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I won't address your analogy since I think it's obviously quite different. Ultimately, people want to keep their code open, develop in the open, bring in contr

I won't address your analogy since I think it's obviously quite different. Ultimately, people want to keep their code open, develop in the open, bring in contributors, make it easy to adopt and audit their code, etc. They also want to eat and have a home. The extreme hostility I've seen over the years to every OSS project that tries some new way of monetizing is just absurd and damaging to the concept. > "Hey, you can use this for free if you don't make any money, but we want 10% if you're using this in a paid product" -> See? Done, Confusing since what you've just described sounds very much like what is being railed against? You're just talking about taking an open source license and adding a restriction around monetizing the code - this is not open source, as it violates one of the 10 or so requirements to be Truly Open Source (by some organization's standards).

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
>every OSS project that tries some new way of monetizing These are not OSS projects. >You're just talking about taking an open source license and adding a restriction around monetizing the code - this is not open source, as it violates one of the 10 or so requirements to be Truly Open Source (by some organization's standards). 4 requirements, upheld by two highly respected organizations. You can read them here: https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html People need to eat, and that's fine, they can license their software in any way that they think will put food on their table. But if it's not open source, don't call it open source.
- staticassertion 8y ago
  I'm aware of the OSD. I'm referring to open source in the sense of the source code being made available.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest.
    - BeetleB 8y ago
      >The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest. Given how every Reddit/HN thread I come across has an argument on whether it is appropriate to use open source in this context, I strongly disagree with the phrase "most people". In my experience, most people call it open source, and it only misleads the minority that insists on owning the definition of the phrase.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
        There is a loud minority of people who disagree, mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The term "open source" is a trademark of the Open Source Initiative and has a clear, unambiguous meaning.
        icebraining 8y ago
        Unfortunately, no, the OSI could never get a trademark on "open source".
        Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
        Ah, pity.
        BeetleB 8y ago
        >There is a loud minority of people who disagree The minority is those who insist on the OSI definition as the only appropriate way to use "open source". >mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The problem I'm seeing is the labeling of people who disagree about a single point (terminology) as bad actors (i.e. people who are bent on "exploiting"). As I mentioned in another comment, this is sadly a common path that ideological movements take - attributing intentions to others, and focusing on rooting out impure adherents.
  - Flimm 8y ago
    There is only one commonly accepted definition of open source. Just making the source code available is not enough, you also have to grant the right to be able to use the software for commercial purposes, etc. See: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated
    - hoaw 8y ago
      The whole point of the license is presumably that they disagree with that definition. As far as I know a license can be OSI approved without containing patent grants, effectively making the code unusable for commercial purposes. There is also, again as far as I know, nothing stopping companies from using contracts to restrict the use of code in at least some OSI approved licenses. That said, I do think they should state that it is "non-commercial open source".
      - icebraining 8y ago
        A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. You're free to use another definition for the same term, but if you don't make it extremely clear to you're departing from the most commonly used, don't be surprised if people treat you as any other sleazy salesperson. The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so. Unlike software copyright, software patents are not even valid in many countries.
        hoaw 8y ago
        > A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. How open something has to be, to be called open source is a matter of opinion, so is to some degree what open means in the context of open source. Otherwise they would have to call it "unconditional open source" but then a number of, if not most, licenses wouldn't qualify. > The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so. It isn't a red herring. I use it as an example to show that the openness in OSI approved licenses aren't absolute. Some licenses have other terms. They might for instance retain the moral rights of the author, try to avoid any liability or condition the distribution of software. If you can have those exceptions and still be considered open source I don't see an objective reason why you can't call software where the economic rights are retained open source as well (even though I can understand why people wouldn't want that).
bunderbunder 8y ago
