3 ms·

And it's MIT license, or as I think of it, the starving artist license. Why not license under AGPLv3, the way MongoDB does? You want to use it in open source st

by danjoc 10y ago

And it's MIT license, or as I think of it, the starving artist license. Why not license under AGPLv3, the way MongoDB does? You want to use it in open source stuff? Free. You want to use it in commercial product? Commercial license is available for a fee.

detaro 10y ago
I doubt that would work, way too many alternatives around.
- danjoc 10y ago
  Like what? Vue.js? One BDFL who might take a new job or be hired away by BigCo? Some other starving artist project that will die when the main contributor loses interest perhaps? GPL, done well, fosters community and contributions. In five years, everything will be "legacy code" and it won't be nice maintaining something with no community behind it. Permissive licenses only work when backed by giants like Facebook/Google/Apple. Even then, they can go Angular 1 on you. Dead stack with no community is a forced rewrite. You can't just sit on it, because every new feature has to be done from scratch by yourself. That's not a lot of fun in my experience.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - detaro 10y ago
    I haven't seen (A)GPL done well and sucessfully in the (frontend) webdev space. I think some of the bigger component libraries are AGPL + commercial license, but they don't seem to have much in the way of community contributing, and would likely be just as successful if they were entirely closed. If the commercial entity behind a dual-licensed project fails, will those that bought a commercial version contribute to its survival? Can they without licensing issues? And preact seems simple enough that if there weren't X other JS frameworks, or if there is a specific niche only it fills, a lot of projects would try to clone it with a less restrictive license, probably win the mindshare race, and be the ones with a community that contributes, regardless of technical merit. I might be wrong, I might be missing some shining counter-example, but I just don't see it happening in that space, as much as there are arguments why it would be in everybodies interest to make it succeed.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    I know this sounds crazy, but perhaps React?
tracker1 10y ago
No way... We're taking about a front end framework... Which means you really can't use it for any commercial front end.. period. Not to mention no corporation would touch it with a 10ft pole
- danjoc 10y ago
  Sure you could. Pay for a commercial license. Corporations pay for those all the time, and usually don't even get source.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    And that's worked out horribly for maintainers.. it's the whole reason for open-source. Look there are plenty of use cases where (A)GPL is perfectly suitable... a front end gui framework is not a good example imho. I've used plenty of closed source tools in the past... and they've always bit me in the ass at some point. I'd rather roll/adapt my own, or use something with a permissive license I don't have to worry about. I participate in the broader community, and prefer ISC/MIT licensing for most of what I do and use. If it's a given database server, sure, AGPL is fine as long as the client library is permissive.

by danjoc 10y ago

detaro 10y ago

I doubt that would work, way too many alternatives around.

danjoc 10y ago
Like what? Vue.js? One BDFL who might take a new job or be hired away by BigCo? Some other starving artist project that will die when the main contributor loses interest perhaps? GPL, done well, fosters community and contributions. In five years, everything will be "legacy code" and it won't be nice maintaining something with no community behind it. Permissive licenses only work when backed by giants like Facebook/Google/Apple. Even then, they can go Angular 1 on you. Dead stack with no community is a forced rewrite. You can't just sit on it, because every new feature has to be done from scratch by yourself. That's not a lot of fun in my experience.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- detaro 10y ago
  I haven't seen (A)GPL done well and sucessfully in the (frontend) webdev space. I think some of the bigger component libraries are AGPL + commercial license, but they don't seem to have much in the way of community contributing, and would likely be just as successful if they were entirely closed. If the commercial entity behind a dual-licensed project fails, will those that bought a commercial version contribute to its survival? Can they without licensing issues? And preact seems simple enough that if there weren't X other JS frameworks, or if there is a specific niche only it fills, a lot of projects would try to clone it with a less restrictive license, probably win the mindshare race, and be the ones with a community that contributes, regardless of technical merit. I might be wrong, I might be missing some shining counter-example, but I just don't see it happening in that space, as much as there are arguments why it would be in everybodies interest to make it succeed.
- jonknee 10y ago
  I know this sounds crazy, but perhaps React?

tracker1 10y ago

No way... We're taking about a front end framework... Which means you really can't use it for any commercial front end.. period. Not to mention no corporation would touch it with a 10ft pole

danjoc 10y ago
Sure you could. Pay for a commercial license. Corporations pay for those all the time, and usually don't even get source.
- tracker1 10y ago
  And that's worked out horribly for maintainers.. it's the whole reason for open-source. Look there are plenty of use cases where (A)GPL is perfectly suitable... a front end gui framework is not a good example imho. I've used plenty of closed source tools in the past... and they've always bit me in the ass at some point. I'd rather roll/adapt my own, or use something with a permissive license I don't have to worry about. I participate in the broader community, and prefer ISC/MIT licensing for most of what I do and use. If it's a given database server, sure, AGPL is fine as long as the client library is permissive.