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Death of an open-source business model

joemorrison.medium.com

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Re: Death of an open-source business model

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can write such a license if you want (or hire a lawyer to write it), but it's not FOSS and it never will be. Why is it important to you that such a license is recognized as FOSS?

Like laws, definitions change with changing times and circumstances. I am a Debian Developer and very happy to discuss this with other members of the community. Why is it important to you that such a license is not recognised as FOSS?

I can't imagine it would go down well at all with Debian users if random packages (in the free or the nonfree repo) came with clauses saying you now owe royalties to random parties. If you installed 10 packages on your company's server that each ask for 20% royalty, your company now would owe 200% royalties. It would just make the distro unusable by companies.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#162
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is stopping you from using your own source available license. Mongo did it, and they're doing okay. It seems like you're arguing something different: You (general you) want the distinction and, more importantly, goodwill that the "open source" label gives you, but without actually having to fit the parameters of "open source".

No, not really. I'm just asking why an innocent question along the lines of "couldn't we.." gets immediately shut down as "No, That's not open source". What is ultimately wrong with having real world limitations to a licence?

> What is ultimately wrong with having real world limitations to a licence?

Nothing? Again, Mongo is doing it, and seems to be fine.

Conversely, why do you need to call those licenses with "real world limitations" open source?

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#163
I believe this is mis-stating the extent of redis re-licensing.

http://antirez.com/news/120

> Today a page about the new Common Clause license in the Redis Labs web site was interpreted as if Redis itself switched license. This is not the case, Redis is, and will remain, BSD licensed.

> What is happening instead is that certain Redis modules, developed inside Redis Labs, are now released under the Common Clause (using Apache license as a base license). This means that basically certain enterprise add-ons…

That is from a few years ago, but I believe it's still true, and basic redis is still FreeBSD. This isn't a slight of hand where "basic redis core" is open source but not really useful by itself, I think the majority of redis installs have never been using those "enterprise add-ons".

I don't think this is necessarily a problem for the author's theory in general, which I am generally sympathetic to as accurately describing something going on in the software world right now, but I think it's misinformation about redis.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#164

I believe this is mis-stating the extent of redis re-licensing. http://antirez.com/news/120 > Today a page about the new Common Clause license in the Redis Labs web site was interpreted as if Redis itself switched license. This is not the case, Redis is, and will remain, BSD licensed. > What is happening instead is that certain Redis modules, developed inside Redis Labs, are now released under the Common Clause (usin…

Redis core is still BSD-3-Clause https://github.com/redis/redis/blob/6.0/COPYING

But it doesn't change the essence of the argument posited by the author. The redis modules in question were originally AGPL. Redis Labs relicensed them to Apache+Commons Clause. Both Redis Labs and Mongo reacted to pressure by relicensing software.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#165

I believe this is mis-stating the extent of redis re-licensing. http://antirez.com/news/120 > Today a page about the new Common Clause license in the Redis Labs web site was interpreted as if Redis itself switched license. This is not the case, Redis is, and will remain, BSD licensed. > What is happening instead is that certain Redis modules, developed inside Redis Labs, are now released under the Common Clause (usin…

Redis core is still BSD-3-Clause https://github.com/redis/redis/blob/6.0/COPYING But it doesn't change the essence of the argument posited by the author. The redis modules in question were originally AGPL. Redis Labs relicensed them to Apache+Commons Clause. Both Redis Labs and Mongo reacted to pressure by relicensing software.

But then redis is essentially still the "open core" model he is saying is dead.

I agree it doesn't really disprove his general story (which I agree is a trend), it doesn't have to be universal to be a trend, a very strong trend even, there can be special unusual circumstances behind redis, or it can just not yet have succumbed but be on the way, or it can just be an unexplained exception to a strong trend.

It just makes redis not a great example to choose, and it makes his article misleading giving people the wrong idea about what's going on with redis.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#166
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that there's a formal definition of capitalized "Open Source" by the OSI, but I'm also not enchanted by that being the only definition for lower-case "open source". I think that the lower case open source is really more about a general approach to software (or intellectual property in general, really). Some people want to use terms like "libre" to refer to projects that have most of the practical characteristi…

People forget that the OSI and the people behind it neither own, nor invented, the term 'open source.' They want to give you the impression that they do and they did, but they don't and they didn't.