So, here's the key text of the Commons Clause: 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. > Ultimately, people want to keep their code open, develop in the open, bring in contributors, make it easy to adopt and audit their code, etc. The Commons Clause doesn't really change any of that from the base license. It says so explicitly - "Without limiting other conditions..." > They also want to eat and have a home. This is the very thing that the Commons Clause tries to prohibit: "the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software." In other words, it's a way for the maintainers of a project to say that they get to sell the software, but nobody else does. Which, hey, I develop proprietary software for a living, I'm fine with doing that in the general case. What I don't like is trying to mix that kind of restriction into an open source license. Because then what you're saying is, you want other people to contribute code, and you want to be able to benefit financially from those contributions, but you expect it to be a one-way street. There's a basic principle of fairness at play there. If you want to do that kind of thing, I'd say it's much preferable to go with something more like the oldschool "dual GPL/commercial licensing" approach. Or, if it fits your needs better, something like one of the non-OSI Microsoft Shared Source licenses.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  > they get to sell the software, but nobody else does... what you're saying is, you want other people to contribute code, and you want to be able to benefit financially from those contributions, but you expect it to be a one-way street. It seems like a lot of the positive responses to the Commons Clause have missed or skipped past this entire concern. People are understandably touchy about "AWS profits off this free code", and understandably concerned that "just make it AGPL" will scare away some big players but not actually keep the developers solvent. But the Commons Clause isn't at all reducible to "pay us if you profit from selling our code". A clause like that might not be FOSS either, but I think there'd be a lot less anger over it. (Especially if it wasn't achieved by taking a FOSS license and adding on a misleadingly-named "...but not really" clause.) Instead, the Commons Clause restricts sale rights to one entity, leaving the software with a clear 'owner'. And that's what people are mad about: it turns an entire development community into a farm team for one license holder. "Pay if you profit" has real potential, and as you say has been achieved in the past via dual licensing. It allows for ecosystems where free code is included in and extended from multiple paid projects, and while the code originator might be guaranteed revenue they aren't in control of the project. That's vastly preferable to the you-work-for-us structure of the Commons Clause. I think the conversation has been undermined by the way the Commons Clause FAQ and authors have skipped across that nuance to say "GPL doesn't suffice here, therefore Commons Clause!" We'll all be better off if we don't let the middle ground stay excluded from the discussion.
pgaddict 8y ago
The "extreme hostility" is not against alternative development/licensing models, but against doing X but saying it's Y. It's obviously everyone's choice to pick whatever license / licensing model you want. The Commons Clause is getting all the flak merely because it pretends to be OSS-compliant, which it (pretty obviously) is not.
kazagistar 8y ago
> The extreme hostility I've seen over the years to every OSS project that tries some new way of monetizing is just absurd and damaging to the concept. Sure, I can get behind that but it has nothing to do with this article which is about non-OSS software trying to trick developers who might want to contribute to OSS into contributing to them instead using naming tricks and deceptive terminology.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  The monetization rules in the Commons Clause are quite narrow (for instance, no consulting profits) and that might have annoyed a lot of people no matter how it was implemented. But I don't think people would be anywhere near this upset if it had been announced as "we started with the text of the Apache License and made a new source-available non-commercial license, we're calling it Use No Resale or UNR for short". Instead we got "Here's a clause that breaks a core tenant of FOSS, for adding to FOSS licenses, but in our FAQ we admit it's not open source. And it's initialism conflicts with the Creative Commons, and its first big application will be called Apache License + Commons Clause, because no one will ever abbreviate that to Apache + Commons and confuse it with the existing Apache Commons." Plus a huge pile of FUD by alluding to unexplained 'malicious contributors' and 'preventing project shutdowns' to justify its existence. There are so many different unpleasant aspects to this rollout that I don't really understand how even proponents of the license can view the backlash as "just more anti-monetization hostility".
Bartweiss 8y ago
> we want 10% if you're using this in a paid product" > Confusing since what you've just described sounds very much like what is being railed against? It's very much not. "Free for private users, paid for corporations" and "free for free uses, paid to include in new products" are both existing licenses, which may be source available but are generally not open source. The Commons Clause is different; it permits OSS-style contributions to the codebase while reserving the sale rights to one party. "...the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software" There seem to be two serious miscommunications here. First, "source available and we monetize by controlling rights" is not universally hated. Most people less extreme than Stallman are fine with that, they just don't want it achieved by warping FOSS licenses and projects. Second, the Commons Clause is a particularly bad road to monetized source-available projects. Applying it to an existing project has the effect of converting a FOSS community into an unpaid dev team for one license holder. That's very different from "we'd like a cut if you monetize this".

