8 ms·

An Open Licensing Organization for Open Source Software

28 points by zrail 8y ago

daly 8y ago
no, No, NO. We're programmers. If you can think of it, we can do it. But it takes someone who has the motivation and the time. Motivation is easy to find but time is not. Because Time is Money (as I'm sure you've heard). So the real issue is open source funding. I've spent the last 18 years trying to get Axiom funded. I tried the NSF. They will not fund Axiom because there is a "competing commercial product" (aka Mathematica). I tried the Air Force (AFOSR). They cannot give grants to open source work because it requires financial tracking. Somebody has to managed the funds and the receipts. When I was at City College I did get a grant but they have a Provost (who took 55% for "support"). In order to handle accounting open source needs an "accounting office" with professional, certified accountants. I approached several companies (e.g. IBM, TI, etc.) with the idea of "donating a certified accountant or two" to an organization that would "manage open source grants" with services like funds management, receipt clearance, taxes, etc. That way an open source project could accept grant money. So far, nobody wants to donate people. I think such an office could completely change the whole open source funding issue. I've tried setting up donations for Axiom. The idea was not to pay people to work on Axiom, just to support things like setting up a conference or paying to attend a conference. I was the only donor. Open source is not free. I estimate that I spent about $3000 per year on things like travel to attend a conference and paying for hosting services. I now have the Axiom server under my desk on a $1200 dollar computer. In order to ensure Axiom runs everywhere I have to buy computers like the Apple (used to be a non-Intel processor), the PowerPC, a Windows machine, a Linux machine, etc. It all adds up to a lot of money.... not to mention the cost of books to keep up. Oh, yeah, and my time is written off as "free".
- zrail 8y ago
  I don't understand your objection. Maybe I'm not communicating the idea properly. The Air Force, as an organization, would purchase an OSCC license and use, as you say, Axiom. If that's the only software they used, all of their license fee (minus overhead expenses) would go directly in your pocket.
- zrail 8y ago
  I agree with your problem statement. I just don't agree with your approach. OSCC wouldn't be a grant making organization and it doesn't need professional accountants (although that would be helpful). It would be a licensing and revenue sharing pass through. Someone wants to use Axiom in a commercial context? Great! Tell them to buy a OSCC subscription. The revenue will flow to you, but you don't have to handle accounting or applying for grants or any other crap.
- zokier 8y ago
  > They cannot give grants to open source work because it requires financial tracking. There is nothing special in open source work that would preclude financial tracking. Sure it takes effort, and there are costs related to getting all the paperwork done so you need to think twice if it is worth it. But still, its just normal part of the business.
  - daly 8y ago
    Yes, you can set up a business to handle everything. And you can pay an accountant to handle the grant. And you can do all the receipt tracking. And you can get your busiess certified by organizations that issue grants. All of which means that you don't spend time programming. The fundamental idea is to centralize that "overhead" so that open source programmers can program, not run a business. We're not trying to make and market a traditional product.
danShumway 8y ago
> The OSCC license would be a variant of Apache 2.0, BSD, or MIT, with the additional clause that the rights granted by the license are also predicated on paying for annual OSCC license fees. Then it's not Open Source. I agree that funding Open Source software is hard, and I want a solution as much as anybody: It's not even a theoretical problem for me, I am currently self employed and would really like to fund myself with just Open Source software. What you're describing is a really bad idea though, it isn't actually FOSS. Heck, it's actually considerably worse than many of the other licensing models out there, because it basically boils down to being a subscription service. Many of us are involved in Open Source because we specifically hate the 'software rental' model. Better ideas that I've seen people kicking around that I wouldn't immediately dismiss: - putting a paywall in front of issue trackers - dual licensing under the GPL and a proprietary paid license. - requiring upfront payment for new features (ie Kickstarter/Patreon) - open core models (ie Gitlab's strategy) - advertising and sponsorships via READMEs and official sites. Many of these ideas also have problems, but at least they don't require us to completely abandon FOSS licensing.
- zrail 8y ago
  You're right, it's not FOSS. It's open source in the broader context of being able to work on software entirely in the open and still get compensated for it by the commercial entities that use it. Giving away your work for one and all to come and take is, ultimately, unsustainable. All of your suggestions ultimately boil down to altruism by commercial entities, and that's also not sustainable. Companies care about legal compliance but don't want to contract with a million little entities to comply. That's why FOSS is so popular for companies and so terrible for maintainers. Companies get to build their business on this great software and completely ignore the externalities that it takes to get there. If there were one central organization (or heck, a handful) where companies could register and pay for one license that entitles them to use any software licensed by that organization I think we would be far better off as a community.
  - danShumway 8y ago
    The benefits of FOSS are specifically tied to the freedom to run and fork code for any reason. If you get rid of that model, you lose a huge number of attractive features of these licenses: freedom is the benefit of FOSS. There are already tons of source available models that tons of companies use. Nothing is stopping you from putting your code on Github right now with a proprietary license. Of course, even in that scenario most users prefer single-time purchases to subscription models. If you want to go off and develop a new proprietary subscription license, then fine. But don't market it as a solution to OSS problems, that's deceptive. > All of your suggestions ultimately boil down to altruism by commercial entities Quite literally none of my suggestions boil down to that, I deliberately left donations off the list. In every single model a commercial entity pays for something they would not be able to get for free: advertising, permission to bypass GPL infection of their own code, support and access to developers, new features, or an enhanced proprietary version.
vortico 8y ago
