Tzeng: "It strikes me that there's no real reason for the rest of us to bother being here if the "old hands" decide what to do regardless of the consensus of the list. Evidently any license submission can be delayed indefinitely."
Randall: "But, one thing open source and free software have demonstrated is that chaotic, rowdy groups of humans can accomplish amazing things together, even despite (and sometimes because of) all their imperfections. Please be patient with us, but persistent. I promise you will get an answer."
Perens: "There aren't that many actually useful variations on the licenses that actually pass the OSD. There are actually only three useful licenses, a gift-style, a sharing-with-rules-style, and something in between. Given Affero and GPL3 terms on those three, essentially all purposes for Open Source can be carried out. All else is embellishment."
Villa: "I'm pretty sure that, contra Bruce, it isn't OSI's position that open
source needs to stay forever trapped in amber, but a reasonable outside
observer (like Kyle!) could certainly conclude otherwise."
Fontana: "I'm generally struck by how conservative, technically and perhaps legally clueless and hidebound contemporary proprietary software license agreements tend to be - though not in the same way as open source licenses, which are vulnerable to similar criticisms."
Perens (quoting): " > A bolder new license might consider: What does an economically viable open source look like?
My usual answer for this is that if you have to ask how you're going to make money, you're the wrong person to make Open Source. Nowhere in the mission of OSI is any mandate to provide authors with a viable business method."
Mitchell: "Hacker-types still favor MIT/BSD over Apache 2.0. Facebook followed suit after the PATENTS tragicomedy. If you don't trust FSF---or OSI for that matter---and you don't have a legal department large enough for an open licensing wonk, you want a license you can read. You want a purpose-built tool that directly expresses your purpose, and little more."
Open source licensing is vastly too complicated. IMHO it needs a menu-like system similar to the Creative Commons options. I think OSI should bite the bullet and lead the way on this change: work with the community to define the options and then say that all future licenses will use the menu system.
> My usual answer for this is that if you have to ask how you're going to make money, you're the wrong person to make Open Source. Nowhere in the mission of OSI is any mandate to provide authors with a viable business method.
Indeed, it is a principle of open source that people can freeload off your work. As soon as an author restricts their work to non-commercial use or commercial-with-a-fee (which is entirely reasonable), it is no longer considered "open source".
> We are asking of you only one thing. Go forth and use your license. We are not stopping you. Just don't call it Open Source.
Go ahead, call it open source. The OSI has no trademark over the term, and the idea that their narrow definition is the only "official" one is a load of crap. There is plenty of room for what constitutes open source that doesn't fall underneath their umbrella.
Edit: I understand this opinion is controversial. If you disagree, please comment and explain why.
> Indeed, it is a principle of open source that people can freeload off your work. As soon as an author restricts their work to non-commercial use or commercial-with-a-fee (which is entirely reasonable), it is no longer considered "open source".
I'd challenge that. Under copyleft and other "share-alike" or "reciprocal" licenses, loading isn't free for everyone, in particular those who create software. There's a cost in sharing source and rights for new code.
I think the community as a whole has forgotten that, because copyleft licenses have fallen behind the times. With a glaring, unpatched vulnerability like the ASP loophole affecting most copyleft code, the terms of the licenses no longer implement the deal their authors wanted to make. Which is why I proposed the license in the second quote you pulled.
That's a good point. For copyleft licenses, reciprocation does not occur through payment, but by users open-sourcing their code. In that case it's fair not to expect reimbursement.
I read your license, and I like the idea. It does seem a bit complicated, but I guess that's inherent in having to wade through payments and private licenses and such. I'm curious, was the LR-0 approved by the OSI? I can't find it on their website.
Reciprocation can occur via payment! That business model is called "selling exceptions" in FSF-speak and "dual licensing" by most everyone else. MySQL pioneered it, decades ago. Basically: "If you can't meet the conditions in LICENSE, buy a different license from us." That's exactly the model licensezero.com tries to make available to independent developers, as a service.
And thank you for reading the license! I've probably poured more time into that document than any other in my career. You're right: there is some inherent complexity in what it attempts to do, compared to permissive open source licenses like MIT or Apache.
Since submitting the license to OSI for approval, the discussion has repeatedly gone off the rails, consuming months of time and thousands upon thousands of words on the mailing list. The silver lining: accepting that OSI approval won't be forthcoming, soon or at all, and that it isn't worth what I thought it was, frees me up to focus even more sharply on clarity and simplicity. If you're interested, I'd love your feedback on this post-OSI "fork":
Programmers should be paid if they are asked to implement someone else's requirements.
There need be no structure for paying programmers who invent their own requirements and thereby just implement whatever they want.
The mass market proprietary software model is indeed based on the process of inventing and implementing requirements and then convincing paying users to value and adopt those requirements and then pay for a copy of the implementation.
That doesn't work for free software, because it is given away; those who like the requirements and their implementation just help themselves to a copy.
The way to get paid, then, is either via donations/crowdfunding, or else to be employed working on customizing open source stuff to specific requirements.
That latter kind of work cannot be the only OSS there is. Someone first has to develop the stuff that is then adopted, and a business forms around it. Those somebodies usually just put in the uncompensated time.
I think you're absolutely right, if and only if we set "open source" equal to "permissive open source" under licenses like MIT, BSD, and Apache 2.
