19 ms·

The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

• Skunkleton 8y ago
  Say I made a sizable contribution to an OSS project, one that qualified me as an expert. For projects that have this clause, I wouldn't not be able to make money directly with the source that _I wrote_. I would certainly not lend my expertise to a project that put me in this position, and I would guess that others would feel the same. Imagine if the Linux kernel had this clause. All this "commons clause" will do is remove the community from an open source project, and probably kill open source adoption as a result.
• phkahler 8y ago
  GPL does not allow the addition of this clause, anyone who did so would be in violation of the GPL. For license that would allow it, it's not fair to say License+CommonCrap - not to the license, and not to the users.
• wyldfire 8y ago
  > including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software Wow! That seems like a mistake. This casts too wide a net and catches more than it should. > ... product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software... Ugh. Instead of unambiguous freedom-granting terms, this leaves it up to a court to help determine this vague notion of the product or service's "value". Steer clear of these license terms! EDIT: deleted request for OSI to clarify
  • dwheeler 8y ago
    It's already not open source software (OSS). That said, if some people might think it's OSS, then it'd be useful for the OSI and others to make that even clearer.
  • CocaKoala 8y ago
    Why do you want OSI to weigh in? The license describes itself as not Open Source, according to https://commonsclause.com/ https://commonsclause.com/ > It this “Open Source”? [sic] > No, at least not by the official definition set forth by the OSD. Applying the Clause to an open source project will transition the project to “source-available”.
    • wyldfire 8y ago
      Good point. I will delete this request.
  • cntlzw 8y ago
    > Wow! That seems like a mistake. This casts too wide a net and catches more than it should. It catches everything. Commons Clause makes the software proprietary.
  • btown 8y ago
    If I am running a CRUD app for some business domain, does its value derive "substantially" from the functionality of the underlying database? Could a lawyer argue that because one of Slack's major selling points is the speed with which messages are delivered, its value derives "substantially" from whatever technology they use to enable pub-sub? Even if Redis Labs wouldn't be so aggressive against Slack, could we count on that if they were acquired by Oracle, or if their acquirer were acquired by Oracle? In such a case, Slack would be in a pickle - they might be liable for having used the software without a license historically, which is in many ways a worse situation vs. having had to negotiate a commercial license in the first place. It's an insidious gotcha term wearing the cloak of open source, and thus it tarnishes the brand of the entire open source community.
  • gpvos 8y ago
    For hosting, I can see how that may be a useful clause. But for consulting or support? That's even worse than the usual terms for proprietary software. As far as I know, I can offer consulting services for Microsoft or Apple software without breaking any license. Similarly for software that builds upon proprietary software. As far as I know, this is commonly allowed without any additional license. Or am I missing something?
• marcinzm 8y ago
  Another problematic aspect of this is that to me the Redis situation seems like a corporate grab of open source software after the fact. By that I mean, Redis Labs are not the creators of Redis. They are a consulting agency that then hired the creator of Redis. In other words, they only exist because the original Redis was not Commons Clause. Now they want to build a moat so others can't do what they did. Not a good precedent.
  • fh973 8y ago
    Fake news, according to the man himself: http://antirez.com/news/120 http://antirez.com/news/120 The whole thing is evidently not about Redis, but modules that were developed by Redis Labs.
    • Someone1234 8y ago
      People need to stop using the term "fake news" it is more a meme at this point than constructive English. Even reading that statement and assuming the best intentions I can see why people would be upset/concerned. Redis has gone from Open Source to "Open Core" with some of the best modules now essentially paid for.
      • paganel 8y ago
        > People need to stop using the term "fake news" it is more a meme at this point than constructive English. Just yesterday the most powerful politician from my country (a EU and NATO member) said during a live interview on prime-time TV that George Soros had sent 4 men in order to assassinate him last year (spoiler alert: they didn't succeed, even though they had been checked-in at the local Hilton hotel). His right-hand man had an interview the day before that saying that the KGB (yes, the Russian KGB) had tried to recruit him (spoiler alert: apparently the Russians didn't succeed). All I want to say is that "fake news" is indeed a live and active concept, just trying to hide it under the rug won't bring back the former, saner times.
        • JackFr 8y ago
• vinceguidry 8y ago
  This argument is theological in that it's arguing against an idea, labeling it heresy. His ideal 'solution' is to just fold it all up and try to forget it ever happened. But you can't fight ideas, ideas provide solutions to problems that people have and if you want people to stop rolling their own solutions, then the orthodoxy needs to make their solutions actually work for actual people, not just the faithful. Not every business can be Red Hat.
  • nathan_long 8y ago
    > This argument is theological in that it's arguing against an idea, labeling it heresy. I find this use of "theological" insulting and not fitting to the situation. "Ideological" or "partisan" would be better IMO.
