12 ms·

The Copyleft Bust Up

78 points by joeyespo 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
manicdee 8y ago
TL;DR: a twenty minute discussion of the permissive vs copyleft dichotomy and why it puts a division between activist- and business-developers. Food for thought rather than answers or questions. From the article: Ask people affiliated with the Open Source Initiative about free software, and many will tell you that it isn’t really any different from open source. Free software just preached too much fire and brimstone, missed the rebrand, and lost mindshare. Ask folks affiliated with the Free Software Foundation about open source, and many will jump to tell just how different it is. Open source strips free software of its values, pandering to the nonfree industry with promises of better, cheaper code, which doesn’t happen without unifying community spirit.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  Did you get past the part about existing divisions, to the discussion of how hybrid terms like SSPL appeal exclusively to business use cases, without activist support?
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  TL;DR as I see it: there's permissive vs copyleft dichotomy in licenses. Both camps are made out of activists and commercial players - copyleft camp has FSF and upstarts, permissive camp has BSD hackers and corporations. The situation is changing, as the commercial players from both camps joined together trying to forge their own "open source" license type, leaving activists from both camps aside.
- vetrom 8y ago
  OP is an IP lawyer right? Food for thought is free, answers cost.
cryptonector 8y ago
> The BSD school of hackerdom rejects intellectual property and its hassles. Ideally, BSD school hackers wouldn’t use licenses at all. [...] Uh, no, that's not true. "The BSD school of hackerdom" doesn't reject intellectual property. What a ridiculous oversimplification. Licensing terms are a business tool. The choice of license at any given point depends on what goals one has, and also what constraints one has. Assuming no constraints, I'd say that anything you feel you can monetize you should either keep proprietary, or use GPL for, while anything you cannot monetize should be licensed under BSD or MIT or similar. That's my take, and it's a common take for many of us who BSD license code or work on BSD licensed code. Aside: how does one get compensated for BSD-licensing? Easy: a) other people's BSD-licensed sources, b) credit and reputation. Both are a big deal.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  The BSD school I referred to is only related to BSD license terms, not defined by them. Many BSD school hackers use MIT or ISC or even Apache. I also mention FPL (0BSD), Unlicense, and especially WTFPL as distinctively BSD-school licenses. The ideological wing that chooses those licenses, despite knowing businesses won’t accept them, wouldn’t choose GPL for personal work. It’s not a pragmatic position. It’s an activist one.
  - skissane 8y ago
    I think the attribution requirements of BSD-style licenses can be burdensome. If you use 50 permissively licensed open source libraries in your program, you could potentially have to ship 50 different copyright notices and license texts (all with slight differences in terms or wording) in any binary distribution. A lot of boilerplate and busywork. And then remember to take them out again if you don't use that library any more, or update them if the next version changes them a bit, etc. This is why I see Unlicense, WTFPL, CC0, etc., as appealing. If I was to develop something that other people ended up using, I'd like to be acknowledged, and I like to think people will do it – just out of common decency, not out of legal obligation. But, I don't really want to burden people with legal obligations to reproduce oodles of copyright notices and license texts. (Disclaimer: These are just my personal opinions, not those of my employer. I'm really talking about 'what license should I choose as a hobbyist for a personal project?', not what licenses a corporation should choose as a business strategy.)
confounded 8y ago
Question for Kyle: Do you see the enterprise exploiting GPL loopholes often? I work at a FAANG, and there’s pretty much a hard ban on any copyleft code being a dependency outside of stuff installed via distro packages. The lawyers are tough about it; the advice is always to get an enterprise license (or of course, make your own cool BSD+patents library to ‘open source’ as marketing). I hear similar things from friends at other FAANG companies. Do you see/hear of this more from startups based around a specific technology, containerizing copyleft code and calling it exempt? Any examples you can share? P.S. Great blog!
- twblalock 8y ago
  I have the same experience at FAANG as well as startups. We have to be careful not to include GPL software as dependencies, except in cases with special exceptions such as OpenJDK. I suspect that a large proportion of the abuses of open source licenses are unintentional and happen because developers don't understand the licenses.
- mr_toad 8y ago
  > I work at a FAANG, and there’s pretty much a hard ban on any copyleft code I have trouble reconciling this with the existence of Android.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Why? Android didn't have any copyleft code besides the Linux kernel, which doesn't extend to the userland. The rest of the components were Bionic (BSD), Dalvik (Apache) and Harmony (Apache). They now use OpenJDK, but that was after getting sued.
