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> Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! The

> Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! They're just taking what I wrote and building it into a proprietary product! You told them they could. > But how is it fair that they can make so much money off my code and I never see a cent? You. Told. Them. They. Could. Time and again I see the same sense of helpless outrage from OSS devs. You owe it to yourself to understand the consequences of the license you choose, now and in the future. All the proselytising about permissive vs reciprocal licenses has only masked the important personal choices involved. Choices that you need to make honestly and carefully, or end up burned by your own expectations. Are you willing to release your code, both in the sense of putting it out into the world and emancipating it from your ownership? Do you accept that your code could be renamed, rebranded, repackaged, rented, traded or sold? Would you be happy if your code made someone else rich, famous or successful while you saw no benefit at all? If so, your code is a gift given unconditionally, and you should choose a permissive license. If not, the answer isn't to release it under an MIT license and then complain about it, but to pick a license that matches your intent. The GPL exists for a reason. The MPL exists for a reason. Not because the people who use reciprocal licenses hate freedom, but because their idea of freedom is based on sharing rather than giving. A gift expects nothing in return. Sharing expects that you share as well. Any choice is a fine choice as long as it aligns with your goals. What I don't get is trying to have both and then being upset when you're rebuffed by reality. Picking a permissive license is being the chill surfer dude who lives in a van and just, like, takes life as it comes, man. Lots of people like the idea of that dude, very few people want to actually be that dude. Don't pick the BSD license because of its cool I-don't-care image. Pick it because you actually don't care, or be forced to admit publicly and embarrassingly later that you actually did all along and it was all a show. And for the love of god, don't pick a permissive license, slap a preface on top that says "but not really tho", and act like you've found some amazing lifehack. You're just lying to yourself and everyone else; wearing open source's uniform without making open source's sacrifices.