    • vinceguidry 8y ago
      Au contraire, I find religion to be extremely fitting to the free software - open source debate. Richard Stallman himself is very sympathetic to theological analogies for technology debates, calling himself Saint IGNUcius. https://stallman.org/saint.html https://stallman.org/saint.html
      • _hyn3 8y ago
        Invoking an atheist like RMS doesn't help matters, even if he may have a lot of wisdom and experience in the licensing wars. Conflating an argument over a particular licensing debate in 2018 with deeply-held religious beliefs that may have existed for thousands of years and even inspired actual religious wars (where thousands of people, or even millions -- might as well loop Godwin's law into this debate -- actually died in horrific ways) would certainly appear to be insulting to those who are religious (and many who are not) and might take your irreverence more seriously than it was intended.
        • JackFr 8y ago
          Lighten up. http://wiki.c2.com/?HolyWar http://wiki.c2.com/?HolyWar
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• acjohnson55 8y ago
  For the Redis example, how does this apply to past versions of Redis? Are we going to see a MariaDB-like fork?
  • cntlzw 8y ago
    From my understanding the commons Clause can only attach itself to new patches. The old code keeps the original license without attachment.
  • aequitas 8y ago
    As explained by antirez[1] Redis itself wil remain BSD and his own modules will remain open source licensed. Only the modules developed by Redis Labs will have this clause. So no change for future or past versions of Redis. [1] http://antirez.com/news/120 http://antirez.com/news/120
    • jwilk 8y ago
      On HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818647
• relaunched 8y ago
  Let them do what they want; the open source community does not suffer fools. It's a dirty practice to build something open source and after a certain point, try to close it off. But, it's not unheard of. Any project can change their license, I believe Google did this with Android. Older versions will get forked and others will do with those forks what they choose. I'm hoping doing this would cause so much backlash that it'll force projects to revert back to OSS. But, it could just push people out of contributing to OSS -- then again, there might be some people more likely to contribute if they knew no one was going to make money off their work. Let the market sort it out.
  • djsumdog 8y ago
    Google and Android is weirder. The base OS is still totally open source and based on a Linux kernel. But in order to distribute Android with Play/Gapps, you have to join the Open Handset Alliance. You're heavily restricted on what apps you can bundle and you CANNOT manufacture any Amazon Fire devices (or any Android devices that do not contain the Google base services). The base is open, but what makes it useful is licensed, essentially making the free still crippled. I did a post about Android a while back: https://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/
    • relaunched 8y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. The more I think about it, the less my comparison applies.
• stephenr 8y ago
  Relevant: https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032180321834467330 https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032180321834467330 @Antirez has confirmed the core project is remaining BSD. The "Common Clause" stuff applies to the modules that RedisLabs create. Additional modules @Antirez creates himself, are also not under Common Clause, they're AGPL.
• paulsutter 8y ago
  Preposterous logic. Therefore WHAT? > If the Commons clause were to be adopted by all open source projects, they would cease to be open source, and therefore the Commons clause is trying to destroy open source
  • draw_down 8y ago
    Man. That is very silly.
  • njharman 8y ago
    Exactly. If everyone used a gun to kill one person, people would cease to exist, and therefore guns are trying to genocide the human race! Make an absurd assumption, link it back to your pet point, conclude something dramatic, link-baity, and utterly preposterous. For bonus points, attribute a motive to inanimate objects.
• pc86 8y ago
  > Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software. > For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means...fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software... Why anyone would ever use this license is beyond me. No paid hosted version. No paid consulting. No paid support. I mean this is great for folks who have already made their money but for those of us with bills to pay, it's not exactly realistic. [0] https://commonsclause.com/ https://commonsclause.com/
  • njharman 8y ago
    > for those of us with bills to pay Do you think the authors of the software you want to resell don't have bills to pay?
• snarfy 8y ago
  I can see their side. GPL was called copyleft for a reason, a nod to copyright. It's a copyright restriction which limits redistribution to certain terms. Cloud providers do redistribute. It runs on their servers. They do not have to honor copyright restrictions. They can make proprietary modifications and keep them, and they do. They might be honoring the letter of the license, but certainly not the spirit of it.
  • TimothyBJacobs 8y ago
    Don't we have the AGPL for this purpose to require them to contribute back their proprietary changes. As others have pointed out, if this was only about the modifications they would have used AGPL. Instead, and giving the clauses about consulting, it seems more like they are concerned about money than the health of the ecosystem.
    • gregmac 8y ago
      The Redis Labs modules were AGPL, they moved from that to Apache + Common Clause[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032192721308594176 https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032192721308594176
    • dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Don't we have the AGPL for this purpose to require them to contribute back their proprietary changes. That doesn't help upstream monetize; this is entirely about money, not reciprocal contributions of code.
      • TimothyBJacobs 8y ago
        That was the point I was trying to make. Guess I didn't word it well :)
    • tree_of_item 8y ago
      Money is a part of the health of the ecosystem.
