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"WinFsp is available under the AGPLv3 license. If you find the constraints of the AGPLv3 too onerous, a commercial license is also available. Please contact Bil

"WinFsp is available under the AGPLv3 license. If you find the constraints of the AGPLv3 too onerous, a commercial license is also available. Please contact Bill Zissimopoulos for more details." I hope they will soon switch to MIT.

m_mueller 10y ago
"Hey, could you make your free thing even free-er so I can make money with it in your place?"
- drdaeman 10y ago
  "...so I could make a non-free derivative/build?" Fixed it for you. A lot of people make money by working (or integrating) strongly copylefted software, with results remaining friendly to end-user freedoms.
  - m_mueller 10y ago
    I'm curious. What are examples that are not based around offering what the software does as a service (including support / consulting based products)?
    - drdaeman 10y ago
      I believe, every day, a lot of FOSS projects get forked by engineers (who are getting paid for their work). They add new features or fix bugs they've encountered, and share their work results back upstream. Or release as their own fork/patchset (I stumble upon such forks almost every day I browse GitHub/Bitbucket/GitLab). Say... for an example that resembles the OP project... In a company I work for, we have a FUSE-based (GNU/Linux) filesystem that we use to access Azure Blob Storage like any other mounted network share. A puny tiny project that's a fork of someone else's fork of someone's project, all FOSS (Apache2-licensed, though, not *GPL, but I believe it's irrelevant here), but hope it should still suffice as a quick example. There's literally no reason for us to keep it secret - we're end-user ourselves, enjoying cp and rsync working nicely. Well, maybe not completely nicely - I'm aware there are still some issues with that filesystem, but at least, with the patches, it works OK for us. So, sure, we've put all our changes on GitHub. And, I'm sure, every our developer who had touched the code to solve the problems we had with it got paid for their time. :) So, I guess, it's every time the engineer is an employee of a company that's an end-user themselves. I think the only case where GPL/AGPL doesn't fit is when you license the software to the end-users to run, and you don't want them to re-distribute and modify software on their own but rely on you for all their needs. And it seems that original project author doesn't fancy this particular business model.
      - m_mueller 10y ago
        I completely agree with you - mainly because you're making the same point as I did: OP didn't want other people making licensing money with his software, so he copylefted it. GP didn't like this - at which point I was making the point that apparently he'd like to get in on licensing money (of derivative works), without giving OP a fee. Because, as you described, that's pretty much the only case where OP's model wouldn't work. What you described IMO fits into what I was saying - you can make money on GPLed software just fine, if it's based around services or consulting, even if it's just for internally used services (because internal customers are customers too - you could even be your own customer).
  - pjc50 10y ago
    > "remaining friendly to end-user freedoms" .. which isn't quite the same thing as itself being Free software. Not that I want to start the license war here.
    - drdaeman 10y ago
      Both MIT and AGPL are Free and Open Source Software licenses, by the very official (FSF and OSI) definitions. I don't think there's any need to disagree here. One provides a way to create a proprietary non-free derivatives/builds, granting more freedom to the non-end-user developers who use the code. Another provides a way to ensure end-users always have certain freedoms. Debating which is better is meaningless, as it's just a matter of personal preference. We should avoid that.
simfoo 10y ago
This attitude is why we can't have nice things. The author is obviously making a very conscious choice. Respect that!
- jorangreef 10y ago
  "Respect that!" Preference for the MIT license and a wish that the project will reconsider is meant as no indication of a lack of respect. I am sorry you took it that way. This is too good a project not to be under MIT.
  - Strom 10y ago
    Licenses other than AGPL-3 are available, as you quoted yourself. Just contact Bill Zissimopoulos for more details. By complaining here you're leaving the impression that you're not interested in any arrangement other than Bill giving you a more liberal license for free.
  - cyphar 10y ago
    > This is too good a project not to be under MIT. In my opinion, good projects like these should always be copylefted. Large projects under liberal licenses are essentially donations by the free software community to proprietary software companies. This results in such companies being able to take advantage of their users in unethical ways using your software. The one thing that free software developers have over proprietary software developers is that we can use copylefted software. It maintains user freedom and maintains the competitive advantage that free software companies and communities have over proprietary software companies.
    - jorangreef 10y ago
      I hear what you are saying. Personally, as a contributor to open source, I would like my contributions to go to projects that enable and encourage business. I prefer not to make code contributions to projects that cannot freely be used by all, including business. I consider that to be the spirit of open source. Sure, some businesses will take advantage of Node.js for example because it has an MIT license, but the vast majority will benefit. Startups that build on open source can be more efficient, for the benefit of the customers those businesses exist to serve, honorably, at a profit.
WorldMaker 10y ago
MIT might be a bit too strong of a switch for the author, but I think there is a better compromise than the AGPL. The AGPL has some worrying clauses in it that make it the actual legal nightmare that people used to paint the GPL with. I realize that may be the intention of the project author, but it does severely limit even other open source developers' willingness to touch the project with a ten foot pole. I think a standard GPL license would be an improvement that would keep the intention and avoid some of the larger headaches of the Affero version. Looks like Dokany is already LGPL/MIT-dual licensed though, so probably would just use that if I were building in this space: https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany
- billziss 10y ago
  Some good points here. I admit that I do not fully understand all consequences of licensing this under the AGPL vs the GPL (and I mean social rather than legal). On the question of why AGPL/GPL and not a more free license like BSD: when I started out the project my intention was to place it under a BSD license. But after working on it for 4-5 months and writing about 25-30 KLOC, with much of it being kernel-mode code I had to reexamine the licensing decision. I did not want to go back on my decision to open source the project, but I also felt that I should see something out of all this hard work (believe me when I say that Windows kernel mode is not fun). Bill Zissimopoulos

m_mueller 10y ago

"Hey, could you make your free thing even free-er so I can make money with it in your place?"