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

>every OSS project that tries some new way of monetizing These are not OSS projects. >You're just talking about taking an open source license and adding a restriction around monetizing the code - this is not open source, as it violates one of the 10 or so requirements to be Truly Open Source (by some organization's standards). 4 requirements, upheld by two highly respected organizations. You can read them here: https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html People need to eat, and that's fine, they can license their software in any way that they think will put food on their table. But if it's not open source, don't call it open source.

staticassertion 8y ago
I'm aware of the OSD. I'm referring to open source in the sense of the source code being made available.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    >The term most people use for this is "source available". Calling it "open source" is misleading, and continuing to call it that after it's been pointed out to you is flatly dishonest. Given how every Reddit/HN thread I come across has an argument on whether it is appropriate to use open source in this context, I strongly disagree with the phrase "most people". In my experience, most people call it open source, and it only misleads the minority that insists on owning the definition of the phrase.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
      There is a loud minority of people who disagree, mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The term "open source" is a trademark of the Open Source Initiative and has a clear, unambiguous meaning.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Unfortunately, no, the OSI could never get a trademark on "open source".
        Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
        Ah, pity.
      - BeetleB 8y ago
        >There is a loud minority of people who disagree The minority is those who insist on the OSI definition as the only appropriate way to use "open source". >mainly people who are wondering if in the future they can exploit open source community in a similar manner. The problem I'm seeing is the labeling of people who disagree about a single point (terminology) as bad actors (i.e. people who are bent on "exploiting"). As I mentioned in another comment, this is sadly a common path that ideological movements take - attributing intentions to others, and focusing on rooting out impure adherents.
- Flimm 8y ago
  There is only one commonly accepted definition of open source. Just making the source code available is not enough, you also have to grant the right to be able to use the software for commercial purposes, etc. See: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated
  - hoaw 8y ago
    The whole point of the license is presumably that they disagree with that definition. As far as I know a license can be OSI approved without containing patent grants, effectively making the code unusable for commercial purposes. There is also, again as far as I know, nothing stopping companies from using contracts to restrict the use of code in at least some OSI approved licenses. That said, I do think they should state that it is "non-commercial open source".
    - icebraining 8y ago
      A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. You're free to use another definition for the same term, but if you don't make it extremely clear to you're departing from the most commonly used, don't be surprised if people treat you as any other sleazy salesperson. The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so. Unlike software copyright, software patents are not even valid in many countries.
      - hoaw 8y ago
        > A definition is not an opinion, it's an arbitrary mapping from a term to a description; you can't really disagree with it. How open something has to be, to be called open source is a matter of opinion, so is to some degree what open means in the context of open source. Otherwise they would have to call it "unconditional open source" but then a number of, if not most, licenses wouldn't qualify. > The patent grant is a red herring; they're copyright licenses, and judged as so. It isn't a red herring. I use it as an example to show that the openness in OSI approved licenses aren't absolute. Some licenses have other terms. They might for instance retain the moral rights of the author, try to avoid any liability or condition the distribution of software. If you can have those exceptions and still be considered open source I don't see an objective reason why you can't call software where the economic rights are retained open source as well (even though I can understand why people wouldn't want that).

bunderbunder 8y ago

So, here's the key text of the Commons Clause: 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. > Ultimately, people want to keep their code open, develop in the open, bring in contributors, make it easy to adopt and audit their code, etc. The Commons Clause doesn't really change any of that from the base license. It says so explicitly - "Without limiting other conditions..." > They also want to eat and have a home. This is the very thing that the Commons Clause tries to prohibit: "the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software." In other words, it's a way for the maintainers of a project to say that they get to sell the software, but nobody else does. Which, hey, I develop proprietary software for a living, I'm fine with doing that in the general case. What I don't like is trying to mix that kind of restriction into an open source license. Because then what you're saying is, you want other people to contribute code, and you want to be able to benefit financially from those contributions, but you expect it to be a one-way street. There's a basic principle of fairness at play there. If you want to do that kind of thing, I'd say it's much preferable to go with something more like the oldschool "dual GPL/commercial licensing" approach. Or, if it fits your needs better, something like one of the non-OSI Microsoft Shared Source licenses.

