they simply re-licensing under AGPL? That's what I would do.

Because they want money from certain downstream commercial uses (or to block them so that they can monopolize those services), not to force people to release any modifications when they sell, e.g., hosted Redis services.

Re: Commons Clause

#389

Post by mindcrime »

sonarlunar wrote: post #245
mindcrime wrote: post #55

This is pretty stupid. If you want to license your software under a proprietary license, just license it under a proprietary license. Or if you want to be "Shared Source"[1] use one of the old MS licenses for that. But don't try to put lipstick on a pig and add a veneer of "openness" by shipping something under an Open Source license + terms that make it very explicitly not Open Source. As much as I like Redis, and e…

Probably you don't have to. If one writes code and the other takes the money, there won't be no Redis software to use in the future. When Salvatore was sponsored by Redis Labs back in 2015 I contacted them to ask them about their RLEC (Enterprise Cluster) software for my employer, a public multinational. Had I wanted to use Redis in AWS I would have simply paid for EC2 AWS and paid for Redis Enterprise licenses. This…

I love Redis and I want it to be there forever.

Likewise. And if they think that going proprietary is the best way to accomplish that, then more power to them. But let's call a spade a spade and not come up with disingenuous nomenclature like "Apache License + Commons Clause" and try to pretend to be "kindof Open Source". That makes as much sense as claiming to be partially pregnant.

Re: Commons Clause

#390

Post by Karunamon »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #225
sgentle wrote: post #208

> Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! They're just taking what I wrote and building it into a proprietary product! You told them they could. > But how is it fair that they can make so much money off my code and I never see a cent? You. Told. Them. They. Could. Time and again I see the same sense of hel…

I agree. There's the reflex (here and elsewhere) to dismiss reciprocal licenses such as GPL, AGPL as "uncool", pretentious, and show-stopping. Maybe it's time to reconsider in times of cloud oligopoles. Because why would you want your software become part of the lock-in strategy of a cloud provider.

>Because why would you want your software become part of the lock-in strategy of a cloud provider

Because I care more about that my software was found useful enough to be used, less so about by who and why? This is the main ethos behind licenses like BSD and MIT and APL. That, or I don't care enough to take a stance on license politics, and the BSDlike licenses are the only way I can put my work out there whilst giving any prospective downloader the least amount of need to think about license politics.

I don't share this "those evil corporations!" mindset that tends to drive so many that choose a GPL-series license.

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