zapita 8y ago
> wearing open source's uniform without making open source's sacrifices. That’s an oddly... militaristic way of putting it. Are you sure you haven’t been watching too much Game of Thrones? Your version of open-source sounds like the Night’s Watch!
tannhaeuser 8y ago
I agree. There's the reflex (here and elsewhere) to dismiss reciprocal licenses such as GPL, AGPL as "uncool", pretentious, and show-stopping. Maybe it's time to reconsider in times of cloud oligopoles. Because why would you want your software become part of the lock-in strategy of a cloud provider.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  because they give me a service for free? Or just because we're all in this together? I'm sure it depends on the examples you pick. I'm totally happy if people use my MITed code in a commerical product without reciprocating. I'm not writing it for them. I'm mostly writing it for myself. The payback is the joy I feel when others find it useful. I also feel joy by being part of the larger collection of people and companies that have given me so much free stuff. Python, clang, v8, firefox, chromium, electron, zlib, libjpeg, libpng, git, sdl, react, etc etc...
  - sincerely 8y ago
    How can you say “We’re all in this together” when youre donating your time and they use the fruits of that labor to profit off you
    - pas 8y ago
      OP increases the sum in the non-zero-sum sense. Sure, gots back directly nothing, but the chance that gets more eventually increases.
    - iKevinShah 8y ago
      Key differentiation here is that the person is not donating time so that a company necessarily profits off that labor. OP is getting what they (OP) are expecting out of it (joy by being a part of larger collection of people that have given them so much free stuff)
  - tannhaeuser 8y ago
    git is a good example. It's GPLv2, but that hasn't prevented it from being used to form a near-monopoly (github) for F/OSS, now bought by MS. Linux: used in the world's largest spynet (Android). Your joy and enthusiasm being taken advantage of for nefarious purposes.
XiZhao 8y ago
I don’t think anyone is saying this. Sometimes some projects need to change their license, are you saying the maintainers don’t have a right?
paulsutter 8y ago
I thought your comment was great, until I actually read the link. Once I read the link I’m happy to see this experimentation and evolution of licenses. As someone who builds services and develops open source code, this approach seems more appealing than GPL and seems to cover the concerns of the Redis project nicely. Time will tell how it actually works out, but I think it looks promising. > the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software. For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means ... a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software > Today, most cloud providers offer Redis as a managed service over their infrastructure and enjoy huge income from software that was not developed by them. Redis’ permissive BSD open source license allows them to do so legally, but this must be changed
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  According to this new clause, you may never provide consulting services for a fee if it involves these modules. Still cool?
  - paulsutter 8y ago
    No, the value of your consulting derives from your skill and effort. Definitely share with them any proposed wording changes that could clarify the matter. I’m sure that’s not their intent. Lawyer friends may be able to help both with interpretation and comments. Think of this as “license r&d” rather than a rush to verdict.
    - mijoharas 8y ago
      > For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software. If you consult for a company optimize a bunch of their redis queries, it could easily be argued that your consulting service has value that derives substantially from redis. This licence worries me somewhat. I would definitely prefer a GPL and ask me if you want to licence it kind of situation as you definitely know where you are. Guess we'll see what happens with this. EDIT: IANAL
mful 8y ago
> Are you willing to release your code, both in the sense of putting it out into the world and emancipating it from your ownership? Do you accept that your code could be renamed, rebranded, repackaged, rented, traded or sold? Would you be happy if your code made someone else rich, famous or successful while you saw no benefit at all? I suspect it's a lot easier to say "yes" to these questions when you're just starting out (and thus picking a license) than when you see a bunch of other co's profiting signficantly more than you are. This seems to be an attempt to fix that mistake (I wonder if the Redis creators would call their license choice a mistake?). Like a train gone off the rails, there are probably only messy solutions that no one is super happy about at this point.
- jaredklewis 8y ago
  I think you are probably right. When starting the project, creators value their work very little, but value any attention given to their project very highly, thus a permissive license makes sense. Only after success hits do they regret it. Even so, if someone was seeking fame and fortune through OSS (a somewhat foolish mission, but whatever), I would still probably recommend they release their software with a permissive license as companies are far more willing to get on board with MIT/Apache licensed software. I mean just look at the incredible amount of hate Facebook got for having the gall to offer a free patent grant with gasp a condition that you not sue them. The best way to personally profit from OSS is very oblique. Assuming you make a kind of software useful to businesses like Redis (not end user software), it can look very good on a resume, can help you land some speaking gigs, maybe a book deal, and so on. If you build up your reputation like that, it should be possible to land a cushy, high paying job at a tech company somewhere or high paying support consulting.
  - icc97 8y ago
    This seems similar to how young singers and musicians end up stuck in bad contracts.
    - thijsvandien 8y ago
      And yet, being demanding from the beginning is a good way to never get that first contract.
buboard 8y ago
> but to pick a license that matches your intent or dont release open source, there s a place for proprietary code
krn 8y ago
I think, BSD / MIT / Apache should be used for open source libraries, and MPL / GPL / AGPL for open source products. This way, a developer can build a new product using open source libraries without sharing its source code, but he cannot repackage an existing open source product without sharing its modifications.
- cbsmith 8y ago
  It's like everyone forgot about the LGPL and the guidelines about its use vs. GPL.
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - deleted 8y ago
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- Boulth 8y ago
  Excellent suggestion, and with GPL for distributed products (installers, apks) and AGPL for cloud services.
- ginko 8y ago
  Yes, this is usually how I handled it in my (very few) OSS projects.
CM30 8y ago
