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O'saasy License Agreement

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Re: O'saasy License Agreement

#51

Post by ta2234234242 »

actionfromafar wrote: post #26
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #3

I know I am tooting Sentry's own horn a bit here, and since I was involved it is close to my heart. We struggled at one point with how to build a large company on top of an open source project, and we never liked the idea of simply carving out parts of the codebase and marking them as closed source (open core). At the same time, there was always the latent risk that even if you put 95% of the energy into the product,…

The end of life problem can be solved by source code escrow, with a clause putting the code under an open source license and published in case of the demise of the owning cpmpany.

If the company is sold for its assets is the code released to the public? Or removed from escrow and kept private?

Re: O'saasy License Agreement

#52

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

tzahifadida wrote: post #43
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end, both of these had to revert switching to AGPL licenses. AGPL seems like the most battle tested solution here, though. You'd need a CLA from day 1, but if you have that then you can sell commercial licenses to people who won't meet the criteria for the real license. So I think it's important to differentiate between open source and free software, here.

I believe AGPL3 with CLA is the worst in 2025. Code can be recreated fast in 2025 especially with genAI getting better and better. The problem you'll have is the ownership of the code from day one. Today, people have concerns signing a CLA, so I am not sure redis is repeatable in that regard (though we have n8n). With Apache 2.0, if you are redis, you could have closed source the code in a few months and bury the com…

> the code can be recreated with genAI, it is just a matter of resources.

Can it though? Most interesting things (for my values of interesting at least), cannot be re-created with generative AI.

Every time I try to do anything a little bit out of distribution, they fall apart (and they're not great at in-distribution stuff either).

> I believe AGPL3 with CLA is the worst in 2025

I think that you mean best, as with both of these one can sell commercial licenses while remaining open.

Again, from the company's point of view you get both nerd-cred and a viable business (this is what MySQL did, I believe).

You don't get that with BSD/MIT.

Re: O'saasy License Agreement

#53

Post by graemep »

mythz wrote: post #21

Given oligopoly cloud corps are the biggest exploiters of OSS (to everyone elses detriment), I'd prefer an OSS license that was simply OSS for everyone under < $1B ARR.

> I'd prefer an OSS license that was simply OSS for everyone under They will find a way of gaming the metric.

For example, they run the software through a subsidiary that makes $900m ARR.

Re: O'saasy License Agreement

#54

Post by actionfromafar »

ta2234234242 wrote: post #51
actionfromafar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end of life problem can be solved by source code escrow, with a clause putting the code under an open source license and published in case of the demise of the owning cpmpany.

If the company is sold for its assets is the code released to the public? Or removed from escrow and kept private?

That's the gritty stuff which must be spelled out in the terms.

Re: O'saasy License Agreement

#55

Post by jchw »

jrowen wrote: post #22
jchw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is a piece of software really only of value to the open source community if any kind of unscrupulous use of it is allowed? It's not even open source in the first place if any kind of unscrupulous use of it is disallowed , as that would be discriminating on use case. It ultimately doesn't matter much to the open source community, as it effectively can't be used in otherwise open source projects, as the result wouldn…

I understand that it's not open source. I just see it as like, a spot where a company that would normally make a closed source product wanted to make it more open and hackable and did actually put the code up and take contributions, which should be a kind of good thing, but it's automatically assumed to be the worst, a rugpull, etc. What if I operated in an ethical gray area right around this pretty reasonably worded…

I was trying to make the point that "unfree" software is not really useful at all to the "open source" community, and not because of terminology nitpicking but because of the consequences that has.

But anyway, my problem with a license like this is indeed the existence of gray areas. Open source licenses are in some ways clever attempts to make a social contract into a legal obligation. It isn't perfect, but the side effect is that you don't have to take it on faith that people will follow it: people can be sued for violating it, and depending on how that Vizio case goes, it's not just the copyright holders who are eligible.

But that's a two way street. In return, I shouldn't have to take in on faith that my use case is legal according to the copyright license: it should be clear as day with no room for interpretation. If it's not, then my best hope is to simply never get sued. That is not good. Hope is not a strategy here, not for individuals and not for corporate users.

Business/"fair" licenses seem to offer a good compromise, but it's a mirage: the software still has to be treated a bit like toxic waste in Linux packaging, won't be compatible with strong copyleft licenses, and ultimately, presents an uneven playing field for contributors.

There isn't much to be excited about from a hacking PoV.

With projects like these, you're probably already going to be submitting your code under an unconditional CLA, which essentially forfeits your rights as a contributor, then if it's this license, you also are giving the original copyright owner more rights to use your contribution than you even have.

I don't think this is a good or healthy status quo at all.

The only upside of this is that it protects someone's business model from competition. Well good for them.

