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FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

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Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#51

Post by bentlegen »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #28

> It also enables contributions by the community for the latest version and not old source code. I have no interest in contributing to a code base that where my contributions wouldn’t be open source for two more years. You’ll find naive developers out there, but my free time won’t be spent contributing and my company would never allow me to contribute.

There are many people who use the software, for free, to monitor their own non-competing software projects (it turns out that overwhelmingly most people aren't competing with Sentry).

Some people choose to scratch their own itch and commit small bug fixes. For example, if you are running Sentry internally and you're monitoring a dozen software projects with ~50 users, it might be in your interest to fix some edge case you've hit that's causing your team grief. You could also open up a ticket on GitHub, or do nothing at all and just continue to use free software as-is without contribution.

It sounds like you aren't a user and have very little incentive to contribute. So I agree, don't!

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#52

Post by Macha »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #47
antipurist wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment, and this line in particular: > A license is like a constitution for an ecosystem for how people will interact, a check-and-balance on the monopoly power of the license-holder, and a community contract. finally gave me an answer to the question that bothered me for a while: how do we reconcile the goal of making FOSS available for everyone to run/tinker with/distribute freely with the issue of corporatio…

This is contradictory. > less focus on licenses, more focus on people interactions and actual contracts This gives the impression you support sticking to truly Free and Open Source software licences. > the code is free for non-commercial use A licence that explicitly forbids commercial use in this way is neither a Free Software licence nor an Open Source licence, by definition. > I wonder if anyone has already implem…

> The Business Source Licence (aka BSL, or sometimes BUSL for some reason)

BUSL/BuSL gets used as BUSL is the SPDX identifier. It's the SPDX identifier as BSL was already taken, by the Boost Software License, which predates it.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#53

Post by James_K »

bentlegen wrote: post #43
James_K wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like one of us is fundamentally misunderstanding this license. My understanding is that if I wanted to fork a piece of software, this licence would prevent me from doing so for two years. Then after those two years, I would essentially be stuck using an old version of the source and have to play catch-up with the devs*, who would be able to use my work for free but I would not be allowed to use theirs. Had thi…

> My interpretation of this license is that it's effectively saying: "you can't do anything with this while we're working on it". I disagree. It depends if you're forking it to use it, or if you're forking it to compete commercially against the authors. The license does not prevent you from the former. You could fork it and do what you want with it to monitor your own non-competing software. And if your goal is the l…

No license can prevent you from making alterations to your private copy of a piece of software.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#54

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Macha wrote: post #52
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is contradictory. > less focus on licenses, more focus on people interactions and actual contracts This gives the impression you support sticking to truly Free and Open Source software licences. > the code is free for non-commercial use A licence that explicitly forbids commercial use in this way is neither a Free Software licence nor an Open Source licence, by definition. > I wonder if anyone has already implem…

> The Business Source Licence (aka BSL, or sometimes BUSL for some reason) BUSL/BuSL gets used as BUSL is the SPDX identifier. It's the SPDX identifier as BSL was already taken, by the Boost Software License, which predates it.

Interesting, thanks.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#55

Post by growse »

bentlegen wrote: post #43
James_K wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like one of us is fundamentally misunderstanding this license. My understanding is that if I wanted to fork a piece of software, this licence would prevent me from doing so for two years. Then after those two years, I would essentially be stuck using an old version of the source and have to play catch-up with the devs*, who would be able to use my work for free but I would not be allowed to use theirs. Had thi…

> My interpretation of this license is that it's effectively saying: "you can't do anything with this while we're working on it". I disagree. It depends if you're forking it to use it, or if you're forking it to compete commercially against the authors. The license does not prevent you from the former. You could fork it and do what you want with it to monitor your own non-competing software. And if your goal is the l…

> I disagree. It depends if you're forking it to use it, or if you're forking it to compete commercially against the authors.

The problem is that whilst the license attempts to define what "competes" means, it's not a good definition. Specifically:

  Competing Uses specifically include using the Software:
  1.  as a substitute for any of our products or services;
  2. in a way that exposes the APIs of the Software; and
  3. in a product or service that offers the same or substantially similar functionality to the Software.
(1) & (3) are highly subjective, and (2) attempts to assert a copyright claim over APIs (definitely doesn't work across most jurisdictions). No-one is going to seriously use this software with such a badly written and vague license.

