Commons Clause • Hacker News Board

Re: Commons Clause

#481

Post by __d » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 3:10 AM UTC

yebyen wrote: post #427

nine_k wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would we have Android today were it not for GPLv2 and Linux licensed under it? But indeed, GPL does limit the ways you can distribute software licensed under it. In particular, licensing something like a library, or another early-bound component under GPL forces the users to license their work under GPL, too. This is why LGPL exists.

Absolutely! Not saying that Apple model is right or wrong, but they certainly chose BSD consciously (whether or not it was because of the encumbrance of GPL, or any technical reasons). It's simply wrong to say that nobody pays attention to this. It's a choice you make, and whether you view the consequences as "repercussions" or "features" depends entirely on your view and the actual outcomes of those choices. Fwiw I…

Apple/NeXT had serious experience with the GPL license when shipping their GCC-based Objective-C compiler.

Their subsequent choice to use BSD-licensed components, and to support/create BSD-licensed components where only GPLed components existed, must be seen in the light of this experience.

Re: Commons Clause

#482

Post by Retra » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 4:04 AM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #275

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…

This is true. Most people who start an open source project don't do it for financial reasons. Usually they want to learn, to build a reputation or to create a good product just for the sake of it. Later, after many years, the developer sees other companies making a lot of money using their OSS project but they themselves are basically broke; they're forced to work for other companies during the day and they still nee…

>they still need to spend nights and weekends to maintain their OSS project on the side.

They don't, though. They can simply stop working on it and say "pay me if you want updates from me."

Re: Commons Clause

#483

Post by eropple » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 4:53 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #469

eropple wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, you are a smart guy. I know this, your posts are generally awesome. How in the hell do you think it's okay for them to try to ban consulting about a product ? That isn't "property rights", that's just...fuckery.

I made several comments without fully understanding the situation. I regret making those comments, but I don't regret my comments from being permanent now. When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I know someone who have had their life ruined by having their projects monetized out from beneath them by others; there is emotion behind those comments that shouldn't have been there. It happens to the best of us. I apologize for disapp…

Nah, dude, everybody's mistaken sometimes. I shoot off half-cocked all the time. I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page. =)

Re: Commons Clause

#484

Post by sonarlunar » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:06 AM UTC

hashrate wrote: post #429

sonarlunar wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one vendor contributing some modules which now they have a different license. I don't see how this impacts any other Redis module on github out there. Either those modules are that good and the vendor decides that cloud providers must pay and not get money from the vendor's work, or those modules are not really that used so who cares. I have used RedisJSON module which is nice and I assume changes license now. A…

> I couldn't care less Let's say you are PHP consultant , you set up a Redis + EC2 instances. You enable a redis enterprise module in that instance. Well technically speaking you are breaching the license of RedisLabs. You are not allowed to do so without their consent because those modules aren't "bsd" or "mit" they are "Commons Clause". In short , if you are doing something with the RedisLabs modules ( consulting /…

It's unenforceable. European Union cannot claim VAT from smaller - yet big enough - foreign companies and is only targeting the very big ones to collect it from. I used to play an online game and, if you changed your country to a non EU one, no VAT was paid. And that was a big company that should have been enforcing EU VAT for me.

Would Redis Labs go after Joe and his brother? Even if the license said so? They're after the big abusers, not the community.

If I'm not mistaken antirez said so too, that it does not affect you and me. That's the reasonable thing anyway. AWS is the big abuser. Check MongoDB or Xen or Elastic cases. People (ex employees typically) are starting to talk how AWS is abusing their open source work. I think that's the whole juice of the story, that AWS is abusing successful open source projects.

At least that's what I read behind the words.

Re: Commons Clause

#485

Post by filmor » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:42 AM UTC

jaredklewis wrote: post #476

filmor wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Let's try again:

- If you, as the licensee, sue Facebook on /any/ of their patents (not just on the ones that are subject to the patent grant), the license terminates immediately. - On the other hand, if Facebook, as the licensor, is only promising not to sue based on the /specific/ granted patents.

The "any" vs "specific" part is what people where annoyed about.

Re: Commons Clause

#486

Post by anyzen » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 10:13 AM UTC

rmc wrote: post #432

Karunamon wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly-ignorant legal question: Could the "CLA" be as simple as a checkbox on the PR submission form that says something to the effect of "You agree that your contributions to this repository, while owned by and credited to you, belong to (ownername) for the purposes of copyright and license enforcement?" Basically, making anyone who contributes aware that the contribution doesn't give them a claim in the copyright…

A CLA is basically a simple as you describe. It's just that some people (how many?) don't want their contributions to be ever closed source and might not agree to that term. Worse case, they fork your project, applying their changes to their fork. It's the social issue, not the legal issue, that's annoying about CLAs.

I have been currently exploring the option of open sourcing a project of mine and have researched CLAs a bit, but would love to be corrected if mistaken.

It is as simple - and it is not. You need to take care of special cases, like contributions from company employees in their free time (their company could still own rights to this work), people contributing other people's code (SO answers), patents and whatnot. Fortunately there are existing CLA agreements (Apache for instance).

As for this being the social issue, I don't know yet how big a problem that is. It's never bothered me before, as I recognize that maintainer might want to take the project in another direction in the future and since I don't want to maintain it, I am just happy that they are doing it for me. I will use CLA for my project and if someone doesn't like it, it's fine too - I don't mind forks (if they are well maintained, I'll just switch to them ;), and if someone doesn't want to contribute because of this, I don't want their contribution to be in my code anyway, because it limits my options in the future. There's a new post today on HN [0] that presents options pretty nicely, and it is very aligned with the conclusions I came to.

[0] https://www.influxdata.com/blog/its-time-for-the-open-source...

Re: Commons Clause

#487

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 11:25 AM UTC

zwily wrote: post #369

gdfasfklshg4 wrote: post #361

In other news I suspect someone will soon be forking Redis and development of an open source/free software fork will continue...

The license for Redis itself has not changed and will not change, I doubt there's a need to fork it.

[deleted]

Re: Commons Clause

#488

Post by Nemo_bis » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 12:01 PM UTC

thayne wrote: post #417

oblio wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious what better solutions you would have suggested would be. Dual licensing as commercial and AGPL.

Maybe I'm missing something, but how would AGPL protect Redis from cloud providers? The competitive advantage of aws, azure, and gcp comes from the ecosystem and available hardware, not from any modification or addition to the product.

And what level of integration makes an "addition to the product"? The problem is where you draw the line.

Re: Commons Clause

#489

Post by Nemo_bis » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 12:12 PM UTC

zwily wrote: post #369

gdfasfklshg4 wrote: post #361

In other news I suspect someone will soon be forking Redis and development of an open source/free software fork will continue...

The license for Redis itself has not changed and will not change, I doubt there's a need to fork it.

There was such a need for ownCloud, where the company and main maintainers pushed developers to not develop things in core which would compete with their proprietary extensions. https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/nextcloud/

Re: Commons Clause

#490

Post by Nemo_bis » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 12:18 PM UTC

yread wrote: post #310

wkoszek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be much better if they asked people who understand business of open source on how to drive more $. For example: it could as well be: "If you're any of: FB, APPL, MS, .... and you use this software in your cloud, you owe us $2M/yr" It'd be much easier to analyze the impact.

that would be discrimination and that's would also make it a non open source license 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

The freedom definition doesn't have such a requirement though. Sometimes it allows to prohibit some usages, e.g. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OpinionLicens...