False.

In the application to software, Bruce Perrens most definitely did define ther term, based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and the Free Software Foundation's Three Freedoms definition of Free Software, in June 1997:

https://opensource.org/docs/osd

https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

https://perens.com/2017/09/26/on-usage-of-the-phrase-open-so...

The term was not previously used with regard to software, though the intelligence community have used the phrase "open sources" to refer to unclassified information.b

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#167
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems problematic. You've excluded subsidiaries, but what about companies which aren't controlled by the larger corp? They can buy hosting from whomever from companies they don't control in the slightest, and if there's a market for your software it seems likely those would spring up on their own. What do you do? (1) Ignore the problem -- your license has no teeth. (2) Hold the larger corp responsible for payment any…

> what about companies which aren't controlled by the larger corp? Include these companies in the definition? > What do you do? Generally, there will be situations that are hard to define in a license, as is the revenue sharing part of it - and that's probably why no such license exists yet. The easiest way around this is for a blanket catch-all clause such as "you have 1 year to start negotiations with us, after whi…

> Include these companies in the definition?

Surely not by name if they don't exist yet? And the rest of the bullets were pointing at why it's difficult to pinpoint them with additional terms.

> The easiest way around this is for a blanket catch-all clause such as "you have 1 year to start negotiations with us, after which this license automatically expires".

Which is great if you have some kind of legal foothold on megacorp, but if they're sufficiently legally isolated from you via intermediaries then additional clauses won't help.

> AGPLv3 is enforceable by contract law

In some jurisdictions (and copyright law in most others), but it doesn't magically hold third-parties responsible. It holds first-party users of your license responsible in a way which transitively affects third parties (copyleft being the mechanism). You might then claim that you could just do that for this contract too, but that's precisely my 3rd point above; doing so is unnecessarily restrictive to Elaborating on those restrictions, if randocorp is directly responsible for transitive users then they take on a huge risk whenever they have any customer because that customer might acquire megacorp as a customer at any point in time unbeknownst to them. If randocorp is not responsible for transitive users, then the mechanism for generating a connection between you and megacorp needs to be something like copyleft, but critically it has to somehow apply to contracts and interactions beyond copyright. At least it does if I'm understanding you correctly -- hypothetically, if you build a search tool, randocorp hosts the search tool, and megacorp buys searches from randocorp, would you like them to be targeted by the revenue sharing portion of your >X licenses? Anyway, assuming that's what you meant, copyleft by itself doesn't suffice, and you'd need something significantly more invasive than AGPLv3 to accomplish your goals.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#168
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super familiar with AGPL and how it might address this issue, but I would love to be enlightened.

Cloud providers and enterprises are afraid of AGPL being "super-viral" so they'll either pay for the non-AGPL version or not touch the software.

Or follow the license and provide their changes for maintainers to merge upstream, making the original project better. Isn't that the point of GPL licenses to begin with?

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#169
post #128

Could it be that, rather than the death of a particular variety of open source ("Open Core"), that the author has in fact described yet another open source business model? One that specifically extends Open Core? Consider: - Company releases the Secret Sauce as open source under a highly permissive (non-reciprocal) license - Secret Sauce coalesces a large, engaged community around it - Company pays the bills with sup…

This is actually a very interesting take on this phenomena I haven't come across before, cheers.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#170
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this article from 2014 that touches on some of the same great points you're making here: https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/13/please-dont-tell-me-you-wa...

One thing I recently stumbled upon that struck me was Bryan Cantrill's writeup at http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2018/12/14/open-source-confronts... and https://sfosc.org/docs that was linked from that blog post. Quick takeaways about open source business models: - Dual licensing: Well, poison. Who's want to sign away their copyrights so that some company can make a buck? It's essentially proprietary software that also…

Excuse my ignorance, but what's the difference between dual licensing and a free software product?
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