  - rlpb 8y ago
    Android went out of their way to avoid GPL code in userspace.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  You ask a very good question. I'm afraid the very strong rules about confidentiality that apply to me as a California attorney prevent me from answering as I'd like. I can say that I think your experience is typical of large software firms. Most still ban AGPLv3, if not all GPLs or all copyleft licenses, by policy. Even when there are exploitable loopholes, they're typically narrow enough to require very close collaboration between legal and engineering, in the context of a very specific project, especially the first time. It's possible to exploit those loopholes, but not possible to prescribe how to do so by general policy. That used to be true of private changes to GPLv2 and GPLv3 code. We've seen exercises of those intentional gaps in copyleft operationalized as policy in firms that rely on them daily. If you see posts on https://writing.kemitchell.com https://writing.kemitchell.com that you like, you may also find https://blog.licensezero.com https://blog.licensezero.com worth the candle.
callekabo 8y ago
Copyfree, but still lawyer-y: http://coil.apotheon.org/ http://coil.apotheon.org/
- icebraining 8y ago
  Seems a nice effort, but the "necessarily infringed" seems awkward (if there's a license, there's no infringement!). Has it been reviewed by an IP lawyer?
  - callekabo 8y ago
    Dunno, but I think so. It's on this list: http://copyfree.org/standard/licenses http://copyfree.org/standard/licenses I'm sure the people on ##copyfree over at irc.freenode.net know more than I do.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  Compare: https://licensezero.com/licenses/charity https://licensezero.com/licenses/charity
  - callekabo 8y ago
    Yeah, the coil is much more lawyer-y than that one.
TheDong 8y ago
Thank you for that wonderfully written piece. I think the ontology of Free Software License users is a fascinating topic that sees too little light. This post highlights the following categories: * BSD-school -- Copyright/IP shouldn't exist, people may do what they wish with code, share it or not, but credit should be given at least... Honestly, kinda libertarian. BSD, ISC, WTFPL, and similar * BSD-school (radical) -- Copyright law shouldn't exist, and even a requirement to give credit where due is too much. Software anarchists. WTFPL, Unlicense, etc * Businesses (permissive) -- PaaS and other companies that wish to drink from the stream of existing code, but not worry about making changes and not releasing them. Apache-2.0, second-choice of BSD, ISC, etc * Free Software Activists -- The GNU school, everything is about user freedom to modify any software they use. AGPL, GPLv3, etc * Businesses (Upstarts? Free-software weaponizers?) -- They use free software to lure in idealistic hackers, while also using it as a tool to negotiate with Businesses (permissive) to make money. Dual license SSPL/GPL+something permissive, I think that's roughly the list discussed in the post. I would like to further add a few categories to this list from my perspective: * Free Software Activists (with outreach) -- GNU school of thought, but with a desire to do outreach; they believe in user freedom, but would rather their code be used copyleft than not used, thus settle for the LGPL. LGPL * Open-source Advocate -- Developers who believe in open source as a means of collaboration and improvement of software, not as an ideal related to IP law. This interpretation stems largely from people working at Businesses (permissive) which use this sort of open source as a PR tool or attempt at free labour. Apache-2, BSD, etc * Business (PR/Image) -- A company that publishes open source software to attract developers in any of the previous camps, to create PR, and/or to crowd-source free labour. Distinct from Business (permissive) because (permissive) is about taking and using software, not releasing it, but there is likely overlap. Apache-2, BSD, etc. I'd like to hear any thoughts others might have on whether there are more ontologies, whether any of these are inaccurate, or whether any of these are poorly categorized.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  I've studied philosophy for many years and still ontology seems like much too much a philosophy jargon word to use on HN. (You write as if everyone will understand you.) Well, maybe programmers generally use/know it, sorry if so.
zby 8y ago
Not really about the article - but an idea I have been pondering for some time now. How about a software business that would sell licenses for signed copies but distribute everything unsigned under GPL?
- ryacko 8y ago
  That’d be a subscription service. My problem of the OSS ecosystem right now is under maintained dependencies that just because they compile and work, means most programs by non-billion dollar firms have a minefield of insecure code inside them.
  - zby 8y ago
    Subscription - yeah - but the point is that it limits the possibility of free loading competition selling the same thing. Has anyone heard about a business like this? In the past security was less important than it is now - so perhaps this is a new opportunity window.
    - desdiv 8y ago
