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Commons Clause

redislabs.com

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Re: Commons Clause

#451

Post by rplnt »

shadowmint wrote: post #404
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.

tisk tisk, so many downvotes and knee jerk reactions, but this is pragmatically correct. GPL is unpopular, and if you want people to use your software, it is the wrong license to choose. Should it be? Perhaps not. ...but I don't think the parent comment is nearly as wrong as people seem to think. It doesn't matter if the GPL technically is a better or worse license; the fact is that (perhaps indeed driven by large co…

Arguing for something automatically means you agree with it and support it, apparently. So if I say why would people use less restrictive license for certain project, I apparently hate GPL and/or don't understand it. I guess.

Re: Commons Clause

#452

Post by mijoharas »

antirez wrote: post #330

I clarified that the Redis core ( https://github.com/antirez/redis ) remains BSD, and what I think about the license switch Redis Labs is operating on certain Redis Modules. https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032180321834467330 and the considerations thread: https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032192721308594176

Looks like he has expanded on this here: http://antirez.com/news/120 thanks for the clarification @antirez.

Re: Commons Clause

#453

Post by rplnt »

pjc50 wrote: post #314
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.

Open-source or closed source projects? As discussed upthread, avoiding being used in closed source projects is the entire purpose of the GPL.

Well, both really. Even with open source, if I want to license my code under whatever license for whatever reason, I can't use GPL code.

And I'm not arguing for people to not use GPL. All I'm saying is there are valid reasons to use MIT (or whatever) if ones goal is to make their project as usable as possible.

Re: Commons Clause

#454

Post by rplnt »

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?

Yes, GPL exists, and people use it all the time. How is it relevant to what I've written about some people avoiding it?

Re: Commons Clause

#455

Post by AstralStorm »

nine_k wrote: post #422
Zarel wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at best you can try and re-license it under GPL / LGPL if you want more control, and all contributors agree You actually don't need all contributors to agree, you only need one. The MIT and BSD licenses don't ban you from relicensing into more restrictive licenses (that's why they're popular with businesses, after all).

No, they require you to retain the copyright notice and the license text, and the license states otherwise: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/305/8261

If you can clearly delineate your new code under a different compatible license, you should be fine from the legal standpoint.

The fine hair splitting begins at what is the required amount of modifications required to be able to relicense the given chunk of code.

Re: Commons Clause

#456

Post by matchagaucho »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #31
matchagaucho wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RedisLabs developed proprietary sharding and scaling capabilities for Redis. Best I can infer, they want to open source the module, but not compete against themselves if others get into the Redis cloud hosting business.

You are right that they are making something new available, but they are not open sourcing it according to the commonly accepted meaning of the term -- and the original article actually says "... any software under this new license is non-open source by definition". Now you might think that commercial use is a small semantic detail. But it is one that the open source / free software community has always insisted on,…

On one hand I admire RedisLabs for acknowledging what all major cloud vendors are doing... embracing and extending open source packages but not giving back enhancements.

On the other hand, the terms of "commons" are not in the spirit of the license and software they've built their business upon.

If in the end Salvatore Sanfilippo were getting funded by the licensing of commons modules, I'd be less concerned.

Re: Commons Clause

#457

Post by quadrangle »

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.

> reciprocal licenses such as GPL, AGPL

Note: they are not reciprocal. They require passing on the freedoms. They are pay-it-forward, downstream licenses. If you get something back, it's incidental (though common).

Re: Commons Clause

#458

Post by tannhaeuser »

dragonwriter wrote: post #426
nine_k wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you posit that people are more inclined to share contributions to a codebase that does not ask them to share such contributions? Or do you posit that GPL (or another reciprocal license) prevents adoption of software where a MIT (or another permissive license) would lead to adoption of that same software?

> Do you posit that people are more inclined to share contributions to a codebase that does not ask them to share such contributions? I posit that people businesses share contributions because it brings them business value, and the business itself being able to use the code in proprietary derivatives often significantly enhances the business value from sharing contributions, which is why SQLite (available as public d…

> ... even Linux gets a fair amount from people whose main use motivating modifications is hosted use which does not require contributions (because it's GPL, not AGPL.)

I'm not aware of any Linux mods not being shared upstream (or at least intended to be eventually PRed to master), except maybe grsec? Please don't give them (AWS/Azure/Google) ideas; we might soon see eg. proprietary drivers for datacenter hardware or Docker/k8s-specific kernel mods. That's a case AGPL could've prevented (though again, I don't know of any proprietary kernel mods).

Hm, come to think of it, the possibility of security-piercing the kernel, then to offer the result as a Linux VM or worse, for hosting Docker-like containers, is concerning. One reason more to buy real VMs with a verifiable standard distro installed, rather than "containers" I guess.

Re: Commons Clause

#459

Post by quadrangle »

nine_k wrote: post #397
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.

GPL is great for infrastructure things: it allows easy sharing, but requires reciprocity and prevents takeovers. GPL gave us Linux, a wildly successful OS kernel. Also, GPL is compatible with commercial dual-licensing, which may be important in some cases, such as use in governmental agencies. MIT/BSD is great for small, less important things, and allows for no-question-asked use of such software in basically any set…

> requires reciprocity and prevents takeovers

GPL has neither of these qualities. GPL only requires pay-it-forward with reciprocity being incidental. GPL only prevents takeovers that require proprietization to be effective (which is some portion of takeovers, I'd agree)

Separately, the AGPL situation is obnoxious. AGPL does nothing wrong here. Corporations being anti-AGPL is bullshit (but is indeed all-too-widespread).

Re: Commons Clause

#460

Post by dman »

dragonwriter wrote: post #433
dman wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont think this is as cut and dry as you make it out to be. The emergence of cloud providers + hosted solutions and the ongoing disappearance of on premise computing means its increasingly hard to figure out a business model for infrastructure tech. Multiple database companies with excellent products (Rethinkdb et al) have faced significant challenges commercializing software that is open source. We need credible mon…

> The emergence of cloud providers + hosted solutions and the ongoing disappearance of on premise computing means its increasingly hard to figure out a business model for infrastructure tech. The fact that open source works to the benefit of the largest providers of software-related services by commoditizing software itself is not new with the rise of the cloud as a new and popular domain of software-related services…

Licensing choices dont exist in a vacuum, they are made with a business climate in mind. I think many projects picked liberal licenses in a climate where the assumption was that you could make your money selling integration / consulting on top of the software. I think we are no longer living in that world. In this new cloudy world we need to find a way to fund the development of infrastructure software (databases / debuggers / libraries etc).
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