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I changed my license

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Re: I changed my license

#31

Post by brainwad »

LtWorf wrote: post #24
ricardobeat wrote: post #13

> We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires. As a long-time developer and consumer of OSS I have to disagree. Open-source software has had an enormous effect on the world, and that... was kind of the point? When we licensed things as MIT we knew that corporatio…

But why should I work for free so that companies can fire my fellow human beings?

The causality is wrong here. You chose to work for free with no reward, and _then_ companies found your work and used it. Presumably you started out working for free because it was intrinsically rewarding (otherwise: stop doing work you hate for free?).

Re: I changed my license

#32

Post by apt-get »

Worth noting that the "escape hatch" clauses in the EUPL that allow converting it into other licenses mean it's only ever as strong as the weakest license it names for such an operation, AKA EPL/MPL/LGPL.

Any actor that wants to mess around with providing a closed extension on a network service can exercise that option with an EUPL codebase, so if you care about that, you're better off explicitly naming the AGPL or whatnot.

EUPL is built for government agencies first, and most of the focus is ensuring that nobody has to worry about mix-and-matching it with other copyleft licenses, plus legal language that covers and harmonizes variations in notions of copyright/patents/intellectual property across EU countries, not so much waging war against hyperscalers. (But it's still great to have around!)

Re: I changed my license

#33

Post by alturp »

> "Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires."

Claiming this and afterwards deciding to use a weak copy left license like EUPL (which can be integrated with proprietary software without disclosing source code) instead of AGPLv3, which really closes SaaS loop is a bit lost to me.

Re: I changed my license

#34

Post by kypro »

charcircuit wrote: post #16

>All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires. This is not true. Open source is fundamental to how easy users can create software in the LLM era. Users and developers have gained tremendous value. Saying they have gained little is simply false. And it's a good thing to make it possible for big corporations to make things che…

Also theres not multiple trillionaires in the world, and the one trillionaire we have did that largely by innovating and creating new stuff rather than just leveraging existing OSS for profit...

Re: I changed my license

#35

Post by ricardobeat »

mnahkies wrote: post #12

What are people's thoughts/experiences about dual licencing? Eg: is there a clean way to dual license such that hobbyist, and exploratory work (eg: a proof of concept done in a commercial setting) are allowed, but using it in production requires a fee? If you've done this, has it been successful? Obviously there's been many projects relicense over recent years (terraform, redis, etc) - but it's less clear to me if th…

No success yet, but I recently found BUSL - used by Terraform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License

It stops companies from building high-revenue products for free, while not being as scary as AGPL/LGPL from the business perspective, and completely unrestricted for everyone else (despite not being technically an open-source license).

Re: I changed my license

#36

Post by LoganDark »

brainwad wrote: post #27
LoganDark wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article seems pretty clear that the LGPL is too weak compared to the EUPL for this author, and one of the main concerns is the "SaaS loophole" which I assume would be addressed by the AGPL but also seems addressed by the EUPL.

But the EUPL itself says that derivative works may be distributed under the LGPL instead, as long as those works are derived from both a EUPL and LGPL parent. This seems kinda trivial to abuse and the author should have noticed this clause if that was their main concern.

Huh, that's a pretty massive loophole. Pretty much makes the whole license irrelevant.

Re: I changed my license

#38

Post by mihaelm »

mnahkies wrote: post #12

What are people's thoughts/experiences about dual licencing? Eg: is there a clean way to dual license such that hobbyist, and exploratory work (eg: a proof of concept done in a commercial setting) are allowed, but using it in production requires a fee? If you've done this, has it been successful? Obviously there's been many projects relicense over recent years (terraform, redis, etc) - but it's less clear to me if th…

I think it definitely hurts adoption. No hobbyist or experimenter wants to delve into legalities head first by first having to understand the licensing terms of software, whereas permissive licenses like MIT and Apache 2.0 are easily-understood and familiar.

The solution is probably to be more selective what you're open sourcing if you're planning to build a business. And what you open source, you do it under a permissive license so people don't feel limited should they wish to play around with it.

A more restrictive license might be more apt if you don't really want to open source, but you must for regulatory reasons.

Re: I changed my license

#39

Post by ricardobeat »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #6

For FOSS I personally prefer Apache 2.0 license, as 10 years from now I have no idea what people will need for their projects. Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work. Just don't redirect commercial support tickets onto community projects, or get neglected customers to contact authors. The way I see it... is symbiotic commercial relationships are important, as people can get…

This, for some reason, has become a controversial idea — as evidenced by your comment being downvoted.

I don’t understand what angle people are coming from, when they disregard the community effects of open-source software entirely. If your main goal is to make money, there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a business instead.

Re: I changed my license

#40

Post by addandsubtract »

mnahkies wrote: post #12

What are people's thoughts/experiences about dual licencing? Eg: is there a clean way to dual license such that hobbyist, and exploratory work (eg: a proof of concept done in a commercial setting) are allowed, but using it in production requires a fee? If you've done this, has it been successful? Obviously there's been many projects relicense over recent years (terraform, redis, etc) - but it's less clear to me if th…

Isn't that what Epic, MiniMax, Z.ai, and others are doing, where a license is free for personal use / low revenue projects, but cost a (steep) fee for commercial use? They don't use dual licenses, but rather a tiered license.
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