But making the license look like MIT is just a bit of cosplay, yet another attempt to try to push something as being open source when it's not. This cognitive dissonance can't go unnoticed; it really does trick people if they don't fully think through the consequences. You're better off going with a license that makes no attempt to pass itself off as open source.

Re: O'saasy License Agreement

#56

Post by zeeg »

ignoramous wrote: post #25
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #3

I know I am tooting Sentry's own horn a bit here, and since I was involved it is close to my heart. We struggled at one point with how to build a large company on top of an open source project, and we never liked the idea of simply carving out parts of the codebase and marking them as closed source (open core). At the same time, there was always the latent risk that even if you put 95% of the energy into the product,…

> you were still not fully in control and someone else exploits the economic value without investing O'Sassy came up recently in one of the forums I lurk in [0], and as discussed there, I tend to agree with Adam Jacob (SystemInit) and others that FSL is definitely one way out but doesn't totally solve the commercialization aspect, because the code & all that IP is still readily available. Adam, in this talk [1], argu…

The issue is these are mostly academic points of view. Sentry’s model on the FSL (and previously the BUSL) has shown to be working just fine at scale.

Whereas, for example, trademark protections have shown to fail easily.

So people can argue it doesn’t work, but so far we only have evidence to the contrary and Sentry is quite successful.

Re: O'saasy License Agreement

#57

Post by xigoi »

mirzap wrote: post #30
xigoi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere in the license does it claim that it’s an Open Source™ license.

People who use it claim it's Open Source

They are using “open source” as a generic descriptor, not as the unregistered trademark of the OSI.

Re: O'saasy License Agreement

#58

Post by ignoramous »

zeeg wrote: post #56
ignoramous wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you were still not fully in control and someone else exploits the economic value without investing O'Sassy came up recently in one of the forums I lurk in [0], and as discussed there, I tend to agree with Adam Jacob (SystemInit) and others that FSL is definitely one way out but doesn't totally solve the commercialization aspect, because the code & all that IP is still readily available. Adam, in this talk [1], argu…

The issue is these are mostly academic points of view. Sentry’s model on the FSL (and previously the BUSL) has shown to be working just fine at scale. Whereas, for example, trademark protections have shown to fail easily. So people can argue it doesn’t work, but so far we only have evidence to the contrary and Sentry is quite successful.

> So people can argue it doesn’t work, but so far we only have evidence to the contrary and Sentry is quite successful

So, RedHat has also been successful?

GP says that some companies don't find FSL aggressive enough, despite it having worked nicely for Sentry. And that's similar to the point Adam makes: That Open Source (per OSI not FSF) is a development model not a business model. Companies that don't want/need to prioritize collaboration tend to use FSL / BUSL / etc; but those licenses aren't really going to significantly change their development or business (other than prevent competition from using it as-is, but now the code is out there anyway [0][1]), and so they might as well go close source (and Lockdown the code, too).

> issue is these are mostly academic points of view

Both, commodotizing competition (through OSS) and using OSS as Go-To-Market aren't academic PoVs, I don't think.

[0] And trained on by LLMs, which makes cloning probably that much faster? https://x.com/paultoo/status/1999245292294803914 / https://archive.vn/kTiyZ

[1] Companies will deep pockets and technical expertise can/will anyway clone it: https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2018/12/14/open-source-confront...

Re: O'saasy License Agreement

#59

Post by veeti »

bberenberg wrote: post #18
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #3

I know I am tooting Sentry's own horn a bit here, and since I was involved it is close to my heart. We struggled at one point with how to build a large company on top of an open source project, and we never liked the idea of simply carving out parts of the codebase and marking them as closed source (open core). At the same time, there was always the latent risk that even if you put 95% of the energy into the product,…

Isn’t the “solution” for Sentry that deploying it is such a pain in the ass that no one bothers to really do this? I haven’t checked in years but that always seemed like the real competitive blocker?

Don't believe the salesmen, self hosting Sentry has been the most liberating feeling in a long while. Buy a cheap dedicated server with 64 gigs of RAM from Hetzner, run their install script and it's literally up and running. I'm processing volumes that would bankrupt me on their managed service without breaking a sweat.

Re: O'saasy License Agreement

#60

Post by vanschelven »

bberenberg wrote: post #18
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #3

I know I am tooting Sentry's own horn a bit here, and since I was involved it is close to my heart. We struggled at one point with how to build a large company on top of an open source project, and we never liked the idea of simply carving out parts of the codebase and marking them as closed source (open core). At the same time, there was always the latent risk that even if you put 95% of the energy into the product,…

Isn’t the “solution” for Sentry that deploying it is such a pain in the ass that no one bothers to really do this? I haven’t checked in years but that always seemed like the real competitive blocker?

Earlier discussion on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43725815

I'm personally on the fence how much of it is intentional... from the_mitsuhiko's side it probably isn't, but "the purpose of a system is what it does" and all.

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