• dustingetz 8y ago
  Cloud infrastructure (like DynamoDB) is already closed source and nobody seems to care, so this might not even matter
  • erik_seaberg 8y ago
    AWS doesn't want a monopoly on DynamoDB consulting. At most they encourage certification, probably to motivate people to notice their endless roster of new services.
• eahman06 8y ago
  No it won't. You know what will destroy open source? Lack of money to develop it.
  • jessaustin 8y ago
    I've seen this prediction on a regular basis since the mid-1990s. Usually the prediction hasn't included the qualifier "sometime after 2018". Would you like to add a qualifier to your statement?
    • lmm 8y ago
      How healthy is open source these days? There may be any number of lines of library code publicly available, but I've felt that the four freedoms are less and less available in software that I'm the end user of.
    • kmmbvnr_ 8y ago
      This is already happens with rethinkdb. Even after community "acquisition" the development process mostly dead https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/graphs/commit-activity https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/graphs/commit-activit...
      • jessaustin 8y ago
        This thread is about the health of open source in general. A specific project slowing down doesn't tell us anything about that. Especially since the project you're talking about was created by a business and abandoned by that business when the business situation changed. It seems perverse to infer anything about open source from that.
  • mistrial9 8y ago
    I am currently integrating some of the cleanest FOSS code I have seen, into a Linux setup, and I found their original funding proposal.. It was a German engineering lead and a dozen others in various roles. The first milestone was $9500 USD -- total. 100x that money would not have created this result. I believe they finished their second milestone (a year?) and that was probably more money.. but really, money alone is not enough, and too much is a detriment.
• djsumdog 8y ago
  I wish there were more publications on how open source is really funded. Earlier Linux and BSD kernels were made by a combination of researchers, people with spare time, volunteers as well as big companies who paid people full time. We see much more of the latter. Intel has an entire OSS division in Portland, OR that writes most of the drives, works on Linux kernel patches, etc. Nintendo and Sony both use big parts of the BSD TCP stack in their operating systems and have an interest in contributing and keeping it up to date. But open source didn't depend on these funding models in the 90s/2000s did it? I did a whole post on the philosophy of open source a while back: https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source... ..but one of the things I didn't find enough sources on where a lot of funding came from (And percentage of volunteer contributors). This recent Redis things reminds me of the Caddy controversy, and maybe even more recently, how Win/Mac Docker binaries are behind a login wall. What changed? Do developers no longer have the time to volunteer to work on this stuff? The desire? Is the demand for tech in The Valley/West Cost changing the dynamics of how much time people have to contribute. Were the earlier efforts way less commercial and new efforts moving much faster and requirement more maintenance/resources?
  • DannyBee 8y ago
    "What changed? Do developers no longer have the time to volunteer to work on this stuff? The desire? Is the demand for tech in The Valley/West Cost changing the dynamics of how much time people have to contribute. Were the earlier efforts way less commercial and new efforts moving much faster and requirement more maintenance/resources? " What's changed is that once open source started getting serious VC's, people believe they've created tons of value, and should be able to extract some of it (in reality, the model created most of the value, not them). In the past, people were just relatively happy to be doing okay for themselves while created cool software. Once you try to move to "value extraction", things become a lot thornier because you discover you aren't as important as you thought you were - your attempts to extract value fail. Usually, because it was not you who created the value, but the model.
    • ehnto 8y ago
• DannyBee 8y ago
  All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. The guidelines/definitions/blah blah blah exist precisely because of attempts to do this in the past. If people want to try again, great, let them. Experimentation is good. (I personally wish they'd stop experimenting with repeatedly proven-to-fail models, but c'est la vie) In the end, it's the developers who are going to decide whether it's the right way for the world to be. That is, it's not going to destroy open source or anything else unless the people using/developing open source want it to. Past that, Kevin's refrain is kind of tired, at least to me. Open source has always been a community that basically eats its own over time (nothing is ever good enough, free enough, open enough, etc). Solving that seems more important than solving this. Saying "The OSS project we tried to build as a business sinks tons of money into open source and gets no help" as if it was a new problem is just silly. This is not a new problem at all. The fact that they believe doing literally the same thing that hasn't worked in the past will suddenly work to solve this problem in any meaningful way is disappointing. For a person whose twitter bio likes to tell me how impressive they are, this is not impressive at all. I would have hoped for something better. Because if this is all they've got, then yeah, that model of open source is likely screwed. I will paraphrase a colleague: The underlying issue they are trying to solve is that developers believe they should be able to extract some of the wealth they feel they created. In open source, that wealth is often only created because the software was free. Otherwise, people would have used something else that was free but worked well enough. Developers like to often argue this isn't true, but history shows it to be true basically always :) So saying you should be able to extract this wealth is probably wrong. Saying you should be able to get paid a reasonable amount of money is not.
