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> If the goal is to restrict which people use your software, then the solution is and always has been a proprietary license. The goal is never to restrict whic

> If the goal is to restrict which people use your software, then the solution is and always has been a proprietary license. The goal is never to restrict which people use the software. The goal is to create incentives for individuals to actually make that software, make a living on that software, spend a few decades doing it. Which today requires certain protections from powerful organizations and overall from predatory capitalist incentives. Maybe a license forcing so much opening up, that makes businesses never consider allowing it if they are competing on software in any way, because too much openness makes competing on software automatically unviable, allowing competition to freely enter the market. Parity license seems a bit better at this than AGPL, but still doesn't feel like it's attacking the right issues.

jmillikin 8y ago
> The goal is never to restrict which people use the software. Does your software's license apply equally to a 17 year old in her garage and a Facebook employee writing engagement optimizers? To qualify as an open-source license, the answer must be "yes". Otherwise the license is restricting who can use your software.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  It doesn't work like that. A Facebook employee could be restricted by Facebook's own policies from using the software with that license. But that doesn't mean the license is not open-source.
  - jmillikin 8y ago
    You're dancing around the issue. An open-source license is not allowed to distinguish between use by a hobbyist, a small business, and a multinational megacorp. If your license restricts commercial use then it's not an open-source license. The Prosperity Public License restricts commercial use, therefore it is not an open-source license. You can't wordsmith your way out of this.
    - antt 8y ago
      If you want to get picky with words, open source is actually a subset of free software, a rather inconsequential part of it since all GPL licensed software is free software first and foremost. It started as a way to sell Linux to companies that didn't like Stallman. That you're trying to define away that history to people, such as myself, who were there when it happened and are still deeply ambivalent about the choices made is extremely disingenuous.
    - tannhaeuser 8y ago
      I think you're talking past another here. What is or isn't open source isn't the matter. OSI haven't prevented oligopoles from forming and locking people in to "the cloud" by making software a commodity, nor have they prevented GPL'd software (Linux) to become giant spyware in the form of Android, nor have they prevented software to be weaponized for other forms of monopolization (eg. Webkit based on KHTML). All the while original developers don't see any financial benefit to sustain further development. I doubt those outcomes are what the developers had in mind, or are in fact in the public interest. You can pontificate all day about OSS ideals dogmatically; just don't think that makes the world a better place. There is very much a need to express acceptable licensing and nuance beyond the current copyleft/non-copyleft dichotomy. And as discussed elsewhere in the thread, AGPL might not be the answer since it hasn't stood in court (and there are good reasons it won't), and anyway doesn't express whether you care more about receiving patches/PRs, or licensing royalties for commercial/unrestricted use when that is obviously something that many want to see expressed.

jmillikin 8y ago

> The goal is never to restrict which people use the software. Does your software's license apply equally to a 17 year old in her garage and a Facebook employee writing engagement optimizers? To qualify as an open-source license, the answer must be "yes". Otherwise the license is restricting who can use your software.

zzzcpan 8y ago
It doesn't work like that. A Facebook employee could be restricted by Facebook's own policies from using the software with that license. But that doesn't mean the license is not open-source.
- jmillikin 8y ago
  You're dancing around the issue. An open-source license is not allowed to distinguish between use by a hobbyist, a small business, and a multinational megacorp. If your license restricts commercial use then it's not an open-source license. The Prosperity Public License restricts commercial use, therefore it is not an open-source license. You can't wordsmith your way out of this.
  - antt 8y ago
    If you want to get picky with words, open source is actually a subset of free software, a rather inconsequential part of it since all GPL licensed software is free software first and foremost. It started as a way to sell Linux to companies that didn't like Stallman. That you're trying to define away that history to people, such as myself, who were there when it happened and are still deeply ambivalent about the choices made is extremely disingenuous.
  - tannhaeuser 8y ago
    I think you're talking past another here. What is or isn't open source isn't the matter. OSI haven't prevented oligopoles from forming and locking people in to "the cloud" by making software a commodity, nor have they prevented GPL'd software (Linux) to become giant spyware in the form of Android, nor have they prevented software to be weaponized for other forms of monopolization (eg. Webkit based on KHTML). All the while original developers don't see any financial benefit to sustain further development. I doubt those outcomes are what the developers had in mind, or are in fact in the public interest. You can pontificate all day about OSS ideals dogmatically; just don't think that makes the world a better place. There is very much a need to express acceptable licensing and nuance beyond the current copyleft/non-copyleft dichotomy. And as discussed elsewhere in the thread, AGPL might not be the answer since it hasn't stood in court (and there are good reasons it won't), and anyway doesn't express whether you care more about receiving patches/PRs, or licensing royalties for commercial/unrestricted use when that is obviously something that many want to see expressed.