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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

#151

Post by tedivm »

bentlegen wrote: post #145
tedivm wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some real deflection. While the overall thread was certainly about CodeCov, the questions I asked your head of open source where very clear and not tied to that specific case, and their responses were as well. I do admit it's nice hearing that the Director of Engineering at Sentry has a higher standard for what is or isn't open source software, and I hope that attitude spreads to the rest of the company. I sti…

I don’t feel it’s deflection because Armin is the creator of Flask, a founding engineer, and our Principal Architect. He additionally is a member Sentry’s senior engineering/product leadership, and a key contributor to our licensing efforts. It’s his blog and his personal comments, and we are not a monolith, but I feel his statements are a good reflection of our values. Mine at least. (Disclosure: I’m also a part of…

Even in that blog post, where you get so close, you do this-

> We want to be able to continue to develop Sentry and Codecov as single source Open Source projects

You're stilling calling it "Open Source", but are calling it "Single Source Open Source" as if that's some distinguisher. You're even lower casing the "single source" part to try to emphasis the Open Source part of it.

Your team spends paragraphs admitting it's not open source, all to just continue using open source to describe your projects. It does so in "official comms". You guys should just come up with a better name for this already and stop trying to claim software that isn't open source is open source.

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

#152

Post by arp242 »

James_K wrote: post #144
zeeg wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do we (Sentry) ever call ourselves FOSS? If FOSS is represented by the community in this thread I want no part of that toxicity. We do what we think is good and for developers and customers, and the broader open source ecosystem. A lot of us have been doing that for quite some time and will continue to do so.

EDIT: actually, you couldn't be more blatently lying about this. https://open.sentry.io/ > We're Open Source The title of the page. You really thought you could sneak that past me. You cannot seriously make a reply like this when you have an entire domain name dedicated to the tile "We're Open Source". That is the most obvious of obvious lies. Even the page title "yes, we're open source" is a kind of passive-aggressi…

To claim that the FSL and Sentry is completely disconnected from FOSS and something different entirely that should never under any shape be associated with it is, quite frankly, just weird. It's "almost FOSS" and they're quite upfront about that, more so than they really need to be. You can decide if you care about that or not, but it's just not misleading under any sort of reasonable definition. This is a profoundly silly and frankly toxic hill to die on.

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

#153

Post by benj111 »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #110
benj111 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I don't think it's that complicated.

If I release software under the gpl and to someone to integrate in a closed source application. You don't have gpl code in a closed source application. You have code with 2 licenses.

This is perfectly ok, the two pieces of software can coexist.

This would be the same, if correctly structured.

The only nit would be that code would be forever dual licenced. Some evil company could buy up the code base and do whatever they want and not release code back for 2 years.

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

#154

Post by James_K »

arp242 wrote: post #152
James_K wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: actually, you couldn't be more blatently lying about this. https://open.sentry.io/ > We're Open Source The title of the page. You really thought you could sneak that past me. You cannot seriously make a reply like this when you have an entire domain name dedicated to the tile "We're Open Source". That is the most obvious of obvious lies. Even the page title "yes, we're open source" is a kind of passive-aggressi…

To claim that the FSL and Sentry is completely disconnected from FOSS and something different entirely that should never under any shape be associated with it is, quite frankly, just weird. It's "almost FOSS" and they're quite upfront about that, more so than they really need to be. You can decide if you care about that or not, but it's just not misleading under any sort of reasonable definition. This is a profoundly…

Imagine if you had donated to a "charitably minded" organisation, then later discovered that they were only an "almost charity". I don't think you would be pleased with that. This is how someone donating their time and code to FSL projects might feel. They are not "quite upfront" about the fact that they aren't FOSS [1].

Open source is constantly under attack from various corporate entities, so it makes sense that we should guard our image. Asking people to be clear about what is and isn't FOSS is a basic consequence of that. FSL is a source available license, and I am simply asking that its users make this fact clear instead of trying to associate themselves with FOSS. That is not unreasonable. That is not toxic. That is simply asking that people don't obfuscate the truth.

[1] https://open.sentry.io/

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

#155

Post by [deleted] »

zeeg wrote: post #141
James_K wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read what I wrote? I said that I don't think they need to give people access to their software. That it might even be unfair to expect them to do so. But if they don't do it, they can't call themselves FOSS. It would be unfair to expect a restaurant to sell everything at a 50% discount, but if they said they were doing that and it turned out they weren't, I'd have every right to complain.

Where do we (Sentry) ever call ourselves FOSS? If FOSS is represented by the community in this thread I want no part of that toxicity. We do what we think is good and for developers and customers, and the broader open source ecosystem. A lot of us have been doing that for quite some time and will continue to do so.

