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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

#121

Post by cryptonector »

marcinzm wrote: post #4

Another problematic aspect of this is that to me the Redis situation seems like a corporate grab of open source software after the fact. By that I mean, Redis Labs are not the creators of Redis. They are a consulting agency that then hired the creator of Redis. In other words, they only exist because the original Redis was not Commons Clause. Now they want to build a moat so others can't do what they did. Not a good…

Precedent? This precedent has been set long ago. E.g., Microsoft (for one example) used BSD code in Windows in a proprietary way. There aren't very many prominent cases like this because software is hard to monetize, whether it be open source or proprietary.

I don't see the problem with proprietary forks of open source whose license allows it, and when it's the original creator who pulls it off then I say good for them. When I choose to use BSD or MIT licensing, I do it because a) I don't expect to monetize that code, b) I don't mind if someone else figures out a way to monetize that code -- this is a willful, eyes-wide-open choice on my part. I wouldn't recommend always using any one license; instead I recommend picking a license for each codebase according to whether you want to allow third parties to monetize or whether you want to prevent proprietary forks. There is no one-size-fits all license.

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

#122

Post by arminiusreturns »

paulddraper wrote: post #108
arminiusreturns wrote: post #105

It drives me nuts how much people talk about OSS when they need to at least mention the difference between FOSS and OSS. One more reason to stick to FOSS instead, as OSS proponents seem increasingly disingenuous.

Help me understand. Which of the following are FOSS licenses and which are OSS licenses? - Apache - Apache + Common Clause - BSD - MIT - GPLv2 - GPLv3

The FSF can explain it better than I can.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html

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

#123

Post by binomialxenon »

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.

I don't think it's about censorship so much as it's thinking ahead and realizing how huge of a threat this clause could be towards free software. The author is (IMO, rightly) concerned about this and wants to limit how much damage is caused by it.

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

#124

Post by codeflo »

rectang wrote: post #95
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 :)

Between the name, the abbreviation, and the suggested usage of "Apache + Commons Clause" for a proprietary offering, this "Commons Clause" project has severe problems with deceptive messaging. If it was unintentional it was incredibly foolish; if it was deliberate.... Either way it should be junked.

The plus sign suggests an additional right, as a dual license would offer, instead, it removes rights from the Apache license. I don't think that's an accident because judging from the website, this seems to be a very serious attempt to put a positive spin on "look but don't touch" style proprietary licensing schemes. Fuck this.

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

#125

Post by hinkley »

marcinzm wrote: post #4

Another problematic aspect of this is that to me the Redis situation seems like a corporate grab of open source software after the fact. By that I mean, Redis Labs are not the creators of Redis. They are a consulting agency that then hired the creator of Redis. In other words, they only exist because the original Redis was not Commons Clause. Now they want to build a moat so others can't do what they did. Not a good…

Sounds like corporatism to me. Change the rules so nobody else can follow you.

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

#126

Post by Bartweiss »

XiZhao wrote: post #84
justinjlynn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My fundamental issue with the clause is that it fundamentally changes the nature of the licences it infects. It is just as disingenuous to say "we're an Open Source plus Common Clause project (Apache + Common Clause)" as it is to say "We host Redis (we mean Redis + Proprietary add-ons we use under the AGPL from Redis Labs, that you can't have, which make us incompatible with Open Source Redis)". There's nothing new o…

I don't think the Clause is necessarily the most elegant end-all solution, but there are often broad business, timing and legal requirements that make it really hard to draft a full license to satisfy everyone. In fact, I'd love to see a v2 standalone license. One of the design constraints was size and readability. I think part of the goal here was to start with something extremely short-form. More broadly, the avera…

> More broadly, the average OSS license is far from robust.

Like several people here, I'd really appreciate clarification on this.

The average OSS license doesn't apply to some use cases, but in every case I know that's intentional; they're uses that don't uphold the four freedoms. There are a handful of outstanding issues like Google's allergy to AGPL, but the GPL and MIT licenses are well-tested and accepted. I've regularly used them personally and professionally without any confusion or trouble at all.