But I don't think your view holds if we include share-alike licenses like GPL and AGPL in "open source". Many would-be-users' business models, especially closed, proprietary software development, inherently conflict with sharing alike. Offering software, for free, under terms that require sharing alike therefore preserves a business model: sell alternative licenses, or exceptions to your open source license's share-alike requirements.
That business model directly motivated my work on the License Zero Reciprocal, a license I submitted to OSI. That led eventually to the thread linked by this post.
If you're interested in other thoughts along these lines, I've collected mine on a blog: https://blog.licensezero.com/
The view basically holds for any software that large numbers of users can use without paying a cent: everything from binary-only "shareware" to "freemium" apps, to open-source-but-not-free things like the Pine e-mail client, to BSD to GPL.
If you give away copies, there is no "business model" other than some sort of custom work, or some non-free versions whose copies you do sell or whatever.
I think you're right again, but only with another limitation: concerning applications, not libraries, frameworks, or development tools.
The latter function as components or unfinished goods, not independently usable software. The right to "use" such incomplete programs or software-production tools is meaningless to end-users. It becomes meaningful to them only when parts and tools are incorporated into, or used to build, other software. Software that often isn't open source, by anyone's definition.
If the finished good is proprietary software that the creator will distribute to users, GPL is a blocker. Distributing copies of the final product will trigger GPL's copyleft conditions. If the finished good is software that its creator will run for others, as software as a service, AGPL and other network-copyleft licenses are blockers. Providing the service to users over a network will trigger requirements to provide source.
The strength of the share-alike requirements in the free, public license. I believe Qt us GPL, and partially LGPL. L0-9 (and a forthcoming evolution, the Parity public license) closes the ASP loophole, requires sharing of changes even if you avoid distribution, and covers programs written or improved with licenses developer tools. That makes the model work better, and for more kinds of software.
The real difference, however, is making the kind of mode Trolltech and MySQL and other companies have run, and making it available to individual developers, on a turnkey basis. All you need is a Stripe account.
Are you well compensated for proprietary work? Currently, it's very common to develop reputation, or even learn development, in open source, and then transition to a job in proprietary development.
Would you agree that means there's a break-even point, where programmers have learned enough from open source to earn well as proprietary developers, and lose any financial incentive to contribute open source on their own, without patronage?
Or we could have a Basic Income for all so that anyone who wanted to create FOSS could without having to take a paying job. Or we could have better 3D printers, gardening robots, materials extractors, portable recycling equipment, and printable solar panels so that programmers making FOSS would not need to engage with the exchange economy much. Or we could expand the gift economy (which FOSS is part of) to more of the material world (e.g. Freecycle). Or the US government could repeal most drug laws and convert freed-up prisons into places where FOSS programmers or others who wanted to make free public digital works could hang out and get free room and board and so on (or maybe build nicer accommodations to the same goals).
Or the filing or holding of non-freely-licensed copyrights by non-profits (e.g. most universities who already employ a lot of people to do programming) could be determined to be "self-dealing" by Congress or maybe just the IRS:
https://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors...
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations."
Or in the absence of such a legal ruling, foundations and other donors could require grantees to sign a pledge to only create free and open source works: "Pledge to only fund and create free software and free content" https://pdfernhout.net/pledge-to-only-fund-and-create-free-w...
Or programmers could keep creating FOSS in their spare time both for its own sake and in the hopes the growing quantitative mass of FOSS eventually leads to a qualitative shift towards a post-scarcity society.
Perens: "There are already too many Open Source licenses. If we never accepted another, that would not be a particularly bad thing."
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...
Mitchell: "Plain English legal drafting is making inspiring headway, as a craft. Open source licensing shouldn't cut itself out of the benefits."
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...
Tzeng: "It strikes me that there's no real reason for the rest of us to bother being here if the "old hands" decide what to do regardless of the consensus of the list. Evidently any license submission can be delayed indefinitely."
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...
Randall: "But, one thing open source and free software have demonstrated is that chaotic, rowdy groups of humans can accomplish amazing things together, even despite (and sometimes because of) all their imperfections. Please be patient with us, but persistent. I promise you will get an answer."
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...
Perens: "There aren't that many actually useful variations on the licenses that actually pass the OSD. There are actually only three useful licenses, a gift-style, a sharing-with-rules-style, and something in between. Given Affero and GPL3 terms on those three, essentially all purposes for Open Source can be carried out. All else is embellishment."
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...
Villa: "I'm pretty sure that, contra Bruce, it isn't OSI's position that open source needs to stay forever trapped in amber, but a reasonable outside observer (like Kyle!) could certainly conclude otherwise."
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...
Fontana: "I'm generally struck by how conservative, technically and perhaps legally clueless and hidebound contemporary proprietary software license agreements tend to be - though not in the same way as open source licenses, which are vulnerable to similar criticisms."
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...
Perens (quoting): " > A bolder new license might consider: What does an economically viable open source look like?
My usual answer for this is that if you have to ask how you're going to make money, you're the wrong person to make Open Source. Nowhere in the mission of OSI is any mandate to provide authors with a viable business method."
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...
Mitchell: "Hacker-types still favor MIT/BSD over Apache 2.0. Facebook followed suit after the PATENTS tragicomedy. If you don't trust FSF---or OSI for that matter---and you don't have a legal department large enough for an open licensing wonk, you want a license you can read. You want a purpose-built tool that directly expresses your purpose, and little more."
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...
Perens: "We are asking of you only one thing. Go forth and use your license. We are not stopping you. Just don't call it Open Source."
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...