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Campsite switches to Creative Commons Non-Commercial license

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Re: Campsite switches to Creative Commons Non-Commercial license

#61

Post by jsiepkes »

So Campsite got acqui-hired by Notion, tells their customers in a blog [1] something along the lines: "Thanks for all the fish, you've got 2 months to migrate to something else.".

They could have open sourced it in a way which would have allowed customers to atleast maintain their own install. But instead they release it under a license which says "non-commercial". So even if you were to export your own data you can't even self-host it.

It seems to me rug pulls such as these are bad for the entire industry. Why would you invest in these kind of products if there is real chance you'll get rug-pulled?

[1] https://www.campsite.com/blog/campsite-winding-down

Re: Campsite switches to Creative Commons Non-Commercial license

#62

Post by RobotToaster »

wink wrote: post #53
alexvitkov wrote: post #15

How exactly do you use what looks like work-planning software non-commerically? As for the license, it's their code and they can release it under whatever license they want, but they obviously shouldn't call it open source. Usually companies do this sort of thing to take advantage FOSS's reputation, but in this case it just looks like ignorance to me.

Without having a deeper look into it - could be a replacement for any non-profit or bigger sports club or whatever org that uses Slack or Zulip or whatever now. But that's about everything that comes to my mind...

Even that's a minefield, a non-profit that sells things (like a sports club selling merch) is still potentially engaging in commercial activity.

Re: Campsite switches to Creative Commons Non-Commercial license

#65

Post by ensignavenger »

jsiepkes wrote: post #61

So Campsite got acqui-hired by Notion, tells their customers in a blog [1] something along the lines: "Thanks for all the fish, you've got 2 months to migrate to something else.". They could have open sourced it in a way which would have allowed customers to atleast maintain their own install. But instead they release it under a license which says "non-commercial". So even if you were to export your own data you can'…

Which is why strongly favoring products that are already real open source is the best business decision.

Re: Campsite switches to Creative Commons Non-Commercial license

#67

Post by ensignavenger »

j5155 wrote: post #25

Campsite team, if you happen to be reading this: consider whether a more permissive license still meeting the FOSS definition, like GPL or AGPL, would better fit your needs. GPL means that anyone who modifies the source code, or integrates it into a larger work, has to release the modified version. So this would ensure that everyone’s contributions continue to help the wider community. As a side effect, it would also…

I would prefer a more permissive license, such as MIT or Apache. Zulip is similar software, produced by a commercial company, and it is MIT licensed. The primary reason for this is that it isn't always clear with copyleft licenses where the boundary is between being a new separate work that uses the GPL software API, or when it is a derivative work of the GPL software. Also, as they are shutting down, there isn't really any reason for them to worry about some one else using the code in a permissive way.

(That being said, a copyleft license is miles ahead of the CC NC license for software!)

Re: Campsite switches to Creative Commons Non-Commercial license

#69

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

Every README should explain what the software actually is. "an open source version of the Campsite app" tells me absolute nothing — what IS the Campsite app? I would have submitted a PR with a fix, but the README also states they wouldn't accept such a PR anyway.

Re: Campsite switches to Creative Commons Non-Commercial license

#70

Post by that_guy_iain »

abetusk wrote: post #7

Campsite is not open source. From the LICENSE file on the repo [0]: > Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International [0] https://github.com/campsite/campsite/blob/dae5db8611e8adc057...

Honestly, I find this whole OSI open-source definition annoying.

I'm pretty sure if this went to court a judge would say it's legally is open source because the source code is open. The fact, FOSS folk want to add a bunch of requirements to open source to make it harder for commercial software just stinks and that is really what it is. "You can't claim you're open source because you limit competitors using your code for free" Pfft.

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