      Zammad is a good example: it's open source[0] and packaged binaries are available if you want to self-host[1]. Corporations can: 1. Self-host for free but hire their own engineers/sysadmins to maintain it 2. Pay for a per-seat hosted version from Zammad[2] 3. Self-host and pay for a support contract so that Zammad engineers can maintain it for you[3] [0] https://github.com/zammad/zammad https://github.com/zammad/zammad [1] https://zammad.org/ https://zammad.org/ [2] https://zammad.com/pricing#hosted https://zammad.com/pricing#hosted [3] https://zammad.com/pricing#selfhosted https://zammad.com/pricing#selfhosted
  - Pica_soO 8y ago
    That sounds - like all company code i ever worked with?
- M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
  Signature wouldn't mean anything if there was no warranty. In which case warranty is what they sell and the signature is just a minor technical detail. And selling warranty on software is already a thing.
mikekchar 8y ago
The overwhelming thing I get from reading this article is that the author fundamentally misunderstands the point behind software freedom. While many people (even RMS) characterise it as a moral struggle, the situation is far more nuanced than "doing it that way is bad and doing it this way is good". It's much more that there are outcomes that are desirable and outcomes that are not. Some people believe that the undesirable outcomes are immoral, but I think it is disingenuous to characterise it simply as a moral issue without discussing the various set of outcomes. When we buy some physical object, like a screw driver, nobody tells us what we can use the screw driver for. It doesn't come with a license agreement forbidding you from opening paint cans with it. It doesn't say, "This screw driver is licensed for your projects only. If you want to using it at your friends house, you'll have to buy another screw driver". It doesn't say, "You can't attach this screw driver to an electric drill, thereby fashioning an electric drill". It doesn't say, "You can't sell or even give away this screw driver to someone else. You can't sharpen the blade. You can't attach the handle more securely. You certainly can't show someone else how to sharpen the blade, or attach the handle more securely. You can't forge a copy of this screw driver and give it to your friend. And you especially can't forge a copy of this screw driver and sell it!". In contrast, this is exactly the kind of thing we are told we must accept for software. Of course, it isn't just software. This TV has no user serviceable parts. We've jury-rigged this ink container so that it is a DMCA violation to refill it (that was a WTF moment in customer abuse if there ever was one). It's illegal to fix your tractor. You can't adjust the fuel/air ratios for your car (and especially you can't sell a device that does it for the average person!!!) The list goes on. We're just lucky that 35 years ago or so, somebody realised what was happening and thought critically about it with respect to software. I totally understand that many companies want creative licenses that allow them to more easily control the market place. I understand that they wish to allow some of the 4 freedoms, but wish to curtail others. They feel that they can't make a viable business plan without these controls. They don't want to aid others in competing in their market. I'm not unsympathetic to that point of view. I'm still not going to purchase their software/service if I have any other choice. Especially as a programmer, I value the 4 freedoms. I exercise those freedoms. I'm willing to pay for those freedoms. Perhaps not very many people agree with that, but I'll tell you that there are a hell of a lot more these days than there were 35 odd years ago. There is no need for the FSF to compromise. In fact, there is no reason that they should. The only point for the existence of the FSF is to promote the 4 freedoms. The outcomes for the consumer are much better off with those freedoms intact. If some companies what to make weird hybrid licenses, then they are allowed to do it. If it is marginally better than the really abusive crap that you sometimes get, then that's a plus. It's not a plus that the FSF exists to pursue, though. The "Free As Long As It Doesn't Impact Our Bottom Line Software Foundation" doesn't really roll off the tongue anyway. "We'll only stop you from making full use of the software if doing so impacts our ability to dominate the market. We promise" is just not something that needs protecting or promoting. While parts of this post is tongue in cheek, I hope it makes the situation more clear. Businesses have genuine hardships when trying to create free software businesses. It would be great if the FSF did more work to try to find solutions to help those businesses within the confines of free software, they aren't going to be doing anything useful by compromising on the 4 freedoms. Free software is a movement on behave of the consumer. It would be like CAMRA abandoning real ale as long as it was profitable for the breweries -- it just doesn't make any sense.
ggm 8y ago
I remember the original BSD licence, regents of the university and all the hassle it was renewing it to get the 4.2 tapes. Same signatory had to re-sign. What? we're a university: he moved on.. tough. no sign, no licence. Beautiful piece of paper. I seem to recall they invested time and effort re-creating the university logo in T/Roff. The one we had was the first US legal paper I'd seen. I think it even had embossing for the crest. I know you meant the BSD 4 clause hold harmless, but there was another meaning of BSD licence, before this