Unfortunately, the truth seems to be that most people don't actually read the licenses they release their work under. You can see that a lot in the world of CMS plugins and themes (where the 'can share the work as you like') aspect of the GPL seems completely foreign to 'paid' plugin/theme developers and even with text and image based content under the Creative Commons licenses, where a site creator will often freak out about a competitor using their content despite clearly saying its under a Creative Commons license that allows reuse. It's like they copy the idea from stuff like Wikipedia and then only later realise the implications of it. But yeah, that's why you should read the license you're planning to use and make sure it matches your intent before using it.
icc97 8y ago
One of the earliest questions asked on Open Source SE is on 'How can a project be relicensed?' [0] Edit: further down that rabbit hole, there's a comment on a linked Programmers SE question [1]: > What we do is have a contributor's agreement that contributors sign, and it assigns joint copyright (so both our corporation and the contributor own the code). In that way, we still have the ability to re-license, but they still have all rights that they had. This is the same way that SharpDevelop works. This seems a sensible (or at least an open) way to allow the opportunity for future re-licensing. [0]: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/33/how-can-a-project-be-relicensed#46 https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/33/how-can-a-... [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/55326/can-you-change-a-license-once-you-pick-one?lq=1#comment97921_55328 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5532...
another-cuppa 8y ago
> wearing open source's uniform without making open source's sacrifices. Open source isn't a "sacrifice", for most people at least. Many release under permissive licences because they think there is more chance that people will use their software. They want to be popular and that makes them feel good and might get them a job. People release code under the GPL and if it becomes popular eventually benefit from patches coming back up stream. It's not supposed to be about sacrifice. It's supposed to be about being a good member of a community and sharing your work.
Boulth 8y ago
> The GPL exists for a reason. AGPL would be more appropriate for Redis IMHO as Redis as a service is not "distributed" to users so GPL alone wouldn't have desired effect. On top of that commercial license for people that don't want to share their modifications.
- Nemo_bis 8y ago
  The Redis protocol uses TCP connections, pretty much the perfect case for AGPL which deals with "interacting with it remotely through a computer network" etc. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html Sure, interpretation varies on what kind of interactions with what software cause what obligations, but imagine how much case law and clarity you can have with a license 10 years younger.
- etatoby 8y ago
  So why aren't they simply re-licensing under AGPL? That's what I would do.
  - jononor 8y ago
    That might make existing users/contributors motivated enough to make fork, with the code before the relicensing. If the major Redis-as-Service providers would stick with that version, it might end up being the defacto standard Redis. This is always a possibility with FOSS, but probably way less likely with this added clause to only some modules.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > So why aren't they simply re-licensing under AGPL? That's what I would do. Because they want money from certain downstream commercial uses (or to block them so that they can monopolize those services), not to force people to release any modifications when they sell, e.g., hosted Redis services.
    - Boulth 8y ago
      That why dual licensing exists. AGPL or commercial license. Sidekiq does that [0]. [0]: https://sidekiq.org/products/pro.html https://sidekiq.org/products/pro.html
porker 8y ago
> The MPL exists for a reason How would the MPL help in this case?
jgraham 8y ago
So rather than just blaming authors for their choices, it seems more worthwhile to look at the structural issues that lead people to make certain choices. The Free Software movement was originally aimed mostly at personal freedom; the freedom to take something you owned and modify it. However in the intervening period it hass become integral to commercial tech. In a commoditise-your-compliments like strategy ("commoditise your dependencies", perhaps), there are now trillions of dollars of businesses that depend on open source software for their operation, but typically extract revenue from something proprietery built on top of that tech (e.g. surveillance advertising). And these companies are eager to release yet more open source software for critical (but not revenue-generating) parts of their stack. This has two key advantages for the company: it enables some of the cost of maintainance to be offloaded on the community, and anchors the cost of that component at zero. Take TensoeFlow, for example. If that's closed source then Google have to do all the work of keeping up with the state of the art, and can suffer if someone creates a superior alternative that can't be integrated into Google products. By opening it up they make it much more likely that new developments will be integrated into TensorFlow rather than into a competitor, and make it that much harder for a dirruptive competitor to usurp their position, because anyone looking to fund the development of such a competitor likely needs some revenue stream other than selling their software to finance the work, since they have to compete with free. Now look at this from the point of view of someone developing some software. Unless you are targetting some niche market it's hard to make money through your software; by the mechanism above the expected price of such software is anchored at zero. Also many developers are aware that they have benefited from Free Software / Open Source and are keen to give something back. So creating software under an open source license makes sense; if you want your project to succeed the most valuable thing is to attract users who provide both motivation and contributions. In this way choosing a very permissive license is natural. And ususally this isn't a problem. But it does occasionally happen that projects are hugely successful, people want to continue working on them, and the funding available isn't commesurate to the amount of work that entails. In this case projects can be left struggling looking for a business model and a licensing decision that made perfect sense when the project was small can — from the point of view of securing funding — look suboptimal. None of which is to say that Open Source (or Free Software) is a bad thing; I certainly don't believe that. But it does distort the market for software in an interesting way.
wiz21c 8y ago
that's soooooo spot on. The good thing with the GPL is that it's so political that when you (carefully) read it, you understand your own motivation much better. The GPL is as much aggressive as a proprietary license, but it has different goals. Understanding it is so enlightening.

