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Commons Clause

redislabs.com

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Re: Commons Clause

#271

Post by kemitchell »

vmbrasseur wrote: post #147
bastawhiz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What efforts has your organization made to prevent software companies from selling "Hosted [open source project] as a Service (with a proprietary twist)" offerings while not contributing back to the OSS core project's development? Edit: Or rather, incentivized contributions, or disincentivized a lack of contribution

Arguably the largest users of Redis—Amazon, Google, and Microsoft—are all among the many sponsors of the Open Source Initiative and each make immense contributions to free and open source software. Redis Labs is not a sponsor (but is welcome to become one). Despite that, had they come to OSI looking for assistance with this issue we could have helped open discussions between them and their largest users. They did not…

You start your career later than your siblings. You land your first real job. You scrimp and save to buy your first real set of Christmas presents. Comes the day, and everyone seems grateful. You feel established, for a moment. The others exchange presents, but oddly, not with you. In the end, your hands are empty. Everyone else is okay with this. They make out great.

Giving OSI money isn't giving Redis Labs money. I don't imagine OSI will be sending any of that money Redis Labs' way. On the other hand, OSI's activities will benefit its sponsors. One way: by constraining approved terms to licenses, like ancient permissive licenses, with poor upstart-business potential, but all the permission grants established enterprises require to mulch the remains of dead startups that result.

I'd be willing to bet Redis Labs is contemplating return to ash pretty seriously these days.

More contributions will not solve the problem. They may defer RL's trip into liquidation, but at the expense of a quicker boot out of the top spot on their own project. That, in turn, bodes ill for acquisition. Even if outsiders reduce maintenance and development cost to $0, that's savings, not earnings or recoupment.

Re: Commons Clause

#272

Post by CM30 »

sgentle wrote: post #208

> Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! They're just taking what I wrote and building it into a proprietary product! You told them they could. > But how is it fair that they can make so much money off my code and I never see a cent? You. Told. Them. They. Could. Time and again I see the same sense of hel…

Unfortunately, the truth seems to be that most people don't actually read the licenses they release their work under. You can see that a lot in the world of CMS plugins and themes (where the 'can share the work as you like') aspect of the GPL seems completely foreign to 'paid' plugin/theme developers and even with text and image based content under the Creative Commons licenses, where a site creator will often freak out about a competitor using their content despite clearly saying its under a Creative Commons license that allows reuse.

It's like they copy the idea from stuff like Wikipedia and then only later realise the implications of it. But yeah, that's why you should read the license you're planning to use and make sure it matches your intent before using it.

Re: Commons Clause

#273

Post by icc97 »

sgentle wrote: post #208

> Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! They're just taking what I wrote and building it into a proprietary product! You told them they could. > But how is it fair that they can make so much money off my code and I never see a cent? You. Told. Them. They. Could. Time and again I see the same sense of hel…

One of the earliest questions asked on Open Source SE is on 'How can a project be relicensed?' [0]

Edit: further down that rabbit hole, there's a comment on a linked Programmers SE question [1]:

> What we do is have a contributor's agreement that contributors sign, and it assigns joint copyright (so both our corporation and the contributor own the code). In that way, we still have the ability to re-license, but they still have all rights that they had. This is the same way that SharpDevelop works.

This seems a sensible (or at least an open) way to allow the opportunity for future re-licensing.

[0]: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/33/how-can-a-...

[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5532...

Re: Commons Clause

#274

Post by another-cuppa »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #225
sgentle wrote: post #208

> Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! They're just taking what I wrote and building it into a proprietary product! You told them they could. > But how is it fair that they can make so much money off my code and I never see a cent? You. Told. Them. They. Could. Time and again I see the same sense of hel…

I agree. There's the reflex (here and elsewhere) to dismiss reciprocal licenses such as GPL, AGPL as "uncool", pretentious, and show-stopping. Maybe it's time to reconsider in times of cloud oligopoles. Because why would you want your software become part of the lock-in strategy of a cloud provider.

It's really sad that the GPL has essentially "gone out of fashion". It's sad that developers would be driven merely by fashion rather than careful consideration. The fact that we have free software at all is largely thanks to the GNU and the GPL.