• zzzcpan 8y ago
  Maybe open source is just not keeping up with the real world, a few things could destroy it: lack of open source license choices restrictive enough and clear enough and enabling openness so much that most businesses can't profit in any significant way from software under those licenses; lack of standardized proprietary licenses for dual-licensed open source project; lack of standardized open source CLAs and CLA integration with popular software hubs. Ultimately, though, open source has to incentivize independent creators and not big corporations. AGPL is somewhat successful here, because big corporations already ban its use internally, but it's far from addressing the problem. New restrictive licenses are needed.
  • chriswarbo 8y ago
    What do you mean by "restrictive" and "openness" here? In particular, how does business and profit affect this? Would it maybe help to distinguish between the goals of Free Software (user freedom) and Open Source (abundance of high quality, royalty free code)? > AGPL is somewhat successful here, because big corporations already ban its use internally The word "because" is confusing me here. As far as I'm aware, the goal of AGPL is the same as that of the GPL: protect the freedoms of users (specifically the FSF's "four freedoms"); the difference is that GPL considers "users" to be those who run the software and AGPL also considers those who interact with the software. There's nothing about preventing business use; although I believe that in dual-licensed projects, the extra stipulations of the AGPL may boost the appeal of the alternative license. Is that what you were getting at?
    • quadrangle 8y ago
      I think the AGPL point is to say that there is not a need for an anti-commercial license if the AGPL effectively stops the things you're aiming to restrict. AGPL isn't perfect, but obviously neither is a non-open, non-free anti-commerce clause.
      • dragonwriter 8y ago
        AGPL didn't stop cloud hosting providers from offering hosted serviced with the Redis modules at issue, though, because either they weren't making modifications or they weren't deterred by the requirement to share. RedisLabs wants money, not sharing, from this kind of downstream use, so AGPL doesn't work.
• kazinator 8y ago
  It's just a "free-with-source for non-commercial use" distribution of certain modules that would otherwise be proprietary. There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code. It's a good thing for customers and would-be customers. Customers can track down bugs and security flaws if they have access to the code. Would-be customers can evaluate the product based not only performance of the executables but code quality. It is a "better proprietary", in other words.
  • mindcrime 8y ago
    There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code. Right. And if they would just call it that and not try to make it sound like it's "sorta / kinda Apache licensed" then I wouldn't really care. But it's like people using this clause want to benefit from the general perception of open-ness and the wide acceptance of the ALv2, while not actually being Open Source. It's just dishonest.
    • kazinator 8y ago
      You are right; if you're going to radically change a license by adding a free-for-noncommercial-use type clause, you should change the name, and don't maintain even the slightest insinuations that it's related to the original license. Textually it may be, but legally it's a completely different beast.
  • int_19h 8y ago
    > There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code. The problem is the definition of "commercial use" here, which is broader than most proprietary licenses, since it includes e.g. consulting.
• hw_penfold 8y ago
  Near as I can tell, there’s nothing in this agreement that prevents me from choosing another license model. If I can choose to apply whichever license I want, then it would seem that The Commons Clause could only possibly harm those that choose it. Anyway, there are plenty of unprofitable licenses out there, and the reality is, for all of them, if you’ve already given something away for free, once the cat’s out of the bag, you probably won’t make any money, even if your license doesn’t say you’re a bad person for even thinking about trying. That said, The Commons Clause is probably fine for foundations, where lots of people are sharing an array of technologies, and not really asking for money. Meanwhile, it’s been several decades of HTTP over TCP/IP, and last time I checked, there isn’t a whole lot to lock down, and the real money is in adding reach to flip switches from the other side of a network connection. JSON isn’t going away, so, there really isn’t much to apply licenses to, in this area, without being silly. But hey, databases, operating systems, desktop applications, peripheral drivers, all these things still happen, so I guess there’s stuff to license. But really all the fringe licenses mostly get applied to JavaScript frameworks, and by the time you actually read a JS library’s license, three other projects have replaced it, so why bother.
• throwaway182706 8y ago
  The answer to this dilemma is something like https://tidelift.com/ https://tidelift.com/. This Commons Clause is pure blarney and Drew is exactly right.
• XiZhao 8y ago
  Kevin Wang here. Thanks Drew for the thoughtful post. I can accept that you might not appreciate my work on the Commons Clause, but I'm glad to see you acknowledge why funding OSS is so difficult. I think it's okay to fear the world of open source becoming a bit more closed. I do too. Whether that's a better world or not is up to debate, but I certainly don't think so. I think where we might disagree is what the greatest threat to "open-ness" is. Sometimes people do bad things to open source projects, and force them to go closed. The license choice will inevitably follow -- and when they do, they can choose to close the source entirely or choose a licensing scheme that makes it available. Licensing follows intent, and I certainly don't think the Clause inspires people to close their source. But sometimes people need to change their license -- and I think it's unrealistic to say that this doesn't happen.
  • s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Can you at least change the name, to something that's not CC? It's going to be confused with Creative Commons otherwise.
    • etatoby 8y ago
      That's their purpose. This entire endeavor is quite evil IMHO.
      • sebazzz 8y ago
        We haven't read anything about their intentions yet. Have they addressed this confusion?
