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FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

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Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#91

Post by James_K »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #78
James_K wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a niche case it's not really worth talking about, but the original devs still released it under GPL. The FSL is literally just the Apache license in this case. So you aren't arguing for the FSL, just that the original devs should have used Apache instead of GPL. That's just your opinion. If there was a version of the FSL that converted to GPL after two years, you'd have the exact same issue. The FSL port…

> If there was a version of the FSL that converted to GPL after two years That would not work to begin with, and I already explained elsewhere in this comment thread why. Look, I understand that you do not subscribe to this argument, there is very little I can do to convince you otherwise. I'm coming out of a community that embraces permissive licenses. The FSL plays that tune with a twist that is the exclusivity per…

> I already explained elsewhere in this comment thread why.

Your explanation seemed to be predicated on the idea that you would have to stick to the terms of your own licence. This isn't true. A license only describes what other people can do. As the copyright holder, you can do whatever you want. For instance, you can offer a dual license, or offer different licenses to different people. An FSL-GPL is perfectly feasible.

> But some of these are depending on the goodwill of a future actor.

The FSL also depends on this. Someone releasing FSL code could easily switch to a different license at some point in the same way that someone who was releasing their past source code could decide to stop doing so. This would result in an almost identical situation in practice. The FSL still offers no difference from just releasing the source voluntarily, because it is just you agreeing to release the source voluntarily.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#92

Post by sgift »

tedivm wrote: post #82
bentlegen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like you intentionally omitted his immediate follow-up to your quoted comment: > > my theory about embrace/extend/extinguish seems to be as accurate as I thought. > This is confused. Embrace/extend/extinguish means to initially participate in an open standard and then extend the standard in such a way that the non-extended version is sidelined. I'd encourage people to read the entire thread rather than seize…

> But if you believe pursuing additional licensing mechanisms means we're destroying OSS, there is probably little I can do to disavow you of that notion. Speaking of disingenuous, every time the sentry people come in here to talk it's always strawmen. My issue is with sentry trying to redefine open source, not your creation of new licenses. If you want to put out proprietary or shared source licenses I'm cool with t…

> Speaking of disingenuous, every time the sentry people come in here to talk it's always strawmen.

Good that I'm not the only one who feels that way. Every comment by Sentry people I've read here so far was basically a mix of straw man, word lawyering ("We didn't say this. We said something that means the same to anyone who doesn't actively try to think of some fringe interpretation, but OBVIOUSLY that means you misquoted us. How unfair.") and aggressive "you are against us! Meanie!"

Or in other words, to use their quote back on them: If you are convinced your license is the best thing since sliced bread, there is probably little we can do to disavow you of that notion.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#93

Post by growse »

bentlegen wrote: post #75
growse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but then just do proprietary and then release the software under Apache. What's the actual point of the FSL?

Proprietary wouldn't allow for free, non-competing use of the software during the 2 year period. The FSL does.

Well, it does up until the point you decide an awkward user is "Competing" and then you start legal action :)

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#94

Post by joshuaissac »

James_K wrote: post #53
bentlegen wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My interpretation of this license is that it's effectively saying: "you can't do anything with this while we're working on it". I disagree. It depends if you're forking it to use it, or if you're forking it to compete commercially against the authors. The license does not prevent you from the former. You could fork it and do what you want with it to monitor your own non-competing software. And if your goal is the l…

No license can prevent you from making alterations to your private copy of a piece of software.

> No license can prevent you from making alterations to your private copy of a piece of software.

The right to make alterations to someone else's intellectual property does not exist except as granted by licence or fair use exceptions.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#95

Post by James_K »

bentlegen wrote: post #87
k__ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems some kind of dissonance for me. You create a new license to keep competitors artificially in check. Doesn't this hint to a flawed business model?

