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Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode

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Re: Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode

#91

Post by tyingq »

mkesper wrote: post #73
ralmidani wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that "Faircode" is not trying to protect downstream users from non-free software. That's my point; It's not about principle, it's about extorting money while appearing to be principled. Copyleft licenses force people to release their modifications as source code, or pay the copyright owner for an exception (if the owner is open to providing the exception) Non-Copyleft licenses say "do whatever you want,…

Copyleft licenses force people to release their modifications as source code Only if you distribute the software.

Is AGPL copyleft? If so, it broadens your definition of "distribute".

Re: Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode

#92

Post by antirez »

jondubois wrote: post #51
antirez wrote: post #23

I do not want to judge the license change: everybody should be able to do whatever they want with the code for which there is ownership. Just two general observations: 1) I think this is going to be a trend in the future, for two main reasons, one is that the cloud poses very challenging limits to individuals or small companies to monetize they OSS projects selling services, the second is that many OSS developers are…

Yes I think it depends heavily on the type of open source project and it shouldn't be frowned upon for certain kinds of projects. I run an open source project which is technical and is designed to integrate into other systems; it's ideal for fast growing companies and large organizations that have money; because of this, inbound leads for consulting, technical support, sponsorship, partnership and contract work trick…

Interesting observations, thank you.

Re: Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode

#94

Post by jcranmer »

bobby_the_whale wrote: post #47
rectang wrote: post #11

This is not an "open source business model", as claimed by the Ungit maintainer, because the new license is not open source under the long standard definition maintained by OSI. Good commentary from Grant Bakker in the discussion: https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit/issues/974#issuecommen...

Just because something is old, it doesn't make it true.

Do you have a proposed counterexample? The OSI definition is pretty much the same in spirit and in practice as, say, the DSFG or FSF definitions.

Non-discriminatory terms is pretty much a fundamental precondition for any open-source license. As any lawyer would tell you--and don't forget, licenses are explicit legal contracts--licenses that include discrimination clauses of various kinds (including "fun" clauses like "don't use this for evil") are basically non-starters. It's especially problematic when the discrimination is based on something as malleable as yearly profit, so that someone's inclusion or exclusion on this basis changes every year.

Licenses are legal contracts, and therefore they have the force of law behind them. Rolling your own license is a stupid idea, particularly if you are not a lawyer and you are not retaining a lawyer to give you advice on the matter. Even aspects of major licenses like 3-clause BSD, MIT, GPL, LGPL, Apache, and others have indeterminate legal repercussions, particularly when patents and copyright of contributions come into play.

Re: Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode

#96

Post by quotemstr »

jordigh wrote: post #75

This isn't open source: it discriminates against field of endeavours (point 6): https://opensource.org/osd-annotated Restricting commercial use isn't anything new or a bold new experiment or anything. It's the same lesson we apparently need to relearn from the 1980s.

I've been telling people for ages now that the slow erosion of copyleft mindshare in favor of permissive licensing is going to bring about a return of the bad old days of proprietary software licensing. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but this move doesn't bode well.

Re: Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode

#97

Post by rabidrat »

X86BSD wrote: post #84

This thread and the culture of those replying to it fascinate me. Do you really enjoy spending this much time debating licenses, clauses, and legal matters? I personally, just have to many more important things to do than worry about and waste time on compliance, laws, enforcement. It just seems like such a rediculous waste of time. I just 2 clause BSD license my code and move on. Compensate me, don't compensate me,…

I would love to continue producing the rest of my life, without concern for licenses and business. Unfortunately I am running out of savings and will not be able to spend even 20% of my time producing. So I am in support of finding some way of getting a living wage for the software I lovingly produce for free.

Re: Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode

#98

Post by dwheeler »

The fundamental problem here isn't the relicense, the problem it's that it's being incorrectly called an "open source model".

This is not an open source software license, so it's not an "open source model". It's not a Free software license either, as defined by the Free Software Definition. Instead, it's a proprietary license. It's not a new software license model, either; historically this has been called a "gated community license" or "open box license". Here's article from 2000 about gated community license models: http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/articles/gated.... They've never caught on, in over 20 years of trying, but perhaps this project's experience will be different.

We've had, for decades, a widely-accepted definition for what the term "open source software" means. If someone actually means "open source software" per that widely-accepted definition, then by all means, that person should use the term. Since this project don't actually mean "open source software", then they should not use the term - please call it something else. The world is confusing enough.

Re: Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode

#99

Post by vacri »

ricardobeat wrote: post #72
59nadir wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am trying to avoid the word "shakedown", but this strikes me as exactly that. Yes, the $90/month cost is going to hurt all the companies that have revenue greater than $1,000,000/year. This will put them out on the streets, I'm sure. Let's be real: This does not apply to you, and on the off chance that it does, why are you complaining about paying $90 per month for something you should probably already be donatin…

What if the company makes contributions to open-source through other projects - for which no one is paying them? Is it ‘fair’? Who is the leech? Even a $1m/y company (which is not big at all) will be hard pressed to pay 1k/year for a git wrapper. The whole idea of OSS is that everyone benefits from the exchange and costs are distributed. This won’t scale at all - count your current open source dependencies and imagin…

If they don't consider the software a good deal, then they simply choose something else. We're not talking about the bad old days of the Microsoft monopoly where you were basically forced to use MS products (eg: getting documents in Word format by default in many industries)

It's weird how much HN has transmogrified. Originally a forum for tech entrepreneurs who filled this space with business-running and tech articles, now we get people asking to be paid for their work in some situations called 'leeches' or described as 'extorting'.

> This won’t scale at all - count your current open source dependencies and imagine paying that sum for each of them.

There are now and historically have been plenty of MS-only shops which pay for all their software. There are plenty of companies out there where every employee gets a licensed copy of MS Office.

Re: Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode

#100

Post by bobby_the_whale »

jcranmer wrote: post #94
bobby_the_whale wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something is old, it doesn't make it true.

Do you have a proposed counterexample? The OSI definition is pretty much the same in spirit and in practice as, say, the DSFG or FSF definitions. Non-discriminatory terms is pretty much a fundamental precondition for any open-source license. As any lawyer would tell you--and don't forget, licenses are explicit legal contracts--licenses that include discrimination clauses of various kinds (including "fun" clauses like…

You just don't get it, like so many people here. Just because the OSI put up a website supposedly defining a word doesn't mean that was the definition before they came into existence.

The very first sentence of what they are saying "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. ", is exactly what open source meant before they came around. There is source available, isn't it? It's even freely available.

The "definition" of "Open Source" was made by people with certain political goals. Just because your goals might be the same, or --more likely -- you are ignorant of the history, because you are presumably too young, doesn't change that.

You are on a forum of ignorant young people all echoing each other as parrots. The previous generation would listen to the older people in their respective communities, but it seems all the millennials are just in a race to demonstrate their underdeveloped brains.

Just because you can "vote" things up or down, doesn't entitle you to wisdom. In fact, I would consider Hacker News to be mostly a place to become stupid, judging by its community of startup wannabes.

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