        • s73v3r_ 8y ago
          It's been asked several times to him on this topic, and quite frankly, he's had ample time to respond to someone.
          • michaelmrose 8y ago
• pvg 8y ago
  An alarmist title, I know, but it’s true. If the Commons clause were to be adopted by all open source projects, they would cease to be open source1, and therefore the Commons clause is trying to destroy open source. But it's not true, it's complete, self-admitted clickbait. An asteroid will destroy most life on Earth tomorrow. If a sufficiently large asteroid strikes Earth tomorrow. It's an overwrought premise leading to predictably overwrought handwringing.
• kup0 8y ago
  Regardless of whether or not it is harmful to open source, I find the choice to use two words beginning with C (thus CC as an acronym) flawed, as that abbreviation is typically used to refer to Creative Commons, and Commons Clause and Creative Commons sound quite similar too since they both use the word Commons. I would hope this was not an intentional choice to sow confusion. Edit: obvious spelling error :)
  • dantillberg 8y ago
    Tiny note: "sew confusion" is a malapropism; "sow confusion" is the canonical expression.
    • kup0 8y ago
      Thanks! I knew something didn't look right, but apparently hadn't had enough sleep or caffeine to figure it out.
  • mongol 8y ago
    I am sure it is intentional
  • rectang 8y ago
    Between the name, the abbreviation, and the suggested usage of "Apache + Commons Clause" for a proprietary offering, this "Commons Clause" project has severe problems with deceptive messaging. If it was unintentional it was incredibly foolish; if it was deliberate.... Either way it should be junked.
    • paulddraper 8y ago
      Apache + Commons...Apache Commons...how confusing can you be? https://commons.apache.org/ https://commons.apache.org/
    • codeflo 8y ago
      The plus sign suggests an additional right, as a dual license would offer, instead, it removes rights from the Apache license. I don't think that's an accident because judging from the website, this seems to be a very serious attempt to put a positive spin on "look but don't touch" style proprietary licensing schemes. Fuck this.
• phobosdeimos 8y ago
  Childhood is believing in free software, adulthood is knowing Microsoft was right. What kills open source software is greed, and very few people are immune from that.
  • umanwizard 8y ago
    What in the world are you talking about? We’re living in the golden age of free software. It’s doing better than it ever has before, and even Microsoft and Apple are enthusiastically contributing to it.
  • squarefoot 8y ago
    This. FOSS can be monetized by making it an investment rather than a product: offer services, let the software free then get paid for support and customized patches. This works, unless one wants to keep the money flowing while twiddling thumbs.
  • sipos 8y ago
    Even Microsoft doesn't think that anymore.
• CogitoCogito 8y ago
  The example clause at https://commonsclause.com/ https://commonsclause.com/ does not really make any sense. It first says you can't sell the software and then provides example text below like this: Software: [name software] License: [i.e. Apache 2.0] Licensor: [ABC company] If they actually used the Apache 2.0 license anyone would have the right to sell the software. Hence putting that clause and then putting "Apache 2.0" as the license makes no sense. The licensing terms would be contradictory.
  • binomialxenon 8y ago
    I agree, it's terribly misleading and could cause a real lack of licensing clarity.
  • jahewson 8y ago
    Yes, exactly. You can't use an unmodified Apache 2.0 license and then try and tack on some extra clause which is incompatible with the underlying license and end up with an intelligible end result. You certainly can't call it "Apache 2.0" and direct people to apache.org. It looks like a legal nightmare. Even if you like this license, please never use it!
• dragonwriter 8y ago
  I actually think open source will destroy the “Commons Clause”, which is just a name for a model that keeps being tried (shared source with limited free use but pay us for the use we think we'd like to monetize) that keeps getting killed by open source again and again and again.
• dwheeler 8y ago
  There are several challenges here. One challenge is the name "Commons" is very misleading. It's not creating a commons, and it's also confusingly similar to the term "Creative Commons" which has been around for a really long time. Also, the Commons website says that the Commons license is not OSS "at least not by the official definition set forth by the OSD". Yet that is the official generally-accepted definition.
  • dragonwriter 8y ago
    > One challenge is the name "Commons" is very misleading. It's not creating a commons “Commons” isn't the thing the clause creates, it's the problem it aims to solve. Naming contract or license clauses after the problem they address is not uncommon.
    • binomialxenon 8y ago
      It would be terrible PR to call this the "Anti- Commons Clause", but it would indeed be accurate.
  • licyeus 8y ago
    This is humorously illustrated in Antirez's blog post on this matter[1]: "We at Redis Labs are sorry for the confusion generated by the Creative Common page". They really should've run the name by someone familiar with the copyright landscape. [1] http://antirez.com/news/120 http://antirez.com/news/120
• forrestthewoods 8y ago
  What is the difference between Commons Clause and non-commercial use? Is there one?
• arminiusreturns 8y ago
  It drives me nuts how much people talk about OSS when they need to at least mention the difference between FOSS and OSS. One more reason to stick to FOSS instead, as OSS proponents seem increasingly disingenuous.