drdaeman 10y ago
"...so I could make a non-free derivative/build?" Fixed it for you. A lot of people make money by working (or integrating) strongly copylefted software, with results remaining friendly to end-user freedoms.
- m_mueller 10y ago
  I'm curious. What are examples that are not based around offering what the software does as a service (including support / consulting based products)?
  - drdaeman 10y ago
    I believe, every day, a lot of FOSS projects get forked by engineers (who are getting paid for their work). They add new features or fix bugs they've encountered, and share their work results back upstream. Or release as their own fork/patchset (I stumble upon such forks almost every day I browse GitHub/Bitbucket/GitLab). Say... for an example that resembles the OP project... In a company I work for, we have a FUSE-based (GNU/Linux) filesystem that we use to access Azure Blob Storage like any other mounted network share. A puny tiny project that's a fork of someone else's fork of someone's project, all FOSS (Apache2-licensed, though, not *GPL, but I believe it's irrelevant here), but hope it should still suffice as a quick example. There's literally no reason for us to keep it secret - we're end-user ourselves, enjoying cp and rsync working nicely. Well, maybe not completely nicely - I'm aware there are still some issues with that filesystem, but at least, with the patches, it works OK for us. So, sure, we've put all our changes on GitHub. And, I'm sure, every our developer who had touched the code to solve the problems we had with it got paid for their time. :) So, I guess, it's every time the engineer is an employee of a company that's an end-user themselves. I think the only case where GPL/AGPL doesn't fit is when you license the software to the end-users to run, and you don't want them to re-distribute and modify software on their own but rely on you for all their needs. And it seems that original project author doesn't fancy this particular business model.
    - m_mueller 10y ago
      I completely agree with you - mainly because you're making the same point as I did: OP didn't want other people making licensing money with his software, so he copylefted it. GP didn't like this - at which point I was making the point that apparently he'd like to get in on licensing money (of derivative works), without giving OP a fee. Because, as you described, that's pretty much the only case where OP's model wouldn't work. What you described IMO fits into what I was saying - you can make money on GPLed software just fine, if it's based around services or consulting, even if it's just for internally used services (because internal customers are customers too - you could even be your own customer).
- pjc50 10y ago
  > "remaining friendly to end-user freedoms" .. which isn't quite the same thing as itself being Free software. Not that I want to start the license war here.
  - drdaeman 10y ago
    Both MIT and AGPL are Free and Open Source Software licenses, by the very official (FSF and OSI) definitions. I don't think there's any need to disagree here. One provides a way to create a proprietary non-free derivatives/builds, granting more freedom to the non-end-user developers who use the code. Another provides a way to ensure end-users always have certain freedoms. Debating which is better is meaningless, as it's just a matter of personal preference. We should avoid that.

simfoo 10y ago

This attitude is why we can't have nice things. The author is obviously making a very conscious choice. Respect that!

jorangreef 10y ago
"Respect that!" Preference for the MIT license and a wish that the project will reconsider is meant as no indication of a lack of respect. I am sorry you took it that way. This is too good a project not to be under MIT.
- Strom 10y ago
  Licenses other than AGPL-3 are available, as you quoted yourself. Just contact Bill Zissimopoulos for more details. By complaining here you're leaving the impression that you're not interested in any arrangement other than Bill giving you a more liberal license for free.
- cyphar 10y ago
  > This is too good a project not to be under MIT. In my opinion, good projects like these should always be copylefted. Large projects under liberal licenses are essentially donations by the free software community to proprietary software companies. This results in such companies being able to take advantage of their users in unethical ways using your software. The one thing that free software developers have over proprietary software developers is that we can use copylefted software. It maintains user freedom and maintains the competitive advantage that free software companies and communities have over proprietary software companies.
  - jorangreef 10y ago
    I hear what you are saying. Personally, as a contributor to open source, I would like my contributions to go to projects that enable and encourage business. I prefer not to make code contributions to projects that cannot freely be used by all, including business. I consider that to be the spirit of open source. Sure, some businesses will take advantage of Node.js for example because it has an MIT license, but the vast majority will benefit. Startups that build on open source can be more efficient, for the benefit of the customers those businesses exist to serve, honorably, at a profit.

WorldMaker 10y ago

MIT might be a bit too strong of a switch for the author, but I think there is a better compromise than the AGPL. The AGPL has some worrying clauses in it that make it the actual legal nightmare that people used to paint the GPL with. I realize that may be the intention of the project author, but it does severely limit even other open source developers' willingness to touch the project with a ten foot pole. I think a standard GPL license would be an improvement that would keep the intention and avoid some of the larger headaches of the Affero version. Looks like Dokany is already LGPL/MIT-dual licensed though, so probably would just use that if I were building in this space: https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany

billziss 10y ago
Some good points here. I admit that I do not fully understand all consequences of licensing this under the AGPL vs the GPL (and I mean social rather than legal). On the question of why AGPL/GPL and not a more free license like BSD: when I started out the project my intention was to place it under a BSD license. But after working on it for 4-5 months and writing about 25-30 KLOC, with much of it being kernel-mode code I had to reexamine the licensing decision. I did not want to go back on my decision to open source the project, but I also felt that I should see something out of all this hard work (believe me when I say that Windows kernel mode is not fun). Bill Zissimopoulos