[deleted]

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

#156

Post by bentlegen »

tedivm wrote: post #151
bentlegen wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t feel it’s deflection because Armin is the creator of Flask, a founding engineer, and our Principal Architect. He additionally is a member Sentry’s senior engineering/product leadership, and a key contributor to our licensing efforts. It’s his blog and his personal comments, and we are not a monolith, but I feel his statements are a good reflection of our values. Mine at least. (Disclosure: I’m also a part of…

Even in that blog post, where you get so close, you do this- > We want to be able to continue to develop Sentry and Codecov as single source Open Source projects You're stilling calling it "Open Source", but are calling it "Single Source Open Source" as if that's some distinguisher. You're even lower casing the "single source" part to try to emphasis the Open Source part of it. Your team spends paragraphs admitting i…

Feedback accepted. We’re still sharpening our language, and the FSL is the best articulation of what we want to do today.

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

#157

Post by James_K »

vanviegen wrote: post #143
James_K wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because freeloading competitors are stuck with two year old code, putting them at a disadvantage, or compelling then to invest in that old code (some of which might find its way into the original branch). This makes no sense though. If you don't want competition, why give your source away? If you do want competition, why put it at a disadvantage? That's why I am so negative about this license. It's just someone try…

> If you don't want competition, why give your source away? Of course they don't want competition, but what they do want is customers like me, who will never voluntarily choose to become fully dependent on a single third party for anything remotely important.

> what they do want is customers

Exactly. So they should stop pretending they're open source when this is really just source available as a sales decision. It's also bad for customers like you since you might be mislead into thinking they actually are open source, when in reality they do a lot to prevent any competing services which makes users much more locked-in than it might seem. If you want to switch, you'll either have to self-host if the issue is with their prices, or do 2 full years of development to implement your own version if they make a decision you don't like. It would probably be easier to switch to a competing service at that point, so you are just as locked into them as you are to anyone else.

It would be much better for you if they actually were open source because then you wouldn't be locked-in, and it would be at least a little better if they stopped lying about it.

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

#158

Post by bentlegen »

James_K wrote: post #134
bentlegen wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t feel “given you already have a proprietary license, why wouldn’t you just make it freely permissive” needs much explaining. We develop the software; the exclusivity period helps us monetize the work (vs giving it away to someone else who would). I think it’s worth reading the announcement from 2019 when Sentry first switched to BUSL. The original article links to many such pieces. https://blog.sentry.io/relic…

So, you don't want to competition from large cloud providers, but you also want your source to be available to users, and you want to give them a guarantee that the software will not simply die once you stop maintaining it. Then release your software under a source available non-compete license with the caveat that it will become open source when you stop working on it. (Basically what you have already done.) Don't p…

> Then release your software under a source available non-compete license with the caveat that it will become open source when you stop working on it. (Basically what you have already done.)

Done.

Note that the license website is pretty clear that it is not Open Source. If you find a place where that is not true, you can open an issue on the website’s repo and we’ll address.

https://fsl.software/

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

#159

Post by arp242 »

James_K wrote: post #154
arp242 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To claim that the FSL and Sentry is completely disconnected from FOSS and something different entirely that should never under any shape be associated with it is, quite frankly, just weird. It's "almost FOSS" and they're quite upfront about that, more so than they really need to be. You can decide if you care about that or not, but it's just not misleading under any sort of reasonable definition. This is a profoundly…

Imagine if you had donated to a "charitably minded" organisation, then later discovered that they were only an "almost charity". I don't think you would be pleased with that. This is how someone donating their time and code to FSL projects might feel. They are not "quite upfront" about the fact that they aren't FOSS [1]. Open source is constantly under attack from various corporate entities, so it makes sense that we…

"Open source" is not a charity and you don't donate to Sentry. People have come out of Guantanamo Bay less tortured than that analogy.

> Asking people to be clear about what is and isn't FOSS is a basic consequence of that.

You are throwing around wild accusations bordering on the conspiratorial and making demands that are just beyond reason. The simple good-faith reading is that the Sentry people want to be as "open as possible" without compromising their business to the point of being unviable. There is nothing I know in the entire context and history of Sentry that would dispute that, and you've certainly provided zero evidence of it.

Quite frankly it amazed me that the people at Sentry even try in the face of complete rubbish that's being thrown around here by various people.

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

#160

Post by growse »

zogrodea wrote: post #124
growse wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In brief: "use our product however you wish, as long as it is not to compete with us" doesn't define "us" (you now, or for all perpetuity? What if you get bought by a large litigious-happy database vendor?) or "compete" (same market segment? Geographical area? Product type? Specific use-case?). The clause is not written in good faith. It's designed to essentially make it enormously risky to use in any serious environ…

I don't think you're right to assert bad faith. Look at Sentry's track record allowing users to self-host, and this as a step that makes their work more permissive than what they previously had (for example, the shorter duration). I don't challenge that the license may have shortcomings, but I think better evidence is needed before bad faith can be asserted.

You may be right, I may be wrong. I just find it difficult to look at a phrase in a license which has been deliberately crafted to be intentionally vague as being anything else.
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