zapita 8y ago

> wearing open source's uniform without making open source's sacrifices. That’s an oddly... militaristic way of putting it. Are you sure you haven’t been watching too much Game of Thrones? Your version of open-source sounds like the Night’s Watch!

tannhaeuser 8y ago

I agree. There's the reflex (here and elsewhere) to dismiss reciprocal licenses such as GPL, AGPL as "uncool", pretentious, and show-stopping. Maybe it's time to reconsider in times of cloud oligopoles. Because why would you want your software become part of the lock-in strategy of a cloud provider.

tokyodude 8y ago
because they give me a service for free? Or just because we're all in this together? I'm sure it depends on the examples you pick. I'm totally happy if people use my MITed code in a commerical product without reciprocating. I'm not writing it for them. I'm mostly writing it for myself. The payback is the joy I feel when others find it useful. I also feel joy by being part of the larger collection of people and companies that have given me so much free stuff. Python, clang, v8, firefox, chromium, electron, zlib, libjpeg, libpng, git, sdl, react, etc etc...
- sincerely 8y ago
  How can you say “We’re all in this together” when youre donating your time and they use the fruits of that labor to profit off you
  - pas 8y ago
    OP increases the sum in the non-zero-sum sense. Sure, gots back directly nothing, but the chance that gets more eventually increases.
  - iKevinShah 8y ago
    Key differentiation here is that the person is not donating time so that a company necessarily profits off that labor. OP is getting what they (OP) are expecting out of it (joy by being a part of larger collection of people that have given them so much free stuff)
- tannhaeuser 8y ago
  git is a good example. It's GPLv2, but that hasn't prevented it from being used to form a near-monopoly (github) for F/OSS, now bought by MS. Linux: used in the world's largest spynet (Android). Your joy and enthusiasm being taken advantage of for nefarious purposes.

XiZhao 8y ago

I don’t think anyone is saying this. Sometimes some projects need to change their license, are you saying the maintainers don’t have a right?

paulsutter 8y ago

I thought your comment was great, until I actually read the link. Once I read the link I’m happy to see this experimentation and evolution of licenses. As someone who builds services and develops open source code, this approach seems more appealing than GPL and seems to cover the concerns of the Redis project nicely. Time will tell how it actually works out, but I think it looks promising. > the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software. For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means ... a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software > Today, most cloud providers offer Redis as a managed service over their infrastructure and enjoy huge income from software that was not developed by them. Redis’ permissive BSD open source license allows them to do so legally, but this must be changed

peterwwillis 8y ago
According to this new clause, you may never provide consulting services for a fee if it involves these modules. Still cool?
- paulsutter 8y ago
  No, the value of your consulting derives from your skill and effort. Definitely share with them any proposed wording changes that could clarify the matter. I’m sure that’s not their intent. Lawyer friends may be able to help both with interpretation and comments. Think of this as “license r&d” rather than a rush to verdict.
  - mijoharas 8y ago
    > For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software. If you consult for a company optimize a bunch of their redis queries, it could easily be argued that your consulting service has value that derives substantially from redis. This licence worries me somewhat. I would definitely prefer a GPL and ask me if you want to licence it kind of situation as you definitely know where you are. Guess we'll see what happens with this. EDIT: IANAL

