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Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

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Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#171

Post by verisimilitudes »

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #146
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGPL is vulnerable to certain workarounds in the same way that GPL was. The CC class of non-commercial licenses might be more applicable, but that may harm adoption. EDIT: honestly not sure why this is so heavily downvoted (-7 as of the edit), the whole point of SSPL and other licenses is to address the "workarounds" that Amazon and others have discovered in AGPL

Would you mind elaborating on that? I am interested in a super-copyleft license for my next project and thought that AGPL was the "best" option out there. In what ways can it be bypassed?

Don't be fooled. I use the AGPLv3 for almost all of my software because it's the strongest copyleft license currently available. Apparently, the only reason the AGPLv3 and GPLv3 are different is because of public outrage from some groups, but there's no disadvantages to use the AGPLv3 over the GPLv3 and I recommend it.

What is your project? I'd like to know, if you're willing to tell.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#172

Post by klez »

tsimionescu wrote: post #151
phkahler wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did they create SSPL when AGPL already existed? IMHO all use cases can probably be covered by MIT/BSD, GPL, LGPL, and AGPL. Everything else is license proliferation and adds confusion and problems sharing code between projects.

MongoDB was already AGPL, but that didn't suffice. Amazon simply took the free version of MongoDB, as is, deployed it on its systems in a scalable way, and sold that to customers. They gave the code for MongoDB away, per the terms of the AGPL. Hence, the need for a new license. However, they seem to have kept the deployment infrastructure as a trade secret, and since that didn't interact directly with MongoDB's inter…

Companies did that for years with Linux, Apache, MySQL etc., and noone got riled up enough to produce this mess.

I think another commenter got it right: this is a fuss created by commercial entities that wanted to have their cake and eat it too.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#174

Post by rmrfrmrf »

samcodes wrote: post #170

When I open source code, I use MIT. I have introduced open source strategies at places I work, and guided teams through the process. Ok now that I've established my OSS cred: I'd be really interested in a license that is effectively MIT, _except_ for the 20 largest software companies, for whom there is no license and any use is restricted (you'd need to clearly define what makes a company a software company, and what…

If we're getting into company-specific bans, I'd much rather be using the one that banned Palantir than one that bans FAANG, and the one that banned Palantir resulted in a massive backlash.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#175

Post by liara_k »

For a few years I've wondered about the viability of a "source-available" license with a lot of user-friendly terms (like being able to distribute modified versions which anyone else can use as long as they themselves have a license for the original work, etc...) and a built-in GPL/BSD/etc... conversion after N years.

IMHO, the maximalist position of the RMS camp, while rightfully paranoid about the dangers of fully proprietary software, isn't the optimal solution. Yes, certain kinds of open source projects have been extremely successful, but a lot of this has been driven by corporate interests (i.e., people working on open source projects as a part of their work) and the software that gets built reflects and reinforces these interests.

I'd be happy to pay to have the latest version of some really useful software that respects my rights in lots of other ways (e.g., more control over and access to my data in the app, and be able to tinker/adapt it as I see fit, with full source), particularly if the alternative is that this software doesn't exist. If feels like, at least in some software domains, that the alternative are either (1) user hostile proprietary software or (2) nowhere close to the proprietary alternative in terms of features and robustness.

Obviously that's not the case for stuff like databases and operating system kernels, but that's what it often feels like out of these back-end type packages.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#176

Post by Hello71 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #134
karmakaze wrote: post #104

The problem isn't really here. The problem is that everyone wants a permissive abusable license when AGPL would be just fine. If everyone here complaining just used AGPL then we wouldn't have this Amazon situation. People want to have their cake and eat it too. They started with an MIT license because it gets more uptake then whine when the license terms are being followed. But then it wouldn't be widely used. The so…

Right, but leadership is needed to coordinate that change. The OSI needs to stand up and say "hey, the widespread use of permissive licenses is a threat to the open source community; please try to avoid them, and here's some ways you can accomplish your goals without a permissive license." Most open source projects aren't monetized, and most monetized projects won't be picked up by Amazon, so without a coordinated pu…

the FSF have been saying that for longer than the OSI has existed. people mocked them for saying that they were idealistic and unreasonable.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#177

Post by yarrel »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #118
karmakaze wrote: post #104

The problem isn't really here. The problem is that everyone wants a permissive abusable license when AGPL would be just fine. If everyone here complaining just used AGPL then we wouldn't have this Amazon situation. People want to have their cake and eat it too. They started with an MIT license because it gets more uptake then whine when the license terms are being followed. But then it wouldn't be widely used. The so…

AGPL is vulnerable to certain workarounds in the same way that GPL was. The CC class of non-commercial licenses might be more applicable, but that may harm adoption. EDIT: honestly not sure why this is so heavily downvoted (-7 as of the edit), the whole point of SSPL and other licenses is to address the "workarounds" that Amazon and others have discovered in AGPL

Please don't use the (awesome) CC licenses for software -

https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm...

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#178

Post by gary__ »

samcodes wrote: post #170

When I open source code, I use MIT. I have introduced open source strategies at places I work, and guided teams through the process. Ok now that I've established my OSS cred: I'd be really interested in a license that is effectively MIT, _except_ for the 20 largest software companies, for whom there is no license and any use is restricted (you'd need to clearly define what makes a company a software company, and what…

This could put off anyone who thinks they could be acquired by such companies from using your software as well. How can anyone know who is going to make it onto the blacklist for the next version etc. Seems quite the can of worms.

Re: Lack of leadership in open source results in source-available licenses

#179

Post by klipt »

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #149
Drdrdrq wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly it. GPL worked in the past, but if we take a look at Android (which is based on Linux) we can see that it failed to protect users' freedoms completely.

Something that GPLv3 would have prevented.

Then Android would probably have just based off BSD like iOS did.
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