Congratulations, you just came up with a proprietary license concept. That's great, but don't misuse the phrase "open source" or "free software". Perhaps a better alternative to the absurdely complex system you've proposed is to simply exchange software licenses/units/subscriptions for cash, the way it's normally done. Other people can contribute to your software through "contracting" and "being hired". This is the easiest and most straightforward way to handle proprietary software. If you truly believe your concept deserves the name "open", you should research the concept at https://opensource.org/ https://opensource.org/ and reevaluate. Open-source software is for everyone to use, not just those advantaged enough to have free time to contribute to projects in a secret club.
sixdimensional 8y ago
So, I have gone down a similar mental experiment trail also, before. I like this direction of thinking, although I haven't arrived at an ideal solution. What I could not avoid with your type of thinking, was ending up with something that seemed like a patent/copyright shell company. If someone can be excluded from licensing by not paying a due, then is this truly open? I understand your intention is to re-use open source licenses and add a small clause directing payment for use to this open licensing organization, but ultimately, I think that such an organization may become a threat not a benefit. I might be wrong - the Apache Foundation works pretty well for humanity, and Apache licensing works well also. And, they seem to raise at least enough funding to keep the lights on from their supporters. I personally always get stuck debating between the concepts of for-profit [1] / non-profit [2] and public [3] / private [4] goods. I think the tendency in these discussions is not to get specific enough about what we are talking about. For example, the traditional confusion between "free" and "open" source software... e.g. the "free as in beer" vs. "freedom of speech" [5]. In a sense, your proposal would solve that problem because it would create a clear organization supporting a clear license, with a clear compensation mechanism. However, how would this organization run? As a non-profit? As a for-profit? Maybe a social benefit corporation [6]? I think the choice is everything, if it can work at all. There's a reason, I think, that open source is especially associated with the rise of the Internet and networks, and decentralization, and sharing. Perhaps there is not a perfect legal model for such a thing. I think in a naive sense, the concept of "open source" is sometimes thought to be analogous to able to be saying that a copy of the intellectual property can be used and/or modified without restriction, the copy can be owned by anyone, and can be shared with anyone, in any situation (commercial or not). Of course, depending on the specific license (GPL, AGPL, MIT, Apache, etc.) there are differing degrees of how open "open" really is. There is a desire to make something.. truly open with literally no restriction. Ironically, many companies and organizations might not touch such a thing out of fear of the origin, they worry if they use it they might get sued. It's almost as if we cannot have a situation where there is just a piece of intellectual property, openly shared, without a license (for example, "common knowledge".. a gray area term as well, but, do you have a license for it?). This again is an area that clarification may help... if you know that you have access to this huge portfolio of IP and source, as a member of such an organization as you propose, you don't have to worry about the license anymore as long as you pay your dues. But, what risk would such an organization carry? We need look no further than to the recent acquisition of GitHub by Microsoft to see an example, we'll have to see how that turns out. I think I'm rambling now, but I hope some of these thoughts come together to help. I'd be willing to chat more about this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For-profit_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For-profit_corporation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_good [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
mperham 8y ago
The easiest, fairest sliding scale I can think of for charging corporations for this is per employee. Charging based on revenue or other accounting metric allows for monkeying and funny math. For example, $500/yr/employee. That's minimal for small startups. For a company with 50,000 employees, that's $25m/yr. Realistically you can't start charging that much initially but as more developers and projects use an OSCC license, the value increases and you can raise the royalty rate.
- zrail 8y ago
  Per employee is also easy to verify and, as you say, difficult to game. ASCAP has a variety of ways to charge based on entity type, as I understand it.
- prepend 8y ago
  That’s great for companies, but bad for organizations. I run into this with commercial vendors who try to explain how all 10k people in my org would benefit, whereas I know only 100 would use it. Just because something is easy to verify, doesn’t make t fair. There’s very little software that I would ever think warrants $500/employee/year for a small startup.
  - mperham 8y ago
    You're misunderstanding. You pay $xxx/employee to buy a license to use ALL software with that license. You aren't buying one thing for N employees. Let's assume Linux, Apache and PHP all licensed via the OSCC. $xxx/employee means you can use all OSCC projects in production for your org. Royalties would go back to those projects based on usage tracking (which itself is a major complication).
    - prepend 8y ago
      There is software not using your system that I would need. Even if this covered all OSS products I use, I wouldn’t pay $500. The price is kind of ridiculous. If it’s for every employee in the org
zrail 8y ago
Author here. Y’all are right, using the words “open source” for this model is a mistake because it doesnt fit the existing definitions well. The core of the idea is to centralize the complexity from the perspective of both the developer and the business that uses the developer’s software, such that businesses fairly compensate developers without developers having to develop a separate, unique business model. Musicians banded together a century ago to make this happen for them and it’s worked well for everyone concerned. It seems like we should be able to do the same.
- prepend 8y ago
  I’ve read of some horror stories around ascap suing various bars and restaurants [0], and that seems like something that I would want no part of as a developer, user, or company. As a music lover, this seems like a system that causes much harm and has been opposed to file sharing and free information sharing. [0] http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/ascap-sues-peninsula-bar-for-copyright-infringement/ http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/ascap-sues-peninsula-...
qz3 8y ago
I'd like a dead-simple and globally accessible way of donating. Like github/gitlab/etc allowing to easily deposit money via CC, Paysafecard, Google Wallet et al. The projects could have a "donate" button by default. I often clone and browse projects and absolutely wouldn't hesitate to donate a few dollars here and there if it's just a click away.
- prepend 8y ago
  Flattr does this, sort of. I pay a monthly fee and it distribute it to whatever repos I star that month. They distribute to more than Github as well, but not everything.