- kemitchell 8y ago
  Every virtue of history is a sin of omission. Not yet forgotten, but remind us why we should remember...
comex 8y ago
This post refers to the Commons Clause and SSPL as patching "loopholes". Here's the reality: - The Commons Clause bans large categories of uses, including providing "consulting/support services", or selling any "product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software". - The SSPL requires users who want to "offer[] a service that accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the Software or modified version" to license all relevant "monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software" under the terms of the SSPL – which is likely impossible if that software is, say, licensed under the GPL. The Commons Clause is not meant to prohibit the listed activities entirely, but require people who want to do them to get a commercial license from the original developer. However, this fundamentally leaves the ability to fork the software at the mercy of that developer. If the developer refused to provide commercial licenses for the forked version, or just disappeared, the community could theoretically maintain the fork under the Commons Clause-adorned license, but they'd be stuck with software that nobody could provide "consulting/support services" for. You can argue that the definition of "open source" ought to be broader than what the OSI or FSF would permit; maybe "freedom zero" isn't essential, maybe broader-reaching copyleft rules are acceptable. Maybe. But the ability to fork is fundamental. "Open source" you can't fork doesn't even remotely deserve to be called that. That's not innovation in license terms; that's just taking proprietary software and calling it something else. As for the SSPL... I'm not sure whether the impractical/impossible redistribution requirements are meant to effectively achieve the same outcome as the Commons Clause – forcing users to get a commercial license – or if it was just poorly drafted. At best, it seems like the idea that people might actually take advantage of the license as written, and make derived works without paying in return for open sourcing the whole thing, as more of an afterthought compared to the commercial license route. Perhaps MongoDB will come up with an updated version of the license that addresses some of the concerns, but that remains to be seen. The broadness and vagueness of "monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software" makes it a bit hard to see the license as a good faith offer, but I could be wrong.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- yorwba 8y ago
di4na 8y ago
There is only one small ppint missing when ypu talk of business not caring if community yells. What if these upstarts needs the community contribution to go through the first hump to adoption. And this break in trust between community and upstart stop people from contributing? Or if devs begin to walk away for personal disagreements with their company license. This is not that far stretch and it is what will cost these companies. The value of open source for business is that the community participate and developers were happy. If that breaks... then you lose.
austincheney 8y ago
This licensing nonsense is clearly people trying to force their political opinions or business interests upon software consumption. To step aside from the political nonsense and business liability I prefer the most militant permissive license, CCO-1.0, in my own software. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en
- Avamander 8y ago
  I prefer AGPLv3 on my software because I've been burned by non-GPL software not respecting my wishes and I don't want any of my users to suffer the same fate. Calling it nonsense is short-sighted.
  - austincheney 8y ago
    > non-GPL software not respecting my wishes Why would you want to force your desires upon a consumer of your software?
    - Avamander 8y ago
      Why do car manufacturers force their desires upon customers and build seatbelts into their cars?
      - austincheney 8y ago
        Bad analogy. Car manufacturers provide a legally mandated feature, but the manufacturer does not dictate usage and is not obligated to. The user can choose to not use the seatbelt, which is not going to change the design of the car.
        Avamander 8y ago
        So if software developing had a law that software must give the four essential user freedoms then it'd be okay to give but otherwise it's not okay? Please.
zzzcpan 8y ago
So, ideally Mongo and Redis Labs and everyone using AGPL would unite and get FSF to embrace a new stronger user freedom protecting license. Strong user freedom works well for companies that want to protect themselves from megacorps. It's too bad that megacorps gained so much influence over FSF and it's not true to its ideals anymore.
- klez 8y ago
  > It's too bad that megacorps gained so much influence over FSF and it's not true to its ideals anymore. Wait, what? Can you please provide an example?
kemitchell 8y ago
A visual aid that I might edit into the post later: https://twitter.com/kemitchell/status/1059574111733657600 https://twitter.com/kemitchell/status/1059574111733657600

