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The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

drewdevault.com

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Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#111

Post by mindcrime »

wrs wrote: post #75
_jal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> censoring the mere _idea_ Nobody is censoring anything, in either a precise or a fuzzy sense[1]. Conflating criticism and censorship is (a) a category error, (b) a really pernicious notion, and (c) confuses people and derails discourse. A core principle of free speech is that the answer to bad speech is more speech. Mislabeling criticism censorship attempts to delegitimize that answer, and thus paradoxically attack…

Normally I’d agree, but in fact this post is not just criticism, it’s a demand for self-censorship. That is, stop talking about this, and don’t ever talk about it again. >The only solution is to bury the Common Clause project. Kill the website and GitHub repository, and we can try to forget this ever happened.

Having made a similar comment myself, I feel pretty confident in saying that that is mostly just intentional hyperbole, used to emphasize the seriousness of the issue. Although the OP of the bit you quoted there may choose to disagree.

Personally I'm not advocating any kind of "censorship", self or otherwise, in any literal sense. But I do want everyone to understand the extent to which I think this "clause" is an abomination and a threat to the entire Open Source movement.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#112

Post by jtbayly »

kup0 wrote: post #77

Regardless of whether or not it is harmful to open source, I find the choice to use two words beginning with C (thus CC as an acronym) flawed, as that abbreviation is typically used to refer to Creative Commons, and Commons Clause and Creative Commons sound quite similar too since they both use the word Commons. I would hope this was not an intentional choice to sow confusion. Edit: obvious spelling error :)

yes, I assumed they were related.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#113

Post by sipos »

XiZhao wrote: post #87
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Kevin, Drew here. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate your response, but I find it frustratingly vauge. What kinds of bad things happen to open source projects that drive them to this? If you are fearful of open source becoming more closed, why are you promoting that very approach? Did you consider promoting alternatives like AGPL first? Before I see an option violating one of the four essential freedom…

The Clause was drafted as a reactionary move to solve against specific bad behavior. I'm not entirely sure it's my place to call out these actors (I'll leave that to the users of the Clause), but our job was to open up an option that isn't quite "screw this, let's go full closed source". See the commons clause FAQ for answers to your other questions: https://commonsclause.com/

Unless you can describe the bad behaviour in question, it just looks like an attempt to make more proprietary software for personal gain.

The FAQ does not answer the patent comment's good questions.

Why have you chosen a name so similar to Creative Commons, when you seem to prefer the term Source Available from a descriptive point of view?

Frankly, it just sounds like an attempt to pass off software licensed under this abhorrent license term as Creative Commons.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#114

Post by cryptonector »

Software is hard to monetize, whether it be open source or not.

The best open source monetization case I've seen yet may be SQLite3, which is in the public domain. SQLite3 has a consortium, has some proprietary products (e.g., the more extensive test suite) not available to the public at large (in source form or otherwise), and is so ubiquitous that there are a number of large companies that are so utterly dependent on it that they are practically obligated to be members of the consortium. I've no idea just how profitable SQLite3 has been for D.R. Hipp and friends, and I don't want to know, but I assume it's been good enough that they are happy to continue working on it. SQLite consortium members probably (I imagine anyways) get to influence SQLite3's development, and that's one generic way to monetize source code regardless of license: get paid to do further (specific) development / bug fixes / support, but SQLite3's proprietary test suite makes it very difficult for third parties to be able to have contributions welcomed by the core, which tends to limit third party commercial support.

Choice of license doesn't seem to have that much to do with whether something can be monetized. Consider the Linux kernel, which is GPL'ed: prolific contributors profit mostly by being well-employed to continue being prolific contributors, but almost certainly no one is making a dime from commercial Linux kernel usage without source code distribution. There might be some GPL licensed codebases where the copyright owners are making a few bucks from commercial usage by third parties who don't want to distribute their changes, but probably not a lot. There are almost certainly no BSD/MIT licensed codebases where the owners are making any money from commercial usage by third parties -- the license simply allows third parties to use such code outright with absolutely minimal obligations on the third parties.