28 points by zrail 8y ago

daly 8y ago

no, No, NO. We're programmers. If you can think of it, we can do it. But it takes someone who has the motivation and the time. Motivation is easy to find but time is not. Because Time is Money (as I'm sure you've heard). So the real issue is open source funding. I've spent the last 18 years trying to get Axiom funded. I tried the NSF. They will not fund Axiom because there is a "competing commercial product" (aka Mathematica). I tried the Air Force (AFOSR). They cannot give grants to open source work because it requires financial tracking. Somebody has to managed the funds and the receipts. When I was at City College I did get a grant but they have a Provost (who took 55% for "support"). In order to handle accounting open source needs an "accounting office" with professional, certified accountants. I approached several companies (e.g. IBM, TI, etc.) with the idea of "donating a certified accountant or two" to an organization that would "manage open source grants" with services like funds management, receipt clearance, taxes, etc. That way an open source project could accept grant money. So far, nobody wants to donate people. I think such an office could completely change the whole open source funding issue. I've tried setting up donations for Axiom. The idea was not to pay people to work on Axiom, just to support things like setting up a conference or paying to attend a conference. I was the only donor. Open source is not free. I estimate that I spent about $3000 per year on things like travel to attend a conference and paying for hosting services. I now have the Axiom server under my desk on a $1200 dollar computer. In order to ensure Axiom runs everywhere I have to buy computers like the Apple (used to be a non-Intel processor), the PowerPC, a Windows machine, a Linux machine, etc. It all adds up to a lot of money.... not to mention the cost of books to keep up. Oh, yeah, and my time is written off as "free".