mful 8y ago

> Are you willing to release your code, both in the sense of putting it out into the world and emancipating it from your ownership? Do you accept that your code could be renamed, rebranded, repackaged, rented, traded or sold? Would you be happy if your code made someone else rich, famous or successful while you saw no benefit at all? I suspect it's a lot easier to say "yes" to these questions when you're just starting out (and thus picking a license) than when you see a bunch of other co's profiting signficantly more than you are. This seems to be an attempt to fix that mistake (I wonder if the Redis creators would call their license choice a mistake?). Like a train gone off the rails, there are probably only messy solutions that no one is super happy about at this point.

jaredklewis 8y ago
I think you are probably right. When starting the project, creators value their work very little, but value any attention given to their project very highly, thus a permissive license makes sense. Only after success hits do they regret it. Even so, if someone was seeking fame and fortune through OSS (a somewhat foolish mission, but whatever), I would still probably recommend they release their software with a permissive license as companies are far more willing to get on board with MIT/Apache licensed software. I mean just look at the incredible amount of hate Facebook got for having the gall to offer a free patent grant with gasp a condition that you not sue them. The best way to personally profit from OSS is very oblique. Assuming you make a kind of software useful to businesses like Redis (not end user software), it can look very good on a resume, can help you land some speaking gigs, maybe a book deal, and so on. If you build up your reputation like that, it should be possible to land a cushy, high paying job at a tech company somewhere or high paying support consulting.
- icc97 8y ago
  This seems similar to how young singers and musicians end up stuck in bad contracts.
  - thijsvandien 8y ago
    And yet, being demanding from the beginning is a good way to never get that first contract.

buboard 8y ago

> but to pick a license that matches your intent or dont release open source, there s a place for proprietary code

krn 8y ago

I think, BSD / MIT / Apache should be used for open source libraries, and MPL / GPL / AGPL for open source products. This way, a developer can build a new product using open source libraries without sharing its source code, but he cannot repackage an existing open source product without sharing its modifications.

cbsmith 8y ago
It's like everyone forgot about the LGPL and the guidelines about its use vs. GPL.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Boulth 8y ago
Excellent suggestion, and with GPL for distributed products (installers, apks) and AGPL for cloud services.
ginko 8y ago
Yes, this is usually how I handled it in my (very few) OSS projects.

CM30 8y ago

Unfortunately, the truth seems to be that most people don't actually read the licenses they release their work under. You can see that a lot in the world of CMS plugins and themes (where the 'can share the work as you like') aspect of the GPL seems completely foreign to 'paid' plugin/theme developers and even with text and image based content under the Creative Commons licenses, where a site creator will often freak out about a competitor using their content despite clearly saying its under a Creative Commons license that allows reuse. It's like they copy the idea from stuff like Wikipedia and then only later realise the implications of it. But yeah, that's why you should read the license you're planning to use and make sure it matches your intent before using it.

icc97 8y ago

One of the earliest questions asked on Open Source SE is on 'How can a project be relicensed?' [0] Edit: further down that rabbit hole, there's a comment on a linked Programmers SE question [1]: > What we do is have a contributor's agreement that contributors sign, and it assigns joint copyright (so both our corporation and the contributor own the code). In that way, we still have the ability to re-license, but they still have all rights that they had. This is the same way that SharpDevelop works. This seems a sensible (or at least an open) way to allow the opportunity for future re-licensing. [0]: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/33/how-can-a-project-be-relicensed#46 https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/33/how-can-a-... [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/55326/can-you-change-a-license-once-you-pick-one?lq=1#comment97921_55328 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5532...

another-cuppa 8y ago

> wearing open source's uniform without making open source's sacrifices. Open source isn't a "sacrifice", for most people at least. Many release under permissive licences because they think there is more chance that people will use their software. They want to be popular and that makes them feel good and might get them a job. People release code under the GPL and if it becomes popular eventually benefit from patches coming back up stream. It's not supposed to be about sacrifice. It's supposed to be about being a good member of a community and sharing your work.

