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The Clause was drafted as a reactionary move to solve against specific bad behavior. I'm not entirely sure it's my place to call out these actors (I'll leave t

by XiZhao 8y ago

The Clause was drafted as a reactionary move to solve against specific bad behavior. I'm not entirely sure it's my place to call out these actors (I'll leave that to the users of the Clause), but our job was to open up an option that isn't quite "screw this, let's go full closed source". See the commons clause FAQ for answers to your other questions: https://commonsclause.com/ https://commonsclause.com/

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
>The Clause was drafted as a reactionary move to solve against specific bad behavior. I'm not entirely sure it's my place to call out these actors Still frustratingly vauge. Without this information I can't assume The Commons Clause is working in good faith. At least you can speak to the types of behaviors, rather than the specific actors, which led to this? >See the commons clause FAQ for answers to your other questions I specifically refered to your website in my comment and called out the summary there as insufficient. Can you elaborate on it here on HN?
- binomialxenon 8y ago
  I share your concern, if the "Commons Clause" (misleading name, IMO) became widespread enough, it could be somewhat of a virus that people may add to their Github projects, possibly causing a lack of clarity what license terms it's really under. It's even worse than a distinct new license in my opinion, as software might be advertised as "being under the Apache license" when it really has additional non-libre terms on it.
- chaostheory 8y ago
  I don't know why he doesn't comment on it when it's already written on the Commons Clause FAQ. He thinks the "bad guys" are the cloud providers. https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/ https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/ "However, today’s cloud providers have repeatedly violated this ethos by taking advantage of successful open source projects and repackaging them into competitive, proprietary service offerings. Cloud providers contribute very little (if anything) to those open source projects. Instead, they use their monopolistic nature to derive hundreds of millions dollars in revenues from them. Already, this behavior has damaged open source communities and put some of the companies that support them out of business."
peterwwillis 8y ago
It is often said that if you don't call people out for bad behavior, you enable it, and them.
- etatoby 8y ago
  This? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omert%C3%A0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omert%C3%A0 also called Conspiracy of Silence
mindcrime 8y ago
What "bad behavior"? Was anybody doing anything that was prohibited by the terms of the previous license(s)? If not, then the real "problem" is that somebody made a bad choice w/r/t licensing. The solution is to switch to an existing license which has the desired terms, OR - as an absolute last resort - create a new license. Preferably the former, as the latter adds to license proliferation, creates confusion, contributes to FUD around open source, etc. And if one is going to create a new license, they should just create a complete license, in it's entirety. Creating an "add-on" that can be tacked on the the ALv2 or other licenses, which goes completely against the nature of Open Source, is absurd.
- lovelearning 8y ago
  This RedisLabs link explains the kind of bad behavior this clause aims to prevent. As I understand it, the bad guys here are cloud providers. [1]: https://redislabs.com/community/licences/ https://redislabs.com/community/licences/
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Again, what was happening that was a violation of the license terms? As I read it, nothing. That's not "bad behavior". That's "I chose the wrong license for my project".
  - etatoby 8y ago
    So cloud providers who take a piece of open source software, install it, upgrade it, and generally maintain its operation in order to provide a service to their customers, billing the service, are now the bad guys? Sounds like somebody needs to re-evaluate their business model to me, and it's not the cloud providers. This attempt to have the cake and eat it too is dumb.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - detuur 8y ago
    So in effect Redis has moved from a traditional community project (by the community, for the community—where RedisLabs is part of that community) to a please-do-my-work-for-me project (by the community, for RedisLabs). RedisLabs is about to experience in real time just how quickly a community can abandon software and embrace a fork or competitor. Which is stupid, because many other projects have gone through the exact same process.
sipos 8y ago
Unless you can describe the bad behaviour in question, it just looks like an attempt to make more proprietary software for personal gain. The FAQ does not answer the patent comment's good questions. Why have you chosen a name so similar to Creative Commons, when you seem to prefer the term Source Available from a descriptive point of view? Frankly, it just sounds like an attempt to pass off software licensed under this abhorrent license term as Creative Commons.
DannyBee 8y ago
No, it's not bad behavior, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of open source economic models, and a desire to have your cake and eat it too. I will steal an argument from a friend who has been doing free software/open source for 30+ years now. Y'all created a bunch of open source software, it became valuable. Y'all think that you should get to extract some percentage of that value, and that others being able to do it instead is "bad behavior". But this is very very wrong, and if that is your understanding of open source, you really should say screw it, and take your ball elsewhere. Try it. See if you can create the same amount of value. In fact, it is your attempt to "extract your share" that is the bad behavior. You cannot, in fact, have your cake and eat it too. If you and others all get to extract your "fair share", that software will cease to exist. This is not theoretical, this is what has happened every time. That is because the value exists because you made the software free. If you didn't, people would have used something else that was free and worked well enough. Also not theoretical. When i review diligence from companies as part of M&A, the vast majority (90-99%) of software is free software, not commercial software. This paradox has existed since free/open source/etc software was created. The solution traditionally is for developers to just be happy creating cool software and making a living on it. I have rarely, if ever, seen this fail to work at the scale seen here. It certainly fails in smaller scales, but you are not solving that problem even a little. Instead these claims of bad behavior only seem to come up when people see a billion dollar ecosystem and think they deserve 50% of it. You are pretty much never going to get anyone worked up over that. Because they shouldn't be. Of all the injustice in this world, this doesn't even register.
- smueller1234 8y ago
  Vaguely similar prior art, similar in motivation, similarly flawed, IMO: Monty's Business Source license. http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2016/08/applying-business-source-licensing-bsl.html?m=1 http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2016/08/applying-business-sou... That received a lot of criticism from its community as well, but also from existing MariaDB Corp customers. I know because I worked for one at the time that was seriously considering stopping the level of collaboration we had. We were quite sad about that at the time and decided to not go that far but instead stopped giving additional funding to the extensions that we were interested in.