You can have open source and monetization for some value of "open source", but not one that most people would really consider "open" -- getting to see the source code != open source.

Getting paid to support open source (e.g., add features, fix bugs) can be very difficult when it is easy for anyone to do that. SQLite3 has a mechanism for limiting third party contributions (a proprietary test suite) which limits third-party commercial support though in general that would also increase the risk of forks (but SQLite3 is so widely used that forks are extremely unlikely). The SQLite3 approach won't work generically for very many open source projects as it depends on SQLite3's popularity and very widespread use.

The fact is that for many of us open source is just a way to build and maintain a reputation, and we then monetize the reputation.

I myself have been offered payment for development on open source codebases that I maintain, and I always reject such offers, mostly because accepting them would interfere with my main responsibilities, and in some cases also because it's not my right (e.g., I don't think it would be fair to take money to work on jq without giving @stedolan the right of first refusal). If I were to lose clients/employment, I might reconsider this.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#115

Post by mindcrime »

kazinator wrote: post #55

It's just a "free-with-source for non-commercial use" distribution of certain modules that would otherwise be proprietary. There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code. It's a good thing for customers and would-be customers. Customers can track down bugs and security flaws if…

There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code.

Right. And if they would just call it that and not try to make it sound like it's "sorta / kinda Apache licensed" then I wouldn't really care. But it's like people using this clause want to benefit from the general perception of open-ness and the wide acceptance of the ALv2, while not actually being Open Source. It's just dishonest.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#116

Post by lodi »

da_chicken wrote: post #69
_jal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> censoring the mere _idea_ Nobody is censoring anything, in either a precise or a fuzzy sense[1]. Conflating criticism and censorship is (a) a category error, (b) a really pernicious notion, and (c) confuses people and derails discourse. A core principle of free speech is that the answer to bad speech is more speech. Mislabeling criticism censorship attempts to delegitimize that answer, and thus paradoxically attack…

> [1] Insert private-citizens-cannot-censor distinction here beside an acknowledgment that the word is used informally with wider applicability. That's not "usage" that's wider applicability, it's accuracy. You are no less censored if your boss threatens your livelihood than if your government threatens your freedom or Twitter bans your account. Tyranny is tyranny, and censorship is censorship. No matter the cause fo…

> You are no less censored if your boss threatens your livelihood than if your government threatens your freedom or Twitter bans your account.

Of course I'm less censored by my boss than by my government. My boss doesn't have a monopoly on my potential sources of income, but my government does have a monopoly on my citizenship; I simply can't move to another country without the permission of both governments. My boss can't persuade me with anything but a temporary lack of income; my government can (legally!) persuade me with a long list of effective arguments, ultimately ending in a gun barrel.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#118

Post by s73v3r_ »

XiZhao wrote: post #65

Kevin Wang here. Thanks Drew for the thoughtful post. I can accept that you might not appreciate my work on the Commons Clause, but I'm glad to see you acknowledge why funding OSS is so difficult. I think it's okay to fear the world of open source becoming a bit more closed. I do too. Whether that's a better world or not is up to debate, but I certainly don't think so. I think where we might disagree is what the grea…

Can you at least change the name, to something that's not CC? It's going to be confused with Creative Commons otherwise.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#119

Post by dantillberg »

kup0 wrote: post #77

Regardless of whether or not it is harmful to open source, I find the choice to use two words beginning with C (thus CC as an acronym) flawed, as that abbreviation is typically used to refer to Creative Commons, and Commons Clause and Creative Commons sound quite similar too since they both use the word Commons. I would hope this was not an intentional choice to sow confusion. Edit: obvious spelling error :)

Tiny note: "sew confusion" is a malapropism; "sow confusion" is the canonical expression.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#120

Post by Skunkleton »

Say I made a sizable contribution to an OSS project, one that qualified me as an expert. For projects that have this clause, I wouldn't not be able to make money directly with the source that _I wrote_. I would certainly not lend my expertise to a project that put me in this position, and I would guess that others would feel the same. Imagine if the Linux kernel had this clause. All this "commons clause" will do is remove the community from an open source project, and probably kill open source adoption as a result.
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