Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

lucumr.pocoo.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 201 posts

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

#191

Post by dsagal »

It makes sense for a successful product that’s being hurt by competitors packaging it up and selling as a paid service. My advice: for a younger product, keep it actually open-source (FOSS).

With either Sentry’s FSL license or FOSS, you as a user can run your own. If you want a paid managed service, you can pay Sentry. With FOSS, there can be competitors who offer such service using the same exact up-to-date version, and undercut Sentry on price (since they aren't paying developers). With FSL, they’d have to run a 2-year old version. That’s a disincentive to competitors.

BUT: even with FOSS, a similar disincentive exists, because the maker of the FOSS software could decide to change license, forcing competitors to run a stale version or invest into their own development, or pay up for licensing.

Seems if you are small enough, pure FOSS is better for this reason (the option to release future changes under a different license is always there). But if you are big enough to have competitors, and you can’t convince enough competitors to pay or revenue share (e.g. through support agreements), then FSL can be a way to twist their arms without hurting most other users too much. (It does hurt to some extent, as the many arguments in this discussion point out.)

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

#192

Post by frognumber »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #189
frognumber wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's very hard to read your comment and take anything away but a "holier-than-thou" attitude. If that's the case, you will have a very hard time selling to folks like me. That's bad business. Even if I'm wrong, you need to figure out how to reach customers like me. > If you take issue with Open Source developers having opinions about Open Source licenses and similar ones, then I'm afraid you will run into many more…

> If that's the case, you will have a very hard time selling to folks like me. I'm not even sure what I have to sell to you? What do you think I'm selling to you?

https://sentry.io/pricing/

You've taken me from: Nice competitor to New Relic, and open-source.

To: Nice competitor to New Relic, and open-source, but with an ego problem, doesn't want me as a customer, and likely a bit incompetent.

Every public interaction is about building brand and sales. I'm offering transparency on impact. That's a gift. It's hard to get frank customer feedback. You're treating it as an insult.

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

#193

Post by phkahler »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #32
phkahler wrote: post #30

Please stop using the Apache licenses. License compatibility is too important. Use MIT (my preference) or BSD if you want a "permissive" one and GPL or LGPL otherwise (v3+ preferred). Anything else is just making non-reusable code. Apache is the same org that actively harms one of the highest visibility open source projects by keeping "Open Office" around. Their licenses are similarly unwelcome IMO.

> GPL or LGPL otherwise (v3+ preferred). I'm confused about your concern then if v3+ is preferred. Apache 2 is compatible with the GPL 3 family of licenses, it's just not compatible with the GPL 2 family of licenses. The only incompatibility of Apache 2 are GPLv2 licenses, but so is GPL 3. Apache 2 has some benefits to the user over MIT, but the GPL incompatibility is why there are two flavors of FSL.

>> Apache 2 is compatible with the GPL 3 family of licenses, it's just not compatible with the GPL 2 family of licenses.

I doubt that. I'm not even sure the MIT license is compatible with GPL because it requires the notice be kept intact, which might be considered an additional condition if the code is merged with GPL licensed code. Apache 2 and GPL 3 might be compatible in spirit, but I doubt they are compatible to the point you can pull some Apache code into a GPL3 project and drop the text of the Apache license. Also, if it is essentially the same terms then there is NO reason to actually have a different license and it just confuses things.

IMHO we actually need a new "do whatever you want" license besides MIT and BSD that make zero conditions on derived works or their inclusion of any particular license text. OTOH that would seem to imply you could claim the code as your own in the derived work (and then try to sue people using other legit forks for example).

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

#194

Post by ferringb »

k__ wrote: post #81
bentlegen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people we're concerned about are not the hundreds of thousands of Sentry users, including those that self-host. We're concerned about people who have taken the software for the purposes of competing directly against us, that hinders our ability to monetize the work. Monetizing the work helps us continue improving the software and distribute it for free use, benefitting those aforementioned real users (e.g. https:…

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?

I think folks need to take a step back from 'business model' and think about how one does large scale FOSS w/out existing on ramen for a decade or two. In the old days you could do FOSS via university gigs (IE, an institution effectively donating resources) or work for a corp that uses said FOSS as part of their products.

When the FOSS you're trying to build and share isn't covered by those- when you need to self fund so you can have an actual life- that's where it's always broken down. Patreon/gofundme type stuff can fly in single dev setups, but doesn't scale when it's a large team. There are exceptions to what I'm stating, but as a general rule, this is my experience across a couple decades of FOSS.

So if you want to build this thing full time and share it with others, and not subsist just on cardboard ramen and other folks coaches, what's your options here? Provide a paid service in parallel (we host it for you). What do you do when others take your development work- which has an inbuilt RD cost (development)- and try to compete with you via offering lower prices since they're just paying hosting rather than hosting + development?

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

#196

Post by pabs3 »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #65
mcny wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on AGPL? Is it not good enough? Do you think (lets say it out loud because we all know what we are talking about) Amazon Web Services will have advantage over you if you picked AGPL as your license? At the end of the day, I think your sales team has to earn its salary. It can't just phone it in like (I assume) Microsoft sales does with Microsoft SQL Server. Why isn't AGPL good enough? Genuinely…

> What are your thoughts on AGPL? Is it not good enough? I'm generally not a fan of GPL based licensed because it means that you create a massive dis-balance between the original copyright holder (who can dual license for commercialization) and everybody else. It might be fine for Sentry or another SaaS business, but then you cannot even take pieces of code and use it in another project that cannot be GPL licensed be…

What about GPL projects without a CLA that have multiple copyright holders, so that none of them can dual license?

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

#198

Post by whit537 »

bentlegen wrote: post #171
James_K wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to this link https://open.sentry.io/ and explain how it is made clear that Sentry isn't actually open source. You can't. No amount of good faith turns "We're Open Source and we don't feel the need to qualify that statement" into "we aren't open source but we'd like to be close to". They are even directly asking in that page for help (for people to volunteer their time). The title of that page is a lie and they mak…

Re: open.sentry.io, some of the language should probably be more clear. We’ll take a look at it.

https://github.com/getsentry/team-ospo/issues/211 ftr

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

#199

Post by frognumber »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #109
midasuni wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll give a small suggestion: If you want to reach consensus, don't use pejorative terms.

Here's a history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Viral_licensing

FYI: The Linux kernel is GPL, and is used on most cell phones, routers, and a huge number of other embedded devices. It powers most of the servers on the internet too. It's simply not the case that it has been any hindrance to commercial use. You should reconsider some of your comments. You equate GPL with non-commercial.

I've built software under GPL-style licenses which has generated hundreds of millions of dollars of commercial value.

It limits some modes of commercialization, but this is one of the places your thinking is confused.

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

#200

Post by zeeg »

em-bee wrote: post #184
zeeg wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/getsentry You suggesting we are anything but what we are just makes you look like you have an agenda at best, or foolish at worst. All you're doing is harming the broader community by arguing about nonsense which is factually proven to be untrue. You came in here trolling as best you could, making false statements without reading or educating yourself on any components. Making statements as if you'…

FOSS is not Open Source sorry, what? All Free Software licenses are also Open Source licenses. so how can FOSS be not Open Source?

For clarity, I meant the two terms are not interchangeable.
Post reply on HN