by XiZhao 8y ago

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

>The Clause was drafted as a reactionary move to solve against specific bad behavior. I'm not entirely sure it's my place to call out these actors Still frustratingly vauge. Without this information I can't assume The Commons Clause is working in good faith. At least you can speak to the types of behaviors, rather than the specific actors, which led to this? >See the commons clause FAQ for answers to your other questions I specifically refered to your website in my comment and called out the summary there as insufficient. Can you elaborate on it here on HN?

binomialxenon 8y ago
I share your concern, if the "Commons Clause" (misleading name, IMO) became widespread enough, it could be somewhat of a virus that people may add to their Github projects, possibly causing a lack of clarity what license terms it's really under. It's even worse than a distinct new license in my opinion, as software might be advertised as "being under the Apache license" when it really has additional non-libre terms on it.
chaostheory 8y ago
I don't know why he doesn't comment on it when it's already written on the Commons Clause FAQ. He thinks the "bad guys" are the cloud providers. https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/ https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/ "However, today’s cloud providers have repeatedly violated this ethos by taking advantage of successful open source projects and repackaging them into competitive, proprietary service offerings. Cloud providers contribute very little (if anything) to those open source projects. Instead, they use their monopolistic nature to derive hundreds of millions dollars in revenues from them. Already, this behavior has damaged open source communities and put some of the companies that support them out of business."

peterwwillis 8y ago

It is often said that if you don't call people out for bad behavior, you enable it, and them.

etatoby 8y ago
This? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omert%C3%A0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omert%C3%A0 also called Conspiracy of Silence

mindcrime 8y ago

What "bad behavior"? Was anybody doing anything that was prohibited by the terms of the previous license(s)? If not, then the real "problem" is that somebody made a bad choice w/r/t licensing. The solution is to switch to an existing license which has the desired terms, OR - as an absolute last resort - create a new license. Preferably the former, as the latter adds to license proliferation, creates confusion, contributes to FUD around open source, etc. And if one is going to create a new license, they should just create a complete license, in it's entirety. Creating an "add-on" that can be tacked on the the ALv2 or other licenses, which goes completely against the nature of Open Source, is absurd.

lovelearning 8y ago
This RedisLabs link explains the kind of bad behavior this clause aims to prevent. As I understand it, the bad guys here are cloud providers. [1]: https://redislabs.com/community/licences/ https://redislabs.com/community/licences/
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Again, what was happening that was a violation of the license terms? As I read it, nothing. That's not "bad behavior". That's "I chose the wrong license for my project".
- etatoby 8y ago
  So cloud providers who take a piece of open source software, install it, upgrade it, and generally maintain its operation in order to provide a service to their customers, billing the service, are now the bad guys? Sounds like somebody needs to re-evaluate their business model to me, and it's not the cloud providers. This attempt to have the cake and eat it too is dumb.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- detuur 8y ago
  So in effect Redis has moved from a traditional community project (by the community, for the community—where RedisLabs is part of that community) to a please-do-my-work-for-me project (by the community, for RedisLabs). RedisLabs is about to experience in real time just how quickly a community can abandon software and embrace a fork or competitor. Which is stupid, because many other projects have gone through the exact same process.

sipos 8y ago

Unless you can describe the bad behaviour in question, it just looks like an attempt to make more proprietary software for personal gain. The FAQ does not answer the patent comment's good questions. Why have you chosen a name so similar to Creative Commons, when you seem to prefer the term Source Available from a descriptive point of view? Frankly, it just sounds like an attempt to pass off software licensed under this abhorrent license term as Creative Commons.

DannyBee 8y ago

No, it's not bad behavior, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of open source economic models, and a desire to have your cake and eat it too. I will steal an argument from a friend who has been doing free software/open source for 30+ years now. Y'all created a bunch of open source software, it became valuable. Y'all think that you should get to extract some percentage of that value, and that others being able to do it instead is "bad behavior". But this is very very wrong, and if that is your understanding of open source, you really should say screw it, and take your ball elsewhere. Try it. See if you can create the same amount of value. In fact, it is your attempt to "extract your share" that is the bad behavior. You cannot, in fact, have your cake and eat it too. If you and others all get to extract your "fair share", that software will cease to exist. This is not theoretical, this is what has happened every time. That is because the value exists because you made the software free. If you didn't, people would have used something else that was free and worked well enough. Also not theoretical. When i review diligence from companies as part of M&A, the vast majority (90-99%) of software is free software, not commercial software. This paradox has existed since free/open source/etc software was created. The solution traditionally is for developers to just be happy creating cool software and making a living on it. I have rarely, if ever, seen this fail to work at the scale seen here. It certainly fails in smaller scales, but you are not solving that problem even a little. Instead these claims of bad behavior only seem to come up when people see a billion dollar ecosystem and think they deserve 50% of it. You are pretty much never going to get anyone worked up over that. Because they shouldn't be. Of all the injustice in this world, this doesn't even register.

smueller1234 8y ago
Vaguely similar prior art, similar in motivation, similarly flawed, IMO: Monty's Business Source license. http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2016/08/applying-business-source-licensing-bsl.html?m=1 http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2016/08/applying-business-sou... That received a lot of criticism from its community as well, but also from existing MariaDB Corp customers. I know because I worked for one at the time that was seriously considering stopping the level of collaboration we had. We were quite sad about that at the time and decided to not go that far but instead stopped giving additional funding to the extensions that we were interested in.