78 points by joeyespo 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

TL;DR: a twenty minute discussion of the permissive vs copyleft dichotomy and why it puts a division between activist- and business-developers. Food for thought rather than answers or questions. From the article: Ask people affiliated with the Open Source Initiative about free software, and many will tell you that it isn’t really any different from open source. Free software just preached too much fire and brimstone, missed the rebrand, and lost mindshare. Ask folks affiliated with the Free Software Foundation about open source, and many will jump to tell just how different it is. Open source strips free software of its values, pandering to the nonfree industry with promises of better, cheaper code, which doesn’t happen without unifying community spirit.

kemitchell 8y ago
Did you get past the part about existing divisions, to the discussion of how hybrid terms like SSPL appeal exclusively to business use cases, without activist support?
TeMPOraL 8y ago
TL;DR as I see it: there's permissive vs copyleft dichotomy in licenses. Both camps are made out of activists and commercial players - copyleft camp has FSF and upstarts, permissive camp has BSD hackers and corporations. The situation is changing, as the commercial players from both camps joined together trying to forge their own "open source" license type, leaving activists from both camps aside.
vetrom 8y ago
OP is an IP lawyer right? Food for thought is free, answers cost.

cryptonector 8y ago

> The BSD school of hackerdom rejects intellectual property and its hassles. Ideally, BSD school hackers wouldn’t use licenses at all. [...] Uh, no, that's not true. "The BSD school of hackerdom" doesn't reject intellectual property. What a ridiculous oversimplification. Licensing terms are a business tool. The choice of license at any given point depends on what goals one has, and also what constraints one has. Assuming no constraints, I'd say that anything you feel you can monetize you should either keep proprietary, or use GPL for, while anything you cannot monetize should be licensed under BSD or MIT or similar. That's my take, and it's a common take for many of us who BSD license code or work on BSD licensed code. Aside: how does one get compensated for BSD-licensing? Easy: a) other people's BSD-licensed sources, b) credit and reputation. Both are a big deal.

kemitchell 8y ago
The BSD school I referred to is only related to BSD license terms, not defined by them. Many BSD school hackers use MIT or ISC or even Apache. I also mention FPL (0BSD), Unlicense, and especially WTFPL as distinctively BSD-school licenses. The ideological wing that chooses those licenses, despite knowing businesses won’t accept them, wouldn’t choose GPL for personal work. It’s not a pragmatic position. It’s an activist one.
- skissane 8y ago
  I think the attribution requirements of BSD-style licenses can be burdensome. If you use 50 permissively licensed open source libraries in your program, you could potentially have to ship 50 different copyright notices and license texts (all with slight differences in terms or wording) in any binary distribution. A lot of boilerplate and busywork. And then remember to take them out again if you don't use that library any more, or update them if the next version changes them a bit, etc. This is why I see Unlicense, WTFPL, CC0, etc., as appealing. If I was to develop something that other people ended up using, I'd like to be acknowledged, and I like to think people will do it – just out of common decency, not out of legal obligation. But, I don't really want to burden people with legal obligations to reproduce oodles of copyright notices and license texts. (Disclaimer: These are just my personal opinions, not those of my employer. I'm really talking about 'what license should I choose as a hobbyist for a personal project?', not what licenses a corporation should choose as a business strategy.)

confounded 8y ago

Question for Kyle: Do you see the enterprise exploiting GPL loopholes often? I work at a FAANG, and there’s pretty much a hard ban on any copyleft code being a dependency outside of stuff installed via distro packages. The lawyers are tough about it; the advice is always to get an enterprise license (or of course, make your own cool BSD+patents library to ‘open source’ as marketing). I hear similar things from friends at other FAANG companies. Do you see/hear of this more from startups based around a specific technology, containerizing copyleft code and calling it exempt? Any examples you can share? P.S. Great blog!

twblalock 8y ago
I have the same experience at FAANG as well as startups. We have to be careful not to include GPL software as dependencies, except in cases with special exceptions such as OpenJDK. I suspect that a large proportion of the abuses of open source licenses are unintentional and happen because developers don't understand the licenses.
mr_toad 8y ago
> I work at a FAANG, and there’s pretty much a hard ban on any copyleft code I have trouble reconciling this with the existence of Android.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Why? Android didn't have any copyleft code besides the Linux kernel, which doesn't extend to the userland. The rest of the components were Bionic (BSD), Dalvik (Apache) and Harmony (Apache). They now use OpenJDK, but that was after getting sued.
- rlpb 8y ago
  Android went out of their way to avoid GPL code in userspace.
kemitchell 8y ago
You ask a very good question. I'm afraid the very strong rules about confidentiality that apply to me as a California attorney prevent me from answering as I'd like. I can say that I think your experience is typical of large software firms. Most still ban AGPLv3, if not all GPLs or all copyleft licenses, by policy. Even when there are exploitable loopholes, they're typically narrow enough to require very close collaboration between legal and engineering, in the context of a very specific project, especially the first time. It's possible to exploit those loopholes, but not possible to prescribe how to do so by general policy. That used to be true of private changes to GPLv2 and GPLv3 code. We've seen exercises of those intentional gaps in copyleft operationalized as policy in firms that rely on them daily. If you see posts on https://writing.kemitchell.com https://writing.kemitchell.com that you like, you may also find https://blog.licensezero.com https://blog.licensezero.com worth the candle.