If there's a flaw or weakness in these licenses, people are obviously eager to hear about it. If they simply don't support restricting downstream rights, that's by design and I think "far from robust" is a thoroughly unfair way of framing the situation.

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

#127

Post by binomialxenon »

dragonwriter wrote: post #102
dwheeler wrote: post #90

There are several challenges here. One challenge is the name "Commons" is very misleading. It's not creating a commons, and it's also confusingly similar to the term "Creative Commons" which has been around for a really long time. Also, the Commons website says that the Commons license is not OSS "at least not by the official definition set forth by the OSD". Yet that is the official generally-accepted definition.

> One challenge is the name "Commons" is very misleading. It's not creating a commons “Commons” isn't the thing the clause creates, it's the problem it aims to solve. Naming contract or license clauses after the problem they address is not uncommon.

It would be terrible PR to call this the "Anti- Commons Clause", but it would indeed be accurate.

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

#128

Post by sipos »

ehnto wrote: post #101
DannyBee wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What changed? Do developers no longer have the time to volunteer to work on this stuff? The desire? Is the demand for tech in The Valley/West Cost changing the dynamics of how much time people have to contribute. Were the earlier efforts way less commercial and new efforts moving much faster and requirement more maintenance/resources? " What's changed is that once open source started getting serious VC's, people bel…

Some are seeing that corporations are the ones making all the money on the back of open source software. It's hard to want to contribute to something like open source infrastructure tooling, when it's use case is purely commercial, for example. I imagine some also feel that it's setting an unrealistic value on digital products, at least I do. Why would I want to build a tool for corporate infrastructure if they take…

> Some are seeing that corporations are the ones making all the money on the back of open source software.

This is true of everything. This isn't a problem with open source, it is a problem with society generally.

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

#129

Post by binomialxenon »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #85

The example clause at https://commonsclause.com/ does not really make any sense. It first says you can't sell the software and then provides example text below like this: Software: [name software] License: [i.e. Apache 2.0] Licensor: [ABC company] If they actually used the Apache 2.0 license anyone would have the right to sell the software. Hence putting that clause and then putting "Apache 2.0" as the license makes…

I agree, it's terribly misleading and could cause a real lack of licensing clarity.

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

#130

Post by api »

I understand the objection but in general I support the Commons Clause-- as long as developers can easily opt out for projects where it isn't desired or doesn't make sense.

Open source developers are building software for free that is then used by extremely large corporations to make vast amounts of money without compensation to the original author. Even worse much of this revenue comes from business practices that the original authors may find highly objectionable including mass surveillance, "surveillance capitalism," and data-driven propaganda, con artistry, and manipulation.

If you create open source today you have no choice but to indirectly offer free labor toward the construction of a global surveillance state. The commons clause offers a way out while still encouraging people to use your software for personal, private, academic, and other purposes and retaining the openness of open source.

The "free as in beer" part of OSS is a relic of the 1990s when the prevailing enemy was "embrace-extend-extinguish" at the hands of (mostly) Microsoft. It was sort of a growth hack to enable open source software to gain critical mass and challenge closed source proprietary platforms.

Times have changed. Today the big threat is SAAS walled gardens, surveillance capitalism, and other business models that in many cases run on and depend upon open source. In some cases SAAS can verge on piracy-- not necessarily in the legal sense since nothing is being done to violate any license but in the moral sense of profiting handsomely from the work of others without compensating them.

Edit: I will provide a concrete example of the last point: RethinkDB.

RethinkDB was probably the best NoSQL database, at least before Mongo was improved enough to challenge it on robustness and versatility. It still has features Mongo and others lack.

Unfortunately RethinkDB the company failed because... well... nobody paid them. Instead they paid services like compose.io to run RethinkDb for them in the cloud. Cloud SAAS database services were making more money off RethinkDB than the database's own developers were. In the end they failed and the project is now almost abandoned.

There are numerous similar examples. AFIAK the Commons Clause would have prevented this, allowing either RethinkDB to capture their own SAAS market or charge compose.io something for making money off their software.

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