Re: Commons Clause

#275

Post by jondubois »

jaredklewis wrote: post #261
mful wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you willing to release your code, both in the sense of putting it out into the world and emancipating it from your ownership? Do you accept that your code could be renamed, rebranded, repackaged, rented, traded or sold? Would you be happy if your code made someone else rich, famous or successful while you saw no benefit at all? I suspect it's a lot easier to say "yes" to these questions when you're just startin…

I think you are probably right. When starting the project, creators value their work very little, but value any attention given to their project very highly, thus a permissive license makes sense. Only after success hits do they regret it. Even so, if someone was seeking fame and fortune through OSS (a somewhat foolish mission, but whatever), I would still probably recommend they release their software with a permiss…

This is true. Most people who start an open source project don't do it for financial reasons. Usually they want to learn, to build a reputation or to create a good product just for the sake of it.

Later, after many years, the developer sees other companies making a lot of money using their OSS project but they themselves are basically broke; they're forced to work for other companies during the day and they still need to spend nights and weekends to maintain their OSS project on the side.

I'm in this situation right now but actually I'm very happy that companies are making money on top of my OSS project; I'm 100% certain that these companies would not have used my project if it wasn't MIT open source licensed.

Most companies who used my project had alternatives in the form of other OSS projects or third party services so they put a lot of trust in me and my project at the beginning. People underestimate how hard it is to compete at the beginning... Even if you're giving away product for free; it's really hard.

Just try to launch an OSS project on GitHub and try to get it to 1000 stars; I see lots of people try all the time but almost none of them make it.

Re: Commons Clause

#276

Post by hashrate »

> if what you sell is basically the functionality of the module [...] Commons Clause does not allow it.

Great ! Now the entire industry is accepting the "freemium" model where the core features are free , but not the modules around it.

This is a push to milk companies with paid licences on Free Software. This is insane that this is becoming the norm in the industry.

Every single day open source is getting less and less open. This type of constraints are insane and are similar to the one forced by Oracle.

Re: Commons Clause

#277

Post by bigiain »

XiZhao wrote: post #229
tomnipotent wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software" This single line completely destroys any confidence I have in Commons Clause. I will avoid any project with this license moving forward until this is fixed. It's embarrassing that I'm being told that the time & energy I've invested in deploying this software (redis in particular) will now be rewarded with the ina…

That’s okay, but I think there’s two parts you might be missing. 1/ the Commons Clause doesnt apply to retroactive versions and in this case is not applied to Redis core. 2/ The Commons Clause isn’t meant for everyone. In the world of open source, sometimes projects can stay open, and sometimes they can’t. For projects that can’t, sometimes it’s because people do bad things that are disguised as Services but in reali…

Thanks. That clarifies that I should 1/ immediately stop deploying new projects using redis, but 2/ I've probably got breathing space to still charge consulting fees for existing projects while I work out which of your competitors to migrate to.

Re: Commons Clause

#278

Post by cbsmith »

krn wrote: post #267
sgentle wrote: post #208

> Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! They're just taking what I wrote and building it into a proprietary product! You told them they could. > But how is it fair that they can make so much money off my code and I never see a cent? You. Told. Them. They. Could. Time and again I see the same sense of hel…

I think, BSD / MIT / Apache should be used for open source libraries , and MPL / GPL / AGPL for open source products . This way, a developer can build a new product using open source libraries without sharing its source code, but he cannot repackage an existing open source product without sharing its modifications.

It's like everyone forgot about the LGPL and the guidelines about its use vs. GPL.

Re: Commons Clause

#279

Post by pvg »

DannyBee wrote: post #215
pvg wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing she's a well-known practitioner in this field. Why would one be involved in such a thing, given it's so problematic? The whole thing seems super-confusing and half-baked.

Yes, Heather is very well known and very smart. She's a hired gun (with no offense meant). She is neither good nor bad IMHO. Though depending on your viewpoint, she's lawful neutral, true neutral, or chaotic neutral :P. She has both defended accused open source license violators and helped open source foundations defend against baseless lawsuits. Given how long she has been doing this, I would simply not believe that…

Thanks, that makes sense. It seems like an awful lot of effort to put into such a transparent (even without the legal issues) and pointless bit of dissembling. Lots of people plainly sell open source + proprietary parts products without much fuss from anyone.

Re: Commons Clause

#280

Post by another-cuppa »

sgentle wrote: post #208

> Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! They're just taking what I wrote and building it into a proprietary product! You told them they could. > But how is it fair that they can make so much money off my code and I never see a cent? You. Told. Them. They. Could. Time and again I see the same sense of hel…

> wearing open source's uniform without making open source's sacrifices.

Open source isn't a "sacrifice", for most people at least. Many release under permissive licences because they think there is more chance that people will use their software. They want to be popular and that makes them feel good and might get them a job. People release code under the GPL and if it becomes popular eventually benefit from patches coming back up stream. It's not supposed to be about sacrifice. It's supposed to be about being a good member of a community and sharing your work.

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