It drives me nuts how much people talk about OSS when they need to at least mention the difference between FOSS and OSS. One more reason to stick to FOSS instead, as OSS proponents seem increasingly disingenuous.
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The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
181–190 of 248 posts
Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
#182The example clause at https://commonsclause.com/ does not really make any sense. It first says you can't sell the software and then provides example text below like this: Software: [name software] License: [i.e. Apache 2.0] Licensor: [ABC company] If they actually used the Apache 2.0 license anyone would have the right to sell the software. Hence putting that clause and then putting "Apache 2.0" as the license makes…
Yes, exactly. You can't use an unmodified Apache 2.0 license and then try and tack on some extra clause which is incompatible with the underlying license and end up with an intelligible end result. You certainly can't call it "Apache 2.0" and direct people to apache.org. It looks like a legal nightmare.
Even if you like this license, please never use it!
Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
#183I can see their side. GPL was called copyleft for a reason, a nod to copyright. It's a copyright restriction which limits redistribution to certain terms. Cloud providers do redistribute. It runs on their servers. They do not have to honor copyright restrictions. They can make proprietary modifications and keep them, and they do. They might be honoring the letter of the license, but certainly not the spirit of it.
Don't we have the AGPL for this purpose to require them to contribute back their proprietary changes. As others have pointed out, if this was only about the modifications they would have used AGPL. Instead, and giving the clauses about consulting, it seems more like they are concerned about money than the health of the ecosystem.
Money is a part of the health of the ecosystem.
Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
#184What's the difference between the Commons Clause and the GPL?
What's the difference between the Commons Clause and the creative commons "nc" (non-commercial) license?
I'm having trouble seeing how the Commons Clause is a threat to open source, while the GPL and Creative Commons are not.
Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
#185What's the difference between the Commons Clause and the GPL? What's the difference between the Commons Clause and the creative commons "nc" (non-commercial) license? I'm having trouble seeing how the Commons Clause is a threat to open source, while the GPL and Creative Commons are not.
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Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Help me understand. Which of the following are FOSS licenses and which are OSS licenses? - Apache - Apache + Common Clause - BSD - MIT - GPLv2 - GPLv3
The FSF can explain it better than I can. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html
> It drives me nuts how much people talk about OSS when they need to at least mention the difference between FOSS and OSS.
Maybe because like you they find it hard to explain?
According to your linked resources, it appears that everything except the Common Clause is FOSS.
So, basically everything I've ever seen is FOSS.
Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
#187No it won't. You know what will destroy open source? Lack of money to develop it.
Yeah, I remember back when the Linux kernel was written by some Finnish nerd in university and given away for free. Thank goodness Google hired him back in 1995 to develop it or it would have died in infancy.
The Linux OS, even in 1993, was a combination of Linux kernel plus GNU userland tools and compiler plus X11 plus assorted goodies from the BSD world.
Developed, at least the first bit of time, on Minix, a Unix-like operating system that a university professor wrote as a teaching tool and gave away under a shared source license.
Linux' use of GPL was better than the shared-source license of Minix because you could distribute patched Linux kernels but had to distribute Minix improvements as patches to the original distribution. Linux' use of GPL was also what led everyone to contribute back to Linux while BSD derivatives were silently used to bootstrap software (including MacOSX) that never contributed back.
Linux also shows two properties that make up successful open source: there's an "inside" (kernel-land) and an "outside", and everyone profits if the inside-OSS part is made better and better while having minor kernel improvements is not a huge differentiator for most companies.
Contrast with the Redis addons by Redislabs: they want the ecosystem aspect of open source - people contributing back patches. But they also want to be the only ones to gain a livelihood from their code (which is their right as creators of the software but not conducive to the growth of an ecosystem). And they want their license to be treated as Apache-License-related, which is the part that smells of make-believe and dishonesty. But observe the part of having an ecosystem of different software parts (here: Redis and RedisLabs' extensions) that have an inside and an outside, as well as an ecosystem of developers/users who can make and share improvements to the software.
Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
#188It's just a "free-with-source for non-commercial use" distribution of certain modules that would otherwise be proprietary. There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code. It's a good thing for customers and would-be customers. Customers can track down bugs and security flaws if…
There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code. Right. And if they would just call it that and not try to make it sound like it's "sorta / kinda Apache licensed" then I wouldn't really care. But it's like people using this clause want to benefit from the general perception of op…
You are right; if you're going to radically change a license by adding a free-for-noncommercial-use type clause, you should change the name, and don't maintain even the slightest insinuations that it's related to the original license. Textually it may be, but legally it's a completely different beast.
Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Clause was drafted as a reactionary move to solve against specific bad behavior. I'm not entirely sure it's my place to call out these actors (I'll leave that to the users of the Clause), but our job was to open up an option that isn't quite "screw this, let's go full closed source". See the commons clause FAQ for answers to your other questions: https://commonsclause.com/
No, it's not bad behavior, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of open source economic models, and a desire to have your cake and eat it too. I will steal an argument from a friend who has been doing free software/open source for 30+ years now. Y'all created a bunch of open source software, it became valuable. Y'all think that you should get to extract some percentage of that value, and that others being able to do i…
I wish I could upvote this twice. That was well put.
Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
how can extra clauses not be restrictive? I mean, if they don't add new restrictions, what do they do?
I guess a clause could specify exemptions to previous clauses.
Exactly. This used to be quite common, see for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception