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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

#101

Post by CM30 »

geerlingguy wrote: post #62
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…

I don't understand the philosophy of wanting to use open source and gain the community / benefits of it... but using a proprietary sales model. It just doesn't work, and once you start calling users of your software who contribute nothing back anything resembling "freeloader" (whether or not you use that word), you've lost the whole concept of why most of us care about true open source. We can use it, we can learn fr…

This. I'm not sure why it's so difficult for people to grasp that open source in of itself is not a business model. It can make money sure, but for the most part that's neither guaranteed or likely. If anyone can take your code and resell it as a competitor or use it for free, then by definition you're not going to be able to monetise the way traditional software businesses can.

All the attempts to block large corporations from using their code, block competition using their work, etc feel like the actions of companies that went open source for the social brownie points and because it was the 'right' thing to do, then realised too late that their business isn't going to work the way they expected it to as a result.

If anyone wants to work on open source/release their work as open source, the best thing to do is for them to treat it like a hobby with no expectation of a return at the end. If they want money for their software and hate the idea of infinite competition, then open source isn't the right model for them/their company.

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

#102

Post by bentlegen »

sgift wrote: post #92
tedivm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mis…

> 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.

I don't think anyone in this thread has claimed that this license is the best thing since sliced bread, or even described it as "great". It is a license we have chosen to use that we think is good for us, and we think it has merit for similar SaaS businesses who choose to share their code as we do.

(If I'm mistaken and someone has claimed that, I am happy to be corrected.)

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

#103

Post by bentlegen »

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…

> when you try to mislead people into thinking those licenses are open source I think you're crossing a line.

Here's what Armin wrote in the parent linked article:

> ... But one thing is clear: until its expiration, the license does not qualify as Open Source. While I recognize the sensitivity around the term “Open Source”, I assert that the FSL's approach is more closely aligned with Open Source ideals than mere source availability. I consider it an “Eventually Open Source” license, though perhaps a more fitting term needs to be found.

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

#104

Post by ic_fly2 »

geerlingguy wrote: post #64
ic_fly2 wrote: post #13

I like it. I totally get the problem projects like mongo, redis and sentry face. AWS, azure etc just eat their lunch and don’t help anybody. That will kill open source in the long run. This still gives me access to inspect the code, contribute fixes I might want, self host if I feel like it or pay someone for the SaaS if I don’t, knowing the money goes to someone who contributes to the project. And if the original au…

Two years is like 20 years in most software ecosystems. If a JS library or mobile front end used this license, by two years the underlying tech that old version used would all be extinct.

You’re not going to need this for a js library that doesn’t have a saas component.

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

#105

Post by tsimionescu »

zogrodea wrote: post #98
growse wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The free software movement generally believes that software exists only to solve problems for its users. The creator of a piece of software has no moral rights to profit it from it more than any other user. Richard Stallman doesn't complain that Linus Torvalds used the GNU userspace tools to outocompete HURD out of existence.

It's perfectly reasonable not to subscribe to this ideology. I don't particularly think it is a very good or well motivated ideology. However, you can't pretend that you are a free software adherent while also wishing to prevent certain uses of your software.

Note that Stallman has explicitly come out against IBM RedHat's similar complaints about people distributing copies of RHEL for free for this very reason.

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

#106

Post by sgift »

bentlegen wrote: post #102
sgift wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mis…

> 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. I don't think anyone in this thread has claimed that this license is the best thing since sliced bread, or even described it as "great". It is a license we have chosen to use that we think is good for us, and we think it has mer…

Let me rephrase it a bit less aggressive, I think "disarming" the discussion is good: I understand the part that you think it works good for you (hey, why else would you use it?) and you hope it can help others. But the 'vibe' I get from your answers is very .. Stallman-y? And at least to me that's very off-putting.

But: I still wish you the best. The sustainability crisis in open source is a real problem and I hold my fingers crossed for a good solution.

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

#107

Post by arp242 »

geerlingguy wrote: post #62
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…

I don't understand the philosophy of wanting to use open source and gain the community / benefits of it... but using a proprietary sales model. It just doesn't work, and once you start calling users of your software who contribute nothing back anything resembling "freeloader" (whether or not you use that word), you've lost the whole concept of why most of us care about true open source. We can use it, we can learn fr…

What Sentry objects to is people setting up "super-error-reporting.com" with an unmodified copy of the Sentry software without contributing anything back, which undercuts their SaaS business model.

This is not a "user" in any common-sense definition of the term. And yes, these people are "getting a free ride" (i.e. "free riding") because they get software with zero cost to them. That's on its own is not really a bad thing – I "free ride" loads of stuff, as do we all – but the "undercuts our business model" is. I'm not a huge fan of the "free rider" phrasing because it doesn't emphasize the core problem, but it certainly means something different from what you're taking it means.

Simple saying "your business model sucks then", as the previous poster did, is too easy. SaaS is the obvious business model for something like Sentry, and this benefits not just Sentry but also the users who don't want to self-host (i.e. most users).

There are other ways, but they're much harder. PostgreSQL and Linux are mostly developed by organisations which use or offer PostreSQL and Linux as a service, so it's more or less the same business model but with extra steps. Ideally having the SaaS company separated from the software development like that is better, but also really really hard to do because it's a catch-22: you need to develop a community for the software, but to develop the software you need a community. PostgreSQL's and Linux's pre-cloud roots are a huge boon here.

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

#108

Post by bentlegen »

tedivm wrote: post #61
jorams wrote: post #35

I might be missing something here, but this doesn't seem compatible with the bazaar model at all. You say > It also enables contributions by the community for the latest version and not old source code. But you will not be able to accept such contributions without an additional license, because you yourself would be unable to use them for a Competing Use (running your service). This makes it much closer to a cathedra…

That's their goal. The head of sentry's open source policy has openly stated that he, and sentry as a whole, want to change the definition of open source so that it has additional limits that make it easier to profit off of and control. This conversation from three months ago is really enlightening: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36972824 When the head of open source was explicitly asked about whether they're t…

> but are people who are trying to replace open source software with a shared source version

Note that the thread you link to is a situation where they took an entirely closed source product, CodeCov, and made it source available under BUSL (and now FSL).

> Unlike other companies, such as Hashicorp, who admit that their software is no longer open source Sentry wants to have their cake and eat it too.

From the parent article (FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral):

> But one thing is clear: until its expiration, the license does not qualify as Open Source. While I recognize the sensitivity around the term “Open Source”, I assert that the FSL's approach is more closely aligned with Open Source ideals than mere source availability. I consider it an “Eventually Open Source” license, though perhaps a more fitting term needs to be found.

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

#109

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

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?

GPL doesn’t work in an environment that requires further restrictions or where the distributor doesn’t want to uphold it. For instance you won’t be able to put GPL code onto the App Store. The viral nature of the license also carries perceived business risk and harms adoption.

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

#110

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

benj111 wrote: post #84
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true in principle but not how the FSL functions. The FSL ceases to exists at the two year anniversary and turns into another license (eg: Apache 2). If it were to turn into GPL the before and after code pieces would not be compatible. The original author would retain copyright and they alone could make that software available under another license (eg: dual licensing) but nobody else would be in that position…

Yes. I release software X under license that turns to Y license after z years. I am free to take exactly the same code and do the same at a later date. Or are you referring to code by a second submitter where their code goes gpl, but then you need to re get their permission to restart the clock. I still think you could work around that if the license is structured correctly. Treat the source tree as it stands at a po…

At FSL-GPL artifact would raise very interesting legal questions I don’t want to explore :)
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