(I suspect this is on purpose, and the actual motivation of the license author is to try and discourage anyone else from using / forking the software, whilst at the same time getting marketing cred for pretending to be "open". It's a source-available license. Others may come to different conclusions).

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#56

Post by tedivm »

As a reminder, the head of open source for Sentry came into hacker news and explicitly said he wants to destroy the existing definition of open source and replace it with one that is VC/Corporate friendly.

> > your end goal is to exclude commercial reuse from the open source definition

> This is fairly accurate, though there are a range of possible outcomes we would be satisfied with.

Anything they say should be considered with that in mind. These are not good actors in the industry, but are people who are trying to replace open source software with a shared source version. Unlike other companies, such as Hashicorp, who admit that their software is no longer open source Sentry wants to have their cake and eat it too.

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36972824

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#57

Post by bentlegen »

tedivm wrote: post #56

As a reminder, the head of open source for Sentry came into hacker news and explicitly said he wants to destroy the existing definition of open source and replace it with one that is VC/Corporate friendly. > > your end goal is to exclude commercial reuse from the open source definition > This is fairly accurate, though there are a range of possible outcomes we would be satisfied with. Anything they say should be cons…

The source you link does not contain the quotes you cite.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#58

Post by James_K »

vanviegen wrote: post #39
James_K wrote: post #22

So, essentially, this is a closed source or source available licence. Anyone trying to develop open source with this will be stuck two years behind the official release and so it won't be worth trying. I don't get how it solves that freeloader problem either. The one benefit I can see is that it forces software to stay relatively up to date as, if they don't make enough changes in a two year period, they will likely…

> Anyone trying to develop open source with this will be stuck two years behind the official release and so it won't be worth trying. Only if you're a direct SaaS competitor. In that case, you'll have to diverge based on two year old code, which seems fair to me. (And you're always free to start your own project, if you want to compete...) > I don't get how it solves that freeloader problem either. Because freeloadin…

> Because freeloading competitors are stuck with two year old code, putting them at a disadvantage, or compelling then to invest in that old code (some of which might find its way into the original branch).

This makes no sense though. If you don't want competition, why give your source away? If you do want competition, why put it at a disadvantage? That's why I am so negative about this license. It's just someone trying to have their cake and eat it too. Also, I don't see what's to stop someone free-loading off a two-year-old copy of your work.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#59

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

James_K wrote: post #50
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My understanding is that if I wanted to fork a piece of software, this licence would prevent me from doing so for two years. Then after those two years, I would essentially be stuck using an old version of the source and have to play catch-up with the devs, who would be able to use my work for free but I would not be allowed to use theirs. The answer is a bit of yes, and a bit of no. If the project is actively main…

> Xapian under a hypothetical FSL would long have been able to commercialize it. I feel like you still aren't understanding what I'm saying here. Suppose a hypothetical version of the Xapian devs existed that were willing to use the FSL, but didn't because it didn't exist at the time. I could email those people, and ask "can you give me an Apache licensed version of your code from two years ago". They would then give…

> Suppose a hypothetical version of the Xapian devs existed that were willing to use the FSL, but didn't because it didn't exist at the time. I could email those people, and ask "can you give me an Apache licensed version of your code from two years ago". They would then give me a copy of that code.

Just to be clear what happened at Xapian: a bunch of people built some software. It was open sourced under the GPL which prevented further adoption. Through some series of acquisitions the copyright holder ended up not caring about it and did not enable anyone to relicense it under another license. If that was FSL licensed to begin with, the moment the copyright holder no longer cared, it would have become available under a license again that enabled commercialization. The folks behind Xapian are unaware of the exact licensing status, but definitely cannot relicense: https://trac.xapian.org/wiki/FAQ/CommercialLicence

They for a while I believe tried to prevent further GPLification of the source.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#60

Post by tedivm »

bentlegen wrote: post #57
tedivm wrote: post #56

As a reminder, the head of open source for Sentry came into hacker news and explicitly said he wants to destroy the existing definition of open source and replace it with one that is VC/Corporate friendly. > > your end goal is to exclude commercial reuse from the open source definition > This is fairly accurate, though there are a range of possible outcomes we would be satisfied with. Anything they say should be cons…

The source you link does not contain the quotes you cite.

Sorry, fixed it.
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