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I'm probably not thinking this through, but here goes anyway... Ignoring the "free software developers" for the moment and only focusing on "open source" devel

I'm probably not thinking this through, but here goes anyway... Ignoring the "free software developers" for the moment and only focusing on "open source" developers... There are essentially two classes: 1. Those who truly believe in the spirit of 3-clause BSD license, plus the small number who believe in the spirit of the GPLv2. 2. Everyone else who "chooses" 3-clause BSD license because that's the default open source license and they just want to spend their time dev'ing. I'm guessing group #2 is vastly bigger than group #1. So for group #2, why not default to AGPLv3 plus selling proprietary licenses to companies that want to use your software? The companies' lawyers won't let them touch the AGPL with a ten foot pole. If they want to use your software they will pay for a reasonably priced proprietary license. For group #2, this is not that much different than defaulting to 3-clause BSD, except for the following: * companies will pay you money before using your software * there might have been some companies which would have downloaded and used your software under 3-clause BSD which will not use it under AGPL nor pay for the proprietary license. But those companies are the ones least likely to support you under the 3-clause BSD license anyway, either by donation or even giving back patches So if the premise is, "I just want to dev," choose AGPL. Then when anyone tries to bikeshed about the license kindly offer to sell them a reasonably priced proprietary license instead. If they accept, eat. If not, keep dev'ing. If it doesn't work at all, you've still got an open source project available to the public under an open source license.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
The issue in this arrangement is with contributors. Why would contributors want to actually contribute. With AGPL one of two things happen: 1) The contributors give you the right to license the software how you see fit. Thus, they are not able to get commercial benefit from the software, but you are. 2) The contributors don't give you the right to re-license the software. When this happens, you can't sell a commercial license. The final issue is that a lot of the contributors to open source actually are doing so on the behalf of their companies. Many companies would like to contribute some feature to the open source project that they find useful so they don't have to constantly patch upstream before using a project. With AGPL, you won't get those contributors.
- phour 8y ago
  With 1), if the company is clearly turning a profit from a dual licensing scheme, the contributors can ask for payment structure in their CLAs. This isn't an unreasonable request if the contributions are valuable. With 2), you may just not be able to accept the contributions upstream. This is fine though, people can still fork the project, which is better than them not being able to do anything at all if it was proprietary.
- flukus 8y ago
  > The contributors give you the right to license the software how you see fit. Thus, they are not able to get commercial benefit from the software, but you are. I'm not sure how common dual licensing is these days, but Trolltech used to use to dual license and use contributions to Qt (and KDE) as a recruiting mechanism. So there was no direct commercial gain but for many it resulted in getting something out of the exchange. There's also the resume padding and other indirect gains from contributing. I'd be more worried that the company could go completely closed source at any point.
  - slavik81 8y ago
    For example, the contributors to Qt have varied over time, but in past years major contributors have included Digia, KDAB and Blackberry. The first two did so mostly to sell consulting services, and Blackberry did so because it was a major part of their OS. That said, Qt is a bit of a special case. It has a unique history and The Qt Company has an agreement with KDE that there will be ongoing open source releases. https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation....
  - jancsika 8y ago
    > I'd be more worried that the company could go completely closed source at any point. Which company? I'm talking about developers who default to some license and then continue dev'ing. Those devs can just as easily go closed source at any point with a 3-clause BSD license. In fact that is more likely as anybody can take 3-clause BSD licensed software and make it proprietary.
- 8y ago
eridius 8y ago
If you don't care about licensing, you should absolutely not default to a copyleft license. You should only ever use a copyleft license when you intentionally and explicitly want copyleft behavior. The truth is, unless you're spending a significant amount of time building a high-quality, highly-useful piece of software, as well as marketing it, no company is going to pay you for your open-source software regardless of its license. If you are spending the time and effort necessary to produce something a company will go through the trouble of licensing, then you should be giving a lot of thought to the license you're using already instead of just going with a "default". As far as actually making money off of open-source work, by far the best way to do that is to leverage your open-source contributions into getting a highly-payed job at one of the big companies. For these purposes, the actual license of the work is pretty much irrelevant, except that using a more permissive license is likely to result in having more users of your component, which in turn gives you as the author more prestige and therefore makes you a more valuable hire. So basically, if you don't want to give any thought to the license you should use for a particular project, you should default to a permissive one. You can always relicense it later if you decide it's turning into something that might actually be valuable enough for companies to pay for.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- js8 8y ago
  I think you described the trade-off between permissive and copyleft licenses well, but the argument that you shouldn't default to copyleft is weak. If you care about developers, you should use permissive license, if you care about end users, you should use copyleft license. The final decision is completely determined as who you see yourself more as a maintaner - developer of the software or end user of the software. The choice depends on the nature of software, and if you expect that you will be paid on either developing it or at least using it in another paid project. Unfortunately, there is no middle road. The middle road will just mean more free loaders.
  - eridius 8y ago
    That's a fair argument, but the counterargument is that permissive licenses are good for users because permissive licenses allow more software to incorporate your component, thus (presumably) increasing the overall quality of software, and it's good for users to have good-quality software.
orangeshark 8y ago
Redis Labs was originally using AGPL for their software before they switched to the Commons Clause. It seens companies had no issue using and selling the software. The issue was they didn't want other people to commercialize their software, which is perfectly fine by Free Software supporters.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

