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This looks neat, but the license is fatal. It is not "just like an open-source license." First, what is a "user"? It is not defined anywhere in the license. I

This looks neat, but the license is fatal. It is not "just like an open-source license." First, what is a "user"? It is not defined anywhere in the license. I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? The worst case scenario if you did this and the "upstream" was open source is that you'd have to do a bit of re-licensing, the worst case scenario here is that every user of the "downstream" project gets sued by SourceGraph. Asking for contributions is also problematic, as you're asking for employers to authorize free contributions including a blanket license and patent grant to a proprietary commercial project. And even after that the contributor doesn't have the right to freely use and distribute the software they modified. I'm all for publishing source code of proprietary projects, but dressing it up as an open source project is not great. I'd suggest adding a license clickwall to avoid accidental IP contamination.

brentjanderson 11y ago
The license is interesting - on their [primary website](https://sourcegraph.com/ https://sourcegraph.com/) (Scroll down to Pricing), the pricing section indicates that teams using the "Core" feature set do not have a set limit. Any number of users can use the core system. Enterprise features appear to revolve around access control and scale.
bradrydzewski 11y ago
> I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? Could this also be an issue with the GPL? What happens if I look at GPL source code and then author similar code under a non-GPL license? I wonder if a precedent has been set that could be applied to this Fair Source license.
- chriswarbo 11y ago
  > What happens if I look at GPL source code and then author similar code under a non-GPL license? In that case it could be argued that your similar code is a "derived work", and hence you are violating the copyright of the original. Whether that original is GPL'd or not doesn't actually matter from a legal point of view; it could be under a different FOSS licence, or proprietary, the result is the same: if you breach the terms, you're in violation. That's the point of copyleft: it's power comes from exactly the same source as that of proprietary licenses. In the particular case that your "non-GPL" license just so happens to be similar to the GPL, e.g. it's FOSS, possibly copyleft, etc. then the original author might be feeling generous and be willing to come to some arrangement, e.g. by retroactively granting you permission for your derived work, or by negotiating a licence change with you (changing the license of either your code, theirs or both). Note that this would be orthogonal to the legalities; it's a matter of whether the owner is willing to cooperate. This might be difficult if there are many owners though (e.g. imagine trying to negotiate a license change for the Linux kernel!)
jrpt 11y ago
Accepting contributions with a license like this is a solved problem. You just require the contributors to sign a contributor license agreement. In case the contributor is working somewhere, you also have them sign a corporate contributor license agreement. This is the same process used by companies like Gitlab. They aren't claiming to be open source. It's similar in certain ways to open source, but different.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > They aren't claiming to be open source. They are claiming to be essentially identical for small organizations: "The Fair Source License works just like an open-source license when the usage is below the Use Limitation." This is, however, false given the lack of ability to redistribute modified copies (even under the same license). Its not "just like an open-source license", even before considering the Usage Limitation.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> First, what is a "user"? It is not defined anywhere in the license. To the extent it is defined, it seems to be defined exclusively as internal users (including commonly-controlled organizations), which might have...interesting...implications if the licensee chose to use their (potentially modified) software in SaaS, rather than internally.

brentjanderson 11y ago

The license is interesting - on their [primary website](https://sourcegraph.com/ https://sourcegraph.com/) (Scroll down to Pricing), the pricing section indicates that teams using the "Core" feature set do not have a set limit. Any number of users can use the core system. Enterprise features appear to revolve around access control and scale.

bradrydzewski 11y ago

> I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? Could this also be an issue with the GPL? What happens if I look at GPL source code and then author similar code under a non-GPL license? I wonder if a precedent has been set that could be applied to this Fair Source license.

chriswarbo 11y ago
> What happens if I look at GPL source code and then author similar code under a non-GPL license? In that case it could be argued that your similar code is a "derived work", and hence you are violating the copyright of the original. Whether that original is GPL'd or not doesn't actually matter from a legal point of view; it could be under a different FOSS licence, or proprietary, the result is the same: if you breach the terms, you're in violation. That's the point of copyleft: it's power comes from exactly the same source as that of proprietary licenses. In the particular case that your "non-GPL" license just so happens to be similar to the GPL, e.g. it's FOSS, possibly copyleft, etc. then the original author might be feeling generous and be willing to come to some arrangement, e.g. by retroactively granting you permission for your derived work, or by negotiating a licence change with you (changing the license of either your code, theirs or both). Note that this would be orthogonal to the legalities; it's a matter of whether the owner is willing to cooperate. This might be difficult if there are many owners though (e.g. imagine trying to negotiate a license change for the Linux kernel!)

jrpt 11y ago

Accepting contributions with a license like this is a solved problem. You just require the contributors to sign a contributor license agreement. In case the contributor is working somewhere, you also have them sign a corporate contributor license agreement. This is the same process used by companies like Gitlab. They aren't claiming to be open source. It's similar in certain ways to open source, but different.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> They aren't claiming to be open source. They are claiming to be essentially identical for small organizations: "The Fair Source License works just like an open-source license when the usage is below the Use Limitation." This is, however, false given the lack of ability to redistribute modified copies (even under the same license). Its not "just like an open-source license", even before considering the Usage Limitation.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> First, what is a "user"? It is not defined anywhere in the license. To the extent it is defined, it seems to be defined exclusively as internal users (including commonly-controlled organizations), which might have...interesting...implications if the licensee chose to use their (potentially modified) software in SaaS, rather than internally.