  • paulddraper 8y ago
    Help me understand. Which of the following are FOSS licenses and which are OSS licenses? - Apache - Apache + Common Clause - BSD - MIT - GPLv2 - GPLv3
    • arminiusreturns 8y ago
      The FSF can explain it better than I can. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html
      • paulddraper 8y ago
        > It drives me nuts how much people talk about OSS when they need to at least mention the difference between FOSS and OSS. Maybe because like you they find it hard to explain? According to your linked resources, it appears that everything except the Common Clause is FOSS. So, basically everything I've ever seen is FOSS.
        • orangeshark 8y ago
          > According to your linked resources, it appears that everything except the Common Clause is FOSS. > So, basically everything I've ever seen is FOSS. Correct. Free Software just puts more attention to the freedom part of software. GNU has a nice diagram and some category definitions for software at https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html
        • arminiusreturns 8y ago
          That's a little bit of a cheap shot, I just wanted to give you a good resource for digging into licenses. Due to bsd and MIT allowing tivoization, those are the two non-foss licenses in that list in my opinion. I try to always use gplv3 when I can, but apache 2+ is acceptable to me.
• cryptonector 8y ago
  Software is hard to monetize, whether it be open source or not. The best open source monetization case I've seen yet may be SQLite3, which is in the public domain. SQLite3 has a consortium, has some proprietary products (e.g., the more extensive test suite) not available to the public at large (in source form or otherwise), and is so ubiquitous that there are a number of large companies that are so utterly dependent on it that they are practically obligated to be members of the consortium. I've no idea just how profitable SQLite3 has been for D.R. Hipp and friends, and I don't want to know, but I assume it's been good enough that they are happy to continue working on it. SQLite consortium members probably (I imagine anyways) get to influence SQLite3's development, and that's one generic way to monetize source code regardless of license: get paid to do further (specific) development / bug fixes / support, but SQLite3's proprietary test suite makes it very difficult for third parties to be able to have contributions welcomed by the core, which tends to limit third party commercial support. Choice of license doesn't seem to have that much to do with whether something can be monetized. Consider the Linux kernel, which is GPL'ed: prolific contributors profit mostly by being well-employed to continue being prolific contributors, but almost certainly no one is making a dime from commercial Linux kernel usage without source code distribution. There might be some GPL licensed codebases where the copyright owners are making a few bucks from commercial usage by third parties who don't want to distribute their changes, but probably not a lot. There are almost certainly no BSD/MIT licensed codebases where the owners are making any money from commercial usage by third parties -- the license simply allows third parties to use such code outright with absolutely minimal obligations on the third parties. You can have open source and monetization for some value of "open source", but not one that most people would really consider "open" -- getting to see the source code != open source. Getting paid to support open source (e.g., add features, fix bugs) can be very difficult when it is easy for anyone to do that. SQLite3 has a mechanism for limiting third party contributions (a proprietary test suite) which limits third-party commercial support though in general that would also increase the risk of forks (but SQLite3 is so widely used that forks are extremely unlikely). The SQLite3 approach won't work generically for very many open source projects as it depends on SQLite3's popularity and very widespread use. The fact is that for many of us open source is just a way to build and maintain a reputation, and we then monetize the reputation. I myself have been offered payment for development on open source codebases that I maintain, and I always reject such offers, mostly because accepting them would interfere with my main responsibilities, and in some cases also because it's not my right (e.g., I don't think it would be fair to take money to work on jq without giving @stedolan the right of first refusal). If I were to lose clients/employment, I might reconsider this.
• api 8y ago
  I understand the objection but in general I support the Commons Clause-- as long as developers can easily opt out for projects where it isn't desired or doesn't make sense. Open source developers are building software for free that is then used by extremely large corporations to make vast amounts of money without compensation to the original author. Even worse much of this revenue comes from business practices that the original authors may find highly objectionable including mass surveillance, "surveillance capitalism," and data-driven propaganda, con artistry, and manipulation. If you create open source today you have no choice but to indirectly offer free labor toward the construction of a global surveillance state. The commons clause offers a way out while still encouraging people to use your software for personal, private, academic, and other purposes and retaining the openness of open source. The "free as in beer" part of OSS is a relic of the 1990s when the prevailing enemy was "embrace-extend-extinguish" at the hands of (mostly) Microsoft. It was sort of a growth hack to enable open source software to gain critical mass and challenge closed source proprietary platforms. Times have changed. Today the big threat is SAAS walled gardens, surveillance capitalism, and other business models that in many cases run on and depend upon open source. In some cases SAAS can verge on piracy-- not necessarily in the legal sense since nothing is being done to violate any license but in the moral sense of profiting handsomely from the work of others without compensating them. Edit: I will provide a concrete example of the last point: RethinkDB. RethinkDB was probably the best NoSQL database, at least before Mongo was improved enough to challenge it on robustness and versatility. It still has features Mongo and others lack. Unfortunately RethinkDB the company failed because... well... nobody paid them. Instead they paid services like compose.io to run RethinkDb for them in the cloud. Cloud SAAS database services were making more money off RethinkDB than the database's own developers were. In the end they failed and the project is now almost abandoned. There are numerous similar examples. AFIAK the Commons Clause would have prevented this, allowing either RethinkDB to capture their own SAAS market or charge compose.io something for making money off their software.