zrail 8y ago
I don't understand your objection. Maybe I'm not communicating the idea properly. The Air Force, as an organization, would purchase an OSCC license and use, as you say, Axiom. If that's the only software they used, all of their license fee (minus overhead expenses) would go directly in your pocket.
zrail 8y ago
I agree with your problem statement. I just don't agree with your approach. OSCC wouldn't be a grant making organization and it doesn't need professional accountants (although that would be helpful). It would be a licensing and revenue sharing pass through. Someone wants to use Axiom in a commercial context? Great! Tell them to buy a OSCC subscription. The revenue will flow to you, but you don't have to handle accounting or applying for grants or any other crap.
zokier 8y ago
> They cannot give grants to open source work because it requires financial tracking. There is nothing special in open source work that would preclude financial tracking. Sure it takes effort, and there are costs related to getting all the paperwork done so you need to think twice if it is worth it. But still, its just normal part of the business.
- daly 8y ago
  Yes, you can set up a business to handle everything. And you can pay an accountant to handle the grant. And you can do all the receipt tracking. And you can get your busiess certified by organizations that issue grants. All of which means that you don't spend time programming. The fundamental idea is to centralize that "overhead" so that open source programmers can program, not run a business. We're not trying to make and market a traditional product.

danShumway 8y ago

> The OSCC license would be a variant of Apache 2.0, BSD, or MIT, with the additional clause that the rights granted by the license are also predicated on paying for annual OSCC license fees. Then it's not Open Source. I agree that funding Open Source software is hard, and I want a solution as much as anybody: It's not even a theoretical problem for me, I am currently self employed and would really like to fund myself with just Open Source software. What you're describing is a really bad idea though, it isn't actually FOSS. Heck, it's actually considerably worse than many of the other licensing models out there, because it basically boils down to being a subscription service. Many of us are involved in Open Source because we specifically hate the 'software rental' model. Better ideas that I've seen people kicking around that I wouldn't immediately dismiss: - putting a paywall in front of issue trackers - dual licensing under the GPL and a proprietary paid license. - requiring upfront payment for new features (ie Kickstarter/Patreon) - open core models (ie Gitlab's strategy) - advertising and sponsorships via READMEs and official sites. Many of these ideas also have problems, but at least they don't require us to completely abandon FOSS licensing.

zrail 8y ago
You're right, it's not FOSS. It's open source in the broader context of being able to work on software entirely in the open and still get compensated for it by the commercial entities that use it. Giving away your work for one and all to come and take is, ultimately, unsustainable. All of your suggestions ultimately boil down to altruism by commercial entities, and that's also not sustainable. Companies care about legal compliance but don't want to contract with a million little entities to comply. That's why FOSS is so popular for companies and so terrible for maintainers. Companies get to build their business on this great software and completely ignore the externalities that it takes to get there. If there were one central organization (or heck, a handful) where companies could register and pay for one license that entitles them to use any software licensed by that organization I think we would be far better off as a community.
- danShumway 8y ago
  The benefits of FOSS are specifically tied to the freedom to run and fork code for any reason. If you get rid of that model, you lose a huge number of attractive features of these licenses: freedom is the benefit of FOSS. There are already tons of source available models that tons of companies use. Nothing is stopping you from putting your code on Github right now with a proprietary license. Of course, even in that scenario most users prefer single-time purchases to subscription models. If you want to go off and develop a new proprietary subscription license, then fine. But don't market it as a solution to OSS problems, that's deceptive. > All of your suggestions ultimately boil down to altruism by commercial entities Quite literally none of my suggestions boil down to that, I deliberately left donations off the list. In every single model a commercial entity pays for something they would not be able to get for free: advertising, permission to bypass GPL infection of their own code, support and access to developers, new features, or an enhanced proprietary version.

vortico 8y ago

Congratulations, you just came up with a proprietary license concept. That's great, but don't misuse the phrase "open source" or "free software". Perhaps a better alternative to the absurdely complex system you've proposed is to simply exchange software licenses/units/subscriptions for cash, the way it's normally done. Other people can contribute to your software through "contracting" and "being hired". This is the easiest and most straightforward way to handle proprietary software. If you truly believe your concept deserves the name "open", you should research the concept at https://opensource.org/ https://opensource.org/ and reevaluate. Open-source software is for everyone to use, not just those advantaged enough to have free time to contribute to projects in a secret club.