The issue in this arrangement is with contributors. Why would contributors want to actually contribute. With AGPL one of two things happen: 1) The contributors give you the right to license the software how you see fit. Thus, they are not able to get commercial benefit from the software, but you are. 2) The contributors don't give you the right to re-license the software. When this happens, you can't sell a commercial license. The final issue is that a lot of the contributors to open source actually are doing so on the behalf of their companies. Many companies would like to contribute some feature to the open source project that they find useful so they don't have to constantly patch upstream before using a project. With AGPL, you won't get those contributors.

phour 8y ago
With 1), if the company is clearly turning a profit from a dual licensing scheme, the contributors can ask for payment structure in their CLAs. This isn't an unreasonable request if the contributions are valuable. With 2), you may just not be able to accept the contributions upstream. This is fine though, people can still fork the project, which is better than them not being able to do anything at all if it was proprietary.
flukus 8y ago
> The contributors give you the right to license the software how you see fit. Thus, they are not able to get commercial benefit from the software, but you are. I'm not sure how common dual licensing is these days, but Trolltech used to use to dual license and use contributions to Qt (and KDE) as a recruiting mechanism. So there was no direct commercial gain but for many it resulted in getting something out of the exchange. There's also the resume padding and other indirect gains from contributing. I'd be more worried that the company could go completely closed source at any point.
- slavik81 8y ago
  For example, the contributors to Qt have varied over time, but in past years major contributors have included Digia, KDAB and Blackberry. The first two did so mostly to sell consulting services, and Blackberry did so because it was a major part of their OS. That said, Qt is a bit of a special case. It has a unique history and The Qt Company has an agreement with KDE that there will be ongoing open source releases. https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation....
- jancsika 8y ago
  > I'd be more worried that the company could go completely closed source at any point. Which company? I'm talking about developers who default to some license and then continue dev'ing. Those devs can just as easily go closed source at any point with a 3-clause BSD license. In fact that is more likely as anybody can take 3-clause BSD licensed software and make it proprietary.
8y ago

eridius 8y ago

If you don't care about licensing, you should absolutely not default to a copyleft license. You should only ever use a copyleft license when you intentionally and explicitly want copyleft behavior. The truth is, unless you're spending a significant amount of time building a high-quality, highly-useful piece of software, as well as marketing it, no company is going to pay you for your open-source software regardless of its license. If you are spending the time and effort necessary to produce something a company will go through the trouble of licensing, then you should be giving a lot of thought to the license you're using already instead of just going with a "default". As far as actually making money off of open-source work, by far the best way to do that is to leverage your open-source contributions into getting a highly-payed job at one of the big companies. For these purposes, the actual license of the work is pretty much irrelevant, except that using a more permissive license is likely to result in having more users of your component, which in turn gives you as the author more prestige and therefore makes you a more valuable hire. So basically, if you don't want to give any thought to the license you should use for a particular project, you should default to a permissive one. You can always relicense it later if you decide it's turning into something that might actually be valuable enough for companies to pay for.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
js8 8y ago
I think you described the trade-off between permissive and copyleft licenses well, but the argument that you shouldn't default to copyleft is weak. If you care about developers, you should use permissive license, if you care about end users, you should use copyleft license. The final decision is completely determined as who you see yourself more as a maintaner - developer of the software or end user of the software. The choice depends on the nature of software, and if you expect that you will be paid on either developing it or at least using it in another paid project. Unfortunately, there is no middle road. The middle road will just mean more free loaders.
- eridius 8y ago
  That's a fair argument, but the counterargument is that permissive licenses are good for users because permissive licenses allow more software to incorporate your component, thus (presumably) increasing the overall quality of software, and it's good for users to have good-quality software.

orangeshark 8y ago

Redis Labs was originally using AGPL for their software before they switched to the Commons Clause. It seens companies had no issue using and selling the software. The issue was they didn't want other people to commercialize their software, which is perfectly fine by Free Software supporters.