Bartweiss 8y ago
> they get to sell the software, but nobody else does... what you're saying is, you want other people to contribute code, and you want to be able to benefit financially from those contributions, but you expect it to be a one-way street. It seems like a lot of the positive responses to the Commons Clause have missed or skipped past this entire concern. People are understandably touchy about "AWS profits off this free code", and understandably concerned that "just make it AGPL" will scare away some big players but not actually keep the developers solvent. But the Commons Clause isn't at all reducible to "pay us if you profit from selling our code". A clause like that might not be FOSS either, but I think there'd be a lot less anger over it. (Especially if it wasn't achieved by taking a FOSS license and adding on a misleadingly-named "...but not really" clause.) Instead, the Commons Clause restricts sale rights to one entity, leaving the software with a clear 'owner'. And that's what people are mad about: it turns an entire development community into a farm team for one license holder. "Pay if you profit" has real potential, and as you say has been achieved in the past via dual licensing. It allows for ecosystems where free code is included in and extended from multiple paid projects, and while the code originator might be guaranteed revenue they aren't in control of the project. That's vastly preferable to the you-work-for-us structure of the Commons Clause. I think the conversation has been undermined by the way the Commons Clause FAQ and authors have skipped across that nuance to say "GPL doesn't suffice here, therefore Commons Clause!" We'll all be better off if we don't let the middle ground stay excluded from the discussion.

pgaddict 8y ago

The "extreme hostility" is not against alternative development/licensing models, but against doing X but saying it's Y. It's obviously everyone's choice to pick whatever license / licensing model you want. The Commons Clause is getting all the flak merely because it pretends to be OSS-compliant, which it (pretty obviously) is not.

kazagistar 8y ago

> The extreme hostility I've seen over the years to every OSS project that tries some new way of monetizing is just absurd and damaging to the concept. Sure, I can get behind that but it has nothing to do with this article which is about non-OSS software trying to trick developers who might want to contribute to OSS into contributing to them instead using naming tricks and deceptive terminology.

Bartweiss 8y ago
The monetization rules in the Commons Clause are quite narrow (for instance, no consulting profits) and that might have annoyed a lot of people no matter how it was implemented. But I don't think people would be anywhere near this upset if it had been announced as "we started with the text of the Apache License and made a new source-available non-commercial license, we're calling it Use No Resale or UNR for short". Instead we got "Here's a clause that breaks a core tenant of FOSS, for adding to FOSS licenses, but in our FAQ we admit it's not open source. And it's initialism conflicts with the Creative Commons, and its first big application will be called Apache License + Commons Clause, because no one will ever abbreviate that to Apache + Commons and confuse it with the existing Apache Commons." Plus a huge pile of FUD by alluding to unexplained 'malicious contributors' and 'preventing project shutdowns' to justify its existence. There are so many different unpleasant aspects to this rollout that I don't really understand how even proponents of the license can view the backlash as "just more anti-monetization hostility".

Bartweiss 8y ago

> we want 10% if you're using this in a paid product" > Confusing since what you've just described sounds very much like what is being railed against? It's very much not. "Free for private users, paid for corporations" and "free for free uses, paid to include in new products" are both existing licenses, which may be source available but are generally not open source. The Commons Clause is different; it permits OSS-style contributions to the codebase while reserving the sale rights to one party. "...the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software" There seem to be two serious miscommunications here. First, "source available and we monetize by controlling rights" is not universally hated. Most people less extreme than Stallman are fine with that, they just don't want it achieved by warping FOSS licenses and projects. Second, the Commons Clause is a particularly bad road to monetized source-available projects. Applying it to an existing project has the effect of converting a FOSS community into an unpaid dev team for one license holder. That's very different from "we'd like a cut if you monetize this".