Boulth 8y ago

> The GPL exists for a reason. AGPL would be more appropriate for Redis IMHO as Redis as a service is not "distributed" to users so GPL alone wouldn't have desired effect. On top of that commercial license for people that don't want to share their modifications.

Nemo_bis 8y ago
The Redis protocol uses TCP connections, pretty much the perfect case for AGPL which deals with "interacting with it remotely through a computer network" etc. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html Sure, interpretation varies on what kind of interactions with what software cause what obligations, but imagine how much case law and clarity you can have with a license 10 years younger.
etatoby 8y ago
So why aren't they simply re-licensing under AGPL? That's what I would do.
- jononor 8y ago
  That might make existing users/contributors motivated enough to make fork, with the code before the relicensing. If the major Redis-as-Service providers would stick with that version, it might end up being the defacto standard Redis. This is always a possibility with FOSS, but probably way less likely with this added clause to only some modules.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > So why aren't they simply re-licensing under AGPL? That's what I would do. Because they want money from certain downstream commercial uses (or to block them so that they can monopolize those services), not to force people to release any modifications when they sell, e.g., hosted Redis services.
  - Boulth 8y ago
    That why dual licensing exists. AGPL or commercial license. Sidekiq does that [0]. [0]: https://sidekiq.org/products/pro.html https://sidekiq.org/products/pro.html

porker 8y ago

> The MPL exists for a reason How would the MPL help in this case?

jgraham 8y ago

So rather than just blaming authors for their choices, it seems more worthwhile to look at the structural issues that lead people to make certain choices. The Free Software movement was originally aimed mostly at personal freedom; the freedom to take something you owned and modify it. However in the intervening period it hass become integral to commercial tech. In a commoditise-your-compliments like strategy ("commoditise your dependencies", perhaps), there are now trillions of dollars of businesses that depend on open source software for their operation, but typically extract revenue from something proprietery built on top of that tech (e.g. surveillance advertising). And these companies are eager to release yet more open source software for critical (but not revenue-generating) parts of their stack. This has two key advantages for the company: it enables some of the cost of maintainance to be offloaded on the community, and anchors the cost of that component at zero. Take TensoeFlow, for example. If that's closed source then Google have to do all the work of keeping up with the state of the art, and can suffer if someone creates a superior alternative that can't be integrated into Google products. By opening it up they make it much more likely that new developments will be integrated into TensorFlow rather than into a competitor, and make it that much harder for a dirruptive competitor to usurp their position, because anyone looking to fund the development of such a competitor likely needs some revenue stream other than selling their software to finance the work, since they have to compete with free. Now look at this from the point of view of someone developing some software. Unless you are targetting some niche market it's hard to make money through your software; by the mechanism above the expected price of such software is anchored at zero. Also many developers are aware that they have benefited from Free Software / Open Source and are keen to give something back. So creating software under an open source license makes sense; if you want your project to succeed the most valuable thing is to attract users who provide both motivation and contributions. In this way choosing a very permissive license is natural. And ususally this isn't a problem. But it does occasionally happen that projects are hugely successful, people want to continue working on them, and the funding available isn't commesurate to the amount of work that entails. In this case projects can be left struggling looking for a business model and a licensing decision that made perfect sense when the project was small can — from the point of view of securing funding — look suboptimal. None of which is to say that Open Source (or Free Software) is a bad thing; I certainly don't believe that. But it does distort the market for software in an interesting way.

wiz21c 8y ago

that's soooooo spot on. The good thing with the GPL is that it's so political that when you (carefully) read it, you understand your own motivation much better. The GPL is as much aggressive as a proprietary license, but it has different goals. Understanding it is so enlightening.