Sentry was already using BUSL (Business Source License) for 4+ years with a non-competitive Additional Use Grant. So we had already been doing this for a long time. The new license actually allows for more competition, because it has a shorter change date to permissive OSS than the aforementioned prior license (2 years vs 3 years). So another read of this is: the business model is going great, so much so that we're c…

So why don't you switch to a fully progressive license? What you're saying here is "we're putting our competitors at slightly less of a disadvantage, and that's good", so why not release under a free license and not put your competitors at any disadvantage? Either you want competition or you don't. What's offensive about this to some people is that you're trying to have the best of both worlds. Pretend that you welcome competition while still suppressing it. I don't think there's anything wrong with you not giving competitors your source code, but I'd rather you were honest about it instead of using this silly half-measure.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#96

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

James_K wrote: post #91
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there was a version of the FSL that converted to GPL after two years That would not work to begin with, and I already explained elsewhere in this comment thread why. Look, I understand that you do not subscribe to this argument, there is very little I can do to convince you otherwise. I'm coming out of a community that embraces permissive licenses. The FSL plays that tune with a twist that is the exclusivity per…

> I already explained elsewhere in this comment thread why. Your explanation seemed to be predicated on the idea that you would have to stick to the terms of your own licence. This isn't true. A license only describes what other people can do. As the copyright holder, you can do whatever you want. For instance, you can offer a dual license, or offer different licenses to different people. An FSL-GPL is perfectly feas…

> This isn't true. A license only describes what other people can do. As the copyright holder, you can do whatever you want.

In the future. A copyright holder can’t change the artifact you are already holding.

> The FSL also depends on this. Someone releasing FSL code could easily switch to a different license at some point

Sure. At which point it no longer is FSL licensed. The code drop of today is fully open source two years from now. Nobody can take that away.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#97

Post by jwildeboer »

midasuni wrote: post #40
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire point of this license is to prevent forks of software. If that was the case, it would be a different license. The point of the license is to enable forks, but with some restrictions. There are many (once) Open Source software projects where the rights holder at one point made decisions that required a full community (or even commercial fork). The license does not want to take that opportunity away. From…

What about the GPL prevents adoption?

The flawed beliefs of Venture Capitalism, IMHO. (A)GPL scares their money away.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#98

Post by zogrodea »

growse wrote: post #88
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "harmful freeloaders". The phrase you quoted "harmful freeloaders" does not appear in any of our texts. The word we used are "free-riders" and that does not refer to our users. Our users are free to use the software without contributions in any matter they want. What is not acceptable is to use it to run a competing SaaS business.

> The phrase you quoted "harmful freeloaders" does not appear in any of our texts. This is nit-picking pedantry. The term "free-riders" appears six times on this site https://fsl.software/ , but my bad for using a slightly different term that has the same meaning. From your very public announcement and linking to the text, it's pretty clear what you think of some of your users. > Our users are free to use the softwar…

Would you mind explaining why you have a problem with a clause stating "use our product however you wish, as long as it is not to compete with us"? It sounds reasonable to me and the opposite which you are defending sounds unsustainable and harmful to the open source ecosystem.

(There was a talk given at Strange Loop titled The Economic of Programming Languages by the creator of Elm about this and it sounds like he's hesitant to release something interesting he's been working on because of it. So it's a real issue in my opinion that can lead to a worse outcome for most of us.)

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#99

Post by bentlegen »

James_K wrote: post #95
bentlegen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sentry was already using BUSL (Business Source License) for 4+ years with a non-competitive Additional Use Grant. So we had already been doing this for a long time. The new license actually allows for more competition, because it has a shorter change date to permissive OSS than the aforementioned prior license (2 years vs 3 years). So another read of this is: the business model is going great, so much so that we're c…

So why don't you switch to a fully progressive license? What you're saying here is "we're putting our competitors at slightly less of a disadvantage, and that's good", so why not release under a free license and not put your competitors at any disadvantage? Either you want competition or you don't. What's offensive about this to some people is that you're trying to have the best of both worlds. Pretend that you welco…

All of this is covered in the article.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#100

Post by arp242 »

growse wrote: post #48

The definition of "harmful free-riding" is not good, and its use to justify the license is problematic. > Consequently, the common pool resource may be under-produced, overused, or degraded. Additionally, it has been shown that despite evidence that people tend to be cooperative by nature (a prosocial behaviour), the presence of free-riders causes cooperation to deteriorate, perpetuating the free-rider problem.” Soft…

> If your business model relies on no-one else using your software to compete with you, don't open-source the software.

So you would rather have completely closed source instead of Open Source-but-for-one -detail?

That's some puritanical ideology-driven nonsense. Be against this license if you wish, that fine and I'll happily debate anyone about it. But this is not a position I consider valid because obviously "more open" is better.

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