• DannyBee 8y ago
  So let me see if i've got the details right: 1. A group of people go off and, without involving their communities at all, try to solve a problem they think they have. 2. They spring it on their communities suddenly and without warning 3. Negative reaction ensues. 4. People decry death of open source. 5. Author of clause bemoans on twitter that the reaction of community should have been collaborative problem solving (and "starting a conversation"), despite completely failing to attempt collaborative problem solving with their community. Is that about right? If so, this is a great object lesson in how not to do this. If you want the reaction to be collaborative problem solving, engage people in collaborative problem solving. If you want the reaction to be to your solution, present people a solution. But expect people to do precisely that! This is like when people drop completely designed/implemented megabombs of stuff on OSS projects and then complain when there is pushback.
• dgreensp 8y ago
  Does a software license actually have the power to prevent you from selling consulting services? All a license can do is grant you rights you wouldn’t otherwise have because of copyright law, right? I’m new to the matter, but I do see in the Commons Clause an intent to manipulate and mislead. If the goal is to provide an option for companies who would otherwise take their software closed-source, why does that option have to sound super-duper open sourcy while not having terms recognizable as open source? I’m not even a rabid free software guy or anything, but just compare the name to the terms. There is no possible way that “Commons Clause” is not intended to be confused with, or somehow gain a positive spin that has nothing to do with its content from, CC or Apache Commons. People who care about things like Creative Commons or about open source as anything more than “source available” will label this as “evil” or at best a marketing ploy.
  • marshray 8y ago
    Services+software is older than software licensing itself. DFSG #6 is written to address this specifically: "No discrimination against fields of endeavor, like commercial use." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guideline...
  • majewsky 8y ago
    I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. > All a license can do is grant you rights you wouldn’t otherwise have because of copyright law, right? No, it can absolutely restrict your rights. A license is a contract, and other contracts can also restrict your rights in exchange for other legal goods (see e.g. NDAs, or non-compete clauses in employment contracts).
• Proven 8y ago
  > It really sucks when companies are using your work to make money for themselves. Why does that suck? It seems GPLv3 is for the envious and MIT and Apache for the free. The four “freedoms” are fake freedoms. There is only one freedom; freedom from coercion. How can someone claim their GPL icense gives me those four freedoms but not others? If some freedoms are restricted then it’s not free (libre) s/w.
• jondubois 8y ago
  I think that the Commons Clause is good for Open Source. There aren't many alternatives at the moment; it seems better than allowing external corporate sponsors to dictate the direction of the project. In the case of Redis, I think that it's a really deserving project and I fully trust the integrity of the people behind it. As someone who created a popular OSS project outside of Silicon Valley, I can relate to how difficult it is to be an outsider in this industry and I understand why Redis Labs would feel entitled to capture a tiny fraction of the enormous value that they created. I think that if the Commons Clause is just related to optional things like plugins or addons then I honestly don't see any harm; at least the plugins/addons are still available for small companies to use for free so it's still a step up from the typical OSS freemium model where they sell the plugins.
  • sipos 8y ago
    > at least the plugins/addons are still available for small companies to use for free so it's still a step up from the typical OSS freemium model where they sell the plugins. This doesn't allow any companies (except not for profits) to use the plugins without buying them.
• t0mbstone 8y ago
  "This Clause is not intended to be applied against at-scale existing open source projects, but incrementally on top of commercial counterparts that need to be transitioned to source-availability to satisfy urgent business or legal requirements."
• floatboth 8y ago
  As a non-commercial user, I'm okay with using stuff that's for non-commercial use only. The problem is when I want to, say, copy a few functions into my own project which I'm publishing under completely unrestricted terms (say, Unlicense). Or use as a dependency, etc. So, I'd say it's okay-ish for "product-like" stuff, for user-facing applications. But please NEVER publish libraries everyone depends upon under these terms.
• wemdyjreichert 8y ago
  Please, somebody fork redis.
• tunesmith 8y ago
  What's the difference between the Commons Clause and the GPL? What's the difference between the Commons Clause and the creative commons "nc" (non-commercial) license? I'm having trouble seeing how the Commons Clause is a threat to open source, while the GPL and Creative Commons are not.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • mort96 8y ago
    There's nothing preventing you from using GPL licensed software commercially.
  • erik_seaberg 8y ago
    Apparently you can no longer do business as a Redis consultant or offer hosting. If it were GPL'd, you could, as long as you don't sell binaries without source.
