Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Commons Clause

redislabs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 496 posts

Re: Commons Clause

#471

Post by doesnt_know »

Karunamon wrote: post #390
tannhaeuser wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 giv…

From my experience, "those evil companies" isnt actually a common argument in free software circles. It's only a problem in the sense that they fail to pass on the freedoms required by the license (breaking copyright law) or attempt to circumvent the intent of it (see Tivoization).

It's pretty common to actually see the opposite. When companies genuinely create/modify/support free software they tend to be praised and actively supported in the free software community.

Re: Commons Clause

#473

Post by dragonwriter »

Boulth wrote: post #442
dragonwriter wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That why dual licensing exists. AGPL or commercial license. Sidekiq does that [0]. [0]: https://sidekiq.org/products/pro.html

Dual licensing doesn't stop anything that AGPL doesn't stop if downstream users are fine with the AGPL. It only helps monetize those users that are not willing to pay money to get out of AGPL requirements. So, if the problem is big cloud vendors selling services around AGPL software (which it expressly is) while complying with AGPL requirements, AGPL with a proprietary alternative doesn't solve anything.

You need a license which expressly prohibits the use at issue unless a deal involving payment is made, hence, the Commons Clause.

Re: Commons Clause

#474

Post by aries185 »

For clarification, here's the official response from the Redis Labs's website: "the license for open source Redis was never changed. It is BSD and will always remain BSD." Only Redis add-on modules developed by Redis Labs have changed from AGPL to Apache v2.0 modified with Commons Clause. https://redislabs.com/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd

Re: Commons Clause

#475

Post by jen20 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #150
jen20 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even dark-ages Microsoft tried to prevent users exchanging knowledge about their products for money ("consulting", or frankly, "employment"). Such a suggestion is preposterous and should kill any company adopting it immediately.

At it's core, this is fundamentally about property rights. The owners of the Redis copyright are well within their right to license their property in any way they see fit. It's preposterous to you , but you're not the one who has spent the time creating Redis. It's preposterous to me that they wouldn't have the rights to govern their creation's use. You could go build your own infrastructure software, of course , tha…

The license doesn't just talk about the software - it tries to restrict the sale of knowledge about it (in the form of consulting) too.

That makes it the most overreaching of any software license I have ever encountered, including those from Oracle.

Re: Commons Clause

#476

Post by jaredklewis »

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.

Nope. Nothing in the patent clause made any restrictions on your right to sue Facebook.

It simply made the patent grant conditional on not suing them for patent infringement. i.e. if you want Facebook to pay royalties on your patent, you would have to pay royalties on their patents. If that’s not reciprocal, what the hell is?

Re: Commons Clause

#477

Post by jjrh »

CJefferson wrote: post #421
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 was soured on the GPL by GPL v3. I don't want "or later", because that is giving control of my code to whoever ends up owning the FSF in the future. However, then you end up with a GPL v2 system, where some authors have passed away so relicensing is impossible, which you can't link to new versions of GNU libraries as they have gone v3 only. It's maddening.

Exactly, folks above need to be more specific when they say 'GPL' because there are radical differences between GPLv3 and GPLv2.

Re: Commons Clause

#478

Post by jjrh »

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?

Because depending on the version of GPL (Linux is GPLv2) Some restrictions might not work with whatever you're doing. GPLv3 specifically has turned off many for various reasons.

Re: Commons Clause

#479

Post by dragonwriter »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #458
dragonwriter wrote: post #426

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? 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…

> 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?

That's my point: they usually upstream changes even when they don't legally need to, because they benefit from the changes being upstream and not something they have to maintain in separately.

Re: Commons Clause

#480

Post by kemitchell »

icebraining wrote: post #407
kemitchell wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some experiences of open source rest on the OSD, but not all. If your experience does, that doesn't invalidate your experience. But your experience doesn't invalidate others', either. Browbeat or excommunicate all the heretics, I think you'll find yourself preaching to a much smaller choir. Granted: OSD, or rather the OSI-approved license list, rules in enterprise procurement at a particular and fairly common level o…

What's the point of preaching to a larger choir, if they don't speak the same language? You're just straining your voice in vain. HESSLA and Fair Source both clearly state they are not open source, so I don't see how they go against rectang's point; the problem is not the existence of different models, but muddling the language to conflate them with the preceding one. That's essentially an EEE attack, and it's no won…

We invoke "open source" in many more ways and places than dry terms like "express patent license" and "copyleft license". The latter have near-zero community, marketing, or ideological meaning. They aren't the names of movements to identify with.

The push and pull between what doing open source is and what open source is supposed to mean has always gone two ways. If the status quo serves your needs, it's natural to cast "open source" as a rigorously bounded definitional category in the vein of "copyleft", and to downplay its social aspects. From a frustrated developer's point of view, it's natural to cast "open source" as a community first and foremost, and elide theory.

One point of view says, "We have this great definition to reference and rely upon, and you're trying to skim value and prestige off it." The other says, "We have all these people to celebrate and work with, and you're trying to claim their support while ignoring their needs."

Two extremes.

Post reply on HN