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I would think a lawyer could poke enough holes through a Commons Clause license for it to resemble swiss cheese afterwards. I am not a lawyer, but software you
by Communitivity 8y ago
I would think a lawyer could poke enough holes through a Commons Clause license for it to resemble swiss cheese afterwards. I am not a lawyer, but software you get is under one license or another. Some are dual licensed, but you choose which license you are operating under when you publish your derivative work.
Base on what I read it's either Apache License or Commons Clause, not both. And if it's Commons Clause then it seems misrepresentation to say 'license: Apache License', as the example gave.
I think GPL has gone out of fashion, in some circles, because of fear. I work in a shop where GPL is outright forbidden, except where absolutely necessary, because of horror stories senior management has heard that exaggerate the risk of using GPL software, and because of real experiences.
I know of one such experience myself, according to my friend, his team was forced to rewrite an entire software package to use the Postgres JDBC driver and Postgres-specific migration scripts, because they were told MySQL driver use an redistribution did not require them to open source their code, and then they were told something different by a second member of the MySQL team. Shortly after that a memo was sent to all teams at that research lab, ordering no further use of GPL software except where no other option exists (and with lots of legal documentation in that case).
If you can deal with a service model for your business, then open source your software with BSD or other permissive license and sell consulting services. If you want a product model, then the one I see repeatedly work well is an open source core with enterprise commercial add-ons.
Mentioning consulting in the license further muddies the water. I know I was thinking of using Redis for a new project with a client, and now I won't. I won't be using Redis again until this license gets changed, and I encourage everyone else to do the same.
In today's security environment, and with software quality issues being what they are, I think having all your software be closed source, or restrictive non-free open source, is going the way of the dinosaur.
This Commons Clause seems to me to be a open source license, but seems restrictive and a step backward. The wording coul be taken to be deceptive. And calling it 'Commons' anything is adding insult to injury.