• brians 8y ago
  I don't think the Commons Clause is going to go anywhere: it's not DFSG-free, so Debian and core Ubuntu won't distribute it.
• skymer 8y ago
  Here's a possible way around this clause: An AWS-like hosting service prepares images of every clause-bound instance users might want (e.g. Linux + Redis + Redis Add-ons), and provides them completely free for download. They also rent users a virtual machine and the ability to quickly load one of these free images.
• sqs 8y ago
  There are 2 separate issues here: 1. The existence of the Commons Clause. 2. The application of the Commons Clause to software that previously was not subject to it. To the original author: How would your view be different if a company released a new product or module that was Commons Clause-licensed from day 1? Would that still be a threat to open source? (What if the alternative to it being Commons Clause-licensed was that it wouldn't exist at all?)
• skywhopper 8y ago
  This is from the guy who ranted confusedly and misleadingly about Signal a couple of weeks ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723973). And now with this post he's spreading misinformation about Redis (see antirez's correction at http://antirez.com/news/120 http://antirez.com/news/120). I don't know enough about Commons Clause to have an opinion about it. But I don't think the author here understands it fully either. Clearly he didn't do due diligence before trashing antirez, so I don't really trust that he has the facts on the legalities here either.
• platform 8y ago
  CC should really be renamed to 'Corporate Continuation' (or abbreviation changed entirely). Commons Clause is misleading in the context of Open source licenses. On a separate note, it is important to address volunteer open source contribution and development. I think as a community we are missing a model that guides how : a) developers, b) their hosting organizations c) financial contributors / donors can all benefit from their activities. Right now, there are different models and experimentation are being used. But I think we, as a community, could come up with 3-4 models that make it worthwile to the above groups.
  • geephroh 8y ago
    > CC should really be renamed to 'Corporate Continuation' (or abbreviation changed entirely). 'Corporate Co-option' or 'Cash Capture' might also be appropriate...
• WalterBright 8y ago
  The D programming language uses the Boost license, the least restrictive license we could find. We aren't going to switch to a more restrictive one. https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
• OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
  premise was not explained
• mslipper 8y ago
  I'm genuinely confused why there is so much backlash against the Commons Clause. Ignoring for a second the confusion around RedisLabs and its relationship with Redis core, the Commons Clause is setting out to solve the following problem with open source: - A person or company creates an open-source library, at great cost of time and effort. - A big company adds that library to their cloud offerings, at arguably far lesser cost, and monetizes it. - The library author receives no compensation. This article seems to argue against the Commons Clause because it's not 'true open source,' but this seems like a purely ideological argument that sidesteps the true problem that CC is trying to solve: open source creators not getting a cut of the profit they are generating for big companies. Am I missing something here?
  • int_19h 8y ago
    Affero GPL is the license that purports to solve this problem. It's been around for a while, and it's getting some use, but I wouldn't call it popular.
• throw2016 8y ago
  Antirez discovered github was using redis by accident on a non related thread here sometime ago, and there was very little outrage. Open source should be just about taking, if million dollar companies, forget supporting projects they rely on, can't even tell the authors something has gone wrong. Ideally those who can afford it should throw some support to the projects they use. But clearly this is not happening, if the project becomes too important then they simply acquire the project with downsides for everyone. There has to be a middle way that has upsides for all parties and untill that is figured out this can work in the interim.
• monster2control 8y ago
  After reading your post, your comments here, the Redislabs post and the entire Commons Clause and FAQ, I feel like you didn’t read either of them completely yourself before getting all doomsday about it. Redislabs made a good point, cloud providers are making huge amounts of money off these products and often contribute little back. Take Linode and their Block Storage service for example. They use Ceph, but contribute nothing to the Ceph open source. Or QEMU, the entire basis of their business, and not a single commit from anyone there. The Commons Clause addressed the AGPL question you ask in your comment. Redislabs states the goal is not to close source redis core, that will remain free forever, and that the use of the priority modules will be free for most use cases, but when companies makes money from packaging it all up as a service, they should have to pay a license fee, which seems completely fair. I’ve worked for a large cloud providers and some small ones, it’s pretty common at these places to not care what the License is because as long as it’s running on a server, it doesn’t matter. And selling service based off them, just means profits without giving back in most cases. The final point of the Commons Clause says very clearly that this was not meant to be slapped on every OSS license and that it’s not a final solution but meant to spark conversation. In that way, it’s working exactly as intended.
• jakobegger 8y ago
  A common fear with Open Source software is "What if someone takes my work and profits from it?". But in my opinion, that's the point of Open Source! If you don't want others to profit from your code, make it proprietary! But any attempt to make software open source, but still make sure that I get licensing fees or whatnot if someone makes a profit from it, is in my opinion seriously misguided. With Open Source, our business model should be that lots of people work together to build an ecosystem; no-one profits directly from selling the code, but everyone profits from using the code. Some people contribute to the project because they offer consulting services, some people profit because they use it for their job, etc.