sixdimensional 8y ago

So, I have gone down a similar mental experiment trail also, before. I like this direction of thinking, although I haven't arrived at an ideal solution. What I could not avoid with your type of thinking, was ending up with something that seemed like a patent/copyright shell company. If someone can be excluded from licensing by not paying a due, then is this truly open? I understand your intention is to re-use open source licenses and add a small clause directing payment for use to this open licensing organization, but ultimately, I think that such an organization may become a threat not a benefit. I might be wrong - the Apache Foundation works pretty well for humanity, and Apache licensing works well also. And, they seem to raise at least enough funding to keep the lights on from their supporters. I personally always get stuck debating between the concepts of for-profit [1] / non-profit [2] and public [3] / private [4] goods. I think the tendency in these discussions is not to get specific enough about what we are talking about. For example, the traditional confusion between "free" and "open" source software... e.g. the "free as in beer" vs. "freedom of speech" [5]. In a sense, your proposal would solve that problem because it would create a clear organization supporting a clear license, with a clear compensation mechanism. However, how would this organization run? As a non-profit? As a for-profit? Maybe a social benefit corporation [6]? I think the choice is everything, if it can work at all. There's a reason, I think, that open source is especially associated with the rise of the Internet and networks, and decentralization, and sharing. Perhaps there is not a perfect legal model for such a thing. I think in a naive sense, the concept of "open source" is sometimes thought to be analogous to able to be saying that a copy of the intellectual property can be used and/or modified without restriction, the copy can be owned by anyone, and can be shared with anyone, in any situation (commercial or not). Of course, depending on the specific license (GPL, AGPL, MIT, Apache, etc.) there are differing degrees of how open "open" really is. There is a desire to make something.. truly open with literally no restriction. Ironically, many companies and organizations might not touch such a thing out of fear of the origin, they worry if they use it they might get sued. It's almost as if we cannot have a situation where there is just a piece of intellectual property, openly shared, without a license (for example, "common knowledge".. a gray area term as well, but, do you have a license for it?). This again is an area that clarification may help... if you know that you have access to this huge portfolio of IP and source, as a member of such an organization as you propose, you don't have to worry about the license anymore as long as you pay your dues. But, what risk would such an organization carry? We need look no further than to the recent acquisition of GitHub by Microsoft to see an example, we'll have to see how that turns out. I think I'm rambling now, but I hope some of these thoughts come together to help. I'd be willing to chat more about this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For-profit_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For-profit_corporation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_good [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

mperham 8y ago

The easiest, fairest sliding scale I can think of for charging corporations for this is per employee. Charging based on revenue or other accounting metric allows for monkeying and funny math. For example, $500/yr/employee. That's minimal for small startups. For a company with 50,000 employees, that's $25m/yr. Realistically you can't start charging that much initially but as more developers and projects use an OSCC license, the value increases and you can raise the royalty rate.

zrail 8y ago
Per employee is also easy to verify and, as you say, difficult to game. ASCAP has a variety of ways to charge based on entity type, as I understand it.
prepend 8y ago
That’s great for companies, but bad for organizations. I run into this with commercial vendors who try to explain how all 10k people in my org would benefit, whereas I know only 100 would use it. Just because something is easy to verify, doesn’t make t fair. There’s very little software that I would ever think warrants $500/employee/year for a small startup.
- mperham 8y ago
  You're misunderstanding. You pay $xxx/employee to buy a license to use ALL software with that license. You aren't buying one thing for N employees. Let's assume Linux, Apache and PHP all licensed via the OSCC. $xxx/employee means you can use all OSCC projects in production for your org. Royalties would go back to those projects based on usage tracking (which itself is a major complication).
  - prepend 8y ago
    There is software not using your system that I would need. Even if this covered all OSS products I use, I wouldn’t pay $500. The price is kind of ridiculous. If it’s for every employee in the org

zrail 8y ago

Author here. Y’all are right, using the words “open source” for this model is a mistake because it doesnt fit the existing definitions well. The core of the idea is to centralize the complexity from the perspective of both the developer and the business that uses the developer’s software, such that businesses fairly compensate developers without developers having to develop a separate, unique business model. Musicians banded together a century ago to make this happen for them and it’s worked well for everyone concerned. It seems like we should be able to do the same.

prepend 8y ago
I’ve read of some horror stories around ascap suing various bars and restaurants [0], and that seems like something that I would want no part of as a developer, user, or company. As a music lover, this seems like a system that causes much harm and has been opposed to file sharing and free information sharing. [0] http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/ascap-sues-peninsula-bar-for-copyright-infringement/ http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/ascap-sues-peninsula-...

qz3 8y ago

I'd like a dead-simple and globally accessible way of donating. Like github/gitlab/etc allowing to easily deposit money via CC, Paysafecard, Google Wallet et al. The projects could have a "donate" button by default. I often clone and browse projects and absolutely wouldn't hesitate to donate a few dollars here and there if it's just a click away.

prepend 8y ago
Flattr does this, sort of. I pay a monthly fee and it distribute it to whatever repos I star that month. They distribute to more than Github as well, but not everything.