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Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

caddyserver.com

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Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#241

Post by nqzero »

lol768 wrote: post #23

> As of version 0.10.9, Caddy emits an HTTP response header, Caddy-Sponsors, which is similar to the Server header that Caddy already has, except that this one credits our sponsors who make it possible to keep Caddy free for personal use. This header cannot be removed by the Caddyfile, and its presence is required by the non-commercial EULA. This requirement is waived by the commercial license, so the header is not p…

i believe that when hosting source on github, you guarantee the right of others to fork the repository

that right would seem to preclude forcing the forked version to change the name

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#242

Post by nqzero »

kbenson wrote: post #216
lol768 wrote: post #23

> As of version 0.10.9, Caddy emits an HTTP response header, Caddy-Sponsors, which is similar to the Server header that Caddy already has, except that this one credits our sponsors who make it possible to keep Caddy free for personal use. This header cannot be removed by the Caddyfile, and its presence is required by the non-commercial EULA. This requirement is waived by the commercial license, so the header is not p…

> Second edit: Accusation of trademark violation within an hour of the fork, classy! https://github.com/WedgeServer/wedge/issues/2 This is just like Red Hat. He's put a lot of work into his product, whether free or not, so don't use trademarked name. CentOS has the same restrictions about not using Red Hat in their distribution. This is just like someone releasing a book for free, and getting mad at someone that deci…

from the github (which hosts caddy source) faq:

Note: If you publish your source code in a public repository on GitHub, according to the Terms of Service, other GitHub users have the right to view and fork your repository within the GitHub site. If you have already created a public repository and no longer want users to have access to it, you can make your repository private. When you convert a public repository to a private repository, existing forks or local copies created by other users will still exist. For more information, see "Making a public repository private."

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#243

Post by nqzero »

nqzero wrote: post #241
lol768 wrote: post #23

> As of version 0.10.9, Caddy emits an HTTP response header, Caddy-Sponsors, which is similar to the Server header that Caddy already has, except that this one credits our sponsors who make it possible to keep Caddy free for personal use. This header cannot be removed by the Caddyfile, and its presence is required by the non-commercial EULA. This requirement is waived by the commercial license, so the header is not p…

i believe that when hosting source on github, you guarantee the right of others to fork the repository that right would seem to preclude forcing the forked version to change the name

i found the github faq that i remembered:

Note: If you publish your source code in a public repository on GitHub, according to the Terms of Service, other GitHub users have the right to view and fork your repository within the GitHub site. If you have already created a public repository and no longer want users to have access to it, you can make your repository private. When you convert a public repository to a private repository, existing forks or local copies created by other users will still exist. For more information, see "Making a public repository private."

https://help.github.com/articles/licensing-a-repository/

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#244

Post by gtirloni »

mholt wrote: post #215
gtirloni wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's excellent. Most people don't seem to use plugins so a default build is enough for them. Those who need it have a business need now and can either setup their own build system or pay Caddy for that. Value is generated as opposed to being subtracted (from the current status quo).

More than 50% of Caddy downloads have at least one plugin. 1 and 2 plugins are the most common of those that have at least one.

That's impressive and a sizable customer base. I hope it works for you, Caddy is impressive and more competition is always good.

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#245

Post by mst »

mholt wrote: post #28
lol768 wrote: post #23

> As of version 0.10.9, Caddy emits an HTTP response header, Caddy-Sponsors, which is similar to the Server header that Caddy already has, except that this one credits our sponsors who make it possible to keep Caddy free for personal use. This header cannot be removed by the Caddyfile, and its presence is required by the non-commercial EULA. This requirement is waived by the commercial license, so the header is not p…

Thanks for your feedback. I'd like to know more. > The fact that the headers aren't seen by most non-technical users is moot. Why's that? (And even among your technical visitors, how many of them actually inspect the response headers?) > I find this practice pretty obnoxious to the point of looking at NGINX Plus for commercial use instead. It's good to know that price isn't the bottleneck, then. Does it make any diff…

I've dealt with similar-ish situations before and would suggest that you consider (I am not recommending, merely suggesting) adding a config option -

    thanks_sponsors false
then people who really hate that header can disable it but it's clear what they're doing with the software they're paying no money for. If people complain about that well, that's their issue IMO. And they have to be explicit about how they're behaving.

This has worked well for me in the past. If you'd be interested chatting about how/why reply and I'll drop you an email.

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#246

Post by nqzero »

as a developer that's also struggling with finding a balance between the good things that open source helps guarantee and a viable business plan, i'm intrigued by this discussion

the approach that caddy has taken appears to be a bit of good cop / bad cop. they're maintaining, at least for now, the apache license but they're also using trademark threats to prevent forks (i believe in violation of the github TOS)

the approach that i'm hoping to take is quite different. i'm interested in any feedback (my software is a database engine that in some ways is more convenient than existing dbms for java developers, but similar to caddy in that many good alternatives exist and are free)

https://github.com/db4j/pupl http://db4j.org/pupl/PUPL

- you can freely copy, modify and distribute the software

- non-production use is free, as is production use on up to 10 cores

- prices are predictable and non-discriminatory

how would you feel about using software (in the infrastructure space) under this license ?

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#247

Post by unethical_ban »

pushcx wrote: post #212
unethical_ban wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. Still kind of shitty to have had access and then have it removed, and then say 'nothing has really changed, guys!'. If they rephrased it to admit they're moving to a Red Hat model of "pay for binary", the news would have fared better. More straightforward, with a direct comparison to a current, successful brand. Let's face it: They realized their product was popular, took advantage of tons of interest and documen…

Yes, he gave you free stuff and then reduced how much free stuff he gave you. That must be very hard on you.

Your comment might have had value if you hadn't been sarcastic.

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#248

Post by throwa34943way »

pryelluw wrote: post #51

1. I applaud this effort. 2. Ive been researching sustainable funding models for open source. Will the maintainers be blogging about the progress and results? Would be useful to learn about what they discover.

> 2. Ive been researching sustainable funding models for open source. Will the maintainers be blogging about the progress and results? Would be useful to learn about what they discover.

Well, just ask $50.000 from Mozilla for an "open source project" grant "like" Caddy got and you're settled for at least a year.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-awards-3850...

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#249

Post by tylersmith »

kyledrake wrote: post #240
tylersmith wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the unhealthy expectation in the FOSS community" Nobody is "expecting" you to make good software, we're just saying that now that you've turned a formally mostly decent piece of software into adware with an untrustworthy author there's no reason to not just use better software. Software that doesn't molest your traffic. I wish you luck with your business but don't know why anybody would pay for software written by y…

You don't think you're being a little melodramatic here? We're talking about a change to a Server header . Nginx doesn't let you remove their server header either, and their business model is to restrict access to important functionality on nginx now. Do you think that's a morally better approach?

We're talking about adware modifying traffic to pester you into licensing. The nginx model of selling additional features is in fact much better.

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#250

Post by always_good »

throwa34943way wrote: post #235
pheeney wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's face it: They realized their product was popular, took advantage of tons of interest and documentation/blogs/hype in the community, then decided to charge for binary distribution. It's a bit of a burn. Or another way of looking at it: Open source has to be subsidized (either through free time or commercial backing) in order to continue to contribute to open source. The amount of time and effort to maintain a…

> Open source has to be subsidized Yep and Caddy was, $50.000 in 2016 from Mozilla https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-awards-3850...

You say that like you think they're set for life...
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