callekabo 8y ago

Copyfree, but still lawyer-y: http://coil.apotheon.org/ http://coil.apotheon.org/

icebraining 8y ago
Seems a nice effort, but the "necessarily infringed" seems awkward (if there's a license, there's no infringement!). Has it been reviewed by an IP lawyer?
- callekabo 8y ago
  Dunno, but I think so. It's on this list: http://copyfree.org/standard/licenses http://copyfree.org/standard/licenses I'm sure the people on ##copyfree over at irc.freenode.net know more than I do.
kemitchell 8y ago
Compare: https://licensezero.com/licenses/charity https://licensezero.com/licenses/charity
- callekabo 8y ago
  Yeah, the coil is much more lawyer-y than that one.

TheDong 8y ago

Thank you for that wonderfully written piece. I think the ontology of Free Software License users is a fascinating topic that sees too little light. This post highlights the following categories: * BSD-school -- Copyright/IP shouldn't exist, people may do what they wish with code, share it or not, but credit should be given at least... Honestly, kinda libertarian. BSD, ISC, WTFPL, and similar * BSD-school (radical) -- Copyright law shouldn't exist, and even a requirement to give credit where due is too much. Software anarchists. WTFPL, Unlicense, etc * Businesses (permissive) -- PaaS and other companies that wish to drink from the stream of existing code, but not worry about making changes and not releasing them. Apache-2.0, second-choice of BSD, ISC, etc * Free Software Activists -- The GNU school, everything is about user freedom to modify any software they use. AGPL, GPLv3, etc * Businesses (Upstarts? Free-software weaponizers?) -- They use free software to lure in idealistic hackers, while also using it as a tool to negotiate with Businesses (permissive) to make money. Dual license SSPL/GPL+something permissive, I think that's roughly the list discussed in the post. I would like to further add a few categories to this list from my perspective: * Free Software Activists (with outreach) -- GNU school of thought, but with a desire to do outreach; they believe in user freedom, but would rather their code be used copyleft than not used, thus settle for the LGPL. LGPL * Open-source Advocate -- Developers who believe in open source as a means of collaboration and improvement of software, not as an ideal related to IP law. This interpretation stems largely from people working at Businesses (permissive) which use this sort of open source as a PR tool or attempt at free labour. Apache-2, BSD, etc * Business (PR/Image) -- A company that publishes open source software to attract developers in any of the previous camps, to create PR, and/or to crowd-source free labour. Distinct from Business (permissive) because (permissive) is about taking and using software, not releasing it, but there is likely overlap. Apache-2, BSD, etc. I'd like to hear any thoughts others might have on whether there are more ontologies, whether any of these are inaccurate, or whether any of these are poorly categorized.

yesenadam 8y ago
I've studied philosophy for many years and still ontology seems like much too much a philosophy jargon word to use on HN. (You write as if everyone will understand you.) Well, maybe programmers generally use/know it, sorry if so.

zby 8y ago

Not really about the article - but an idea I have been pondering for some time now. How about a software business that would sell licenses for signed copies but distribute everything unsigned under GPL?

ryacko 8y ago
That’d be a subscription service. My problem of the OSS ecosystem right now is under maintained dependencies that just because they compile and work, means most programs by non-billion dollar firms have a minefield of insecure code inside them.
- zby 8y ago
  Subscription - yeah - but the point is that it limits the possibility of free loading competition selling the same thing. Has anyone heard about a business like this? In the past security was less important than it is now - so perhaps this is a new opportunity window.
  - desdiv 8y ago
    Zammad is a good example: it's open source[0] and packaged binaries are available if you want to self-host[1]. Corporations can: 1. Self-host for free but hire their own engineers/sysadmins to maintain it 2. Pay for a per-seat hosted version from Zammad[2] 3. Self-host and pay for a support contract so that Zammad engineers can maintain it for you[3] [0] https://github.com/zammad/zammad https://github.com/zammad/zammad [1] https://zammad.org/ https://zammad.org/ [2] https://zammad.com/pricing#hosted https://zammad.com/pricing#hosted [3] https://zammad.com/pricing#selfhosted https://zammad.com/pricing#selfhosted
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  That sounds - like all company code i ever worked with?
M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
Signature wouldn't mean anything if there was no warranty. In which case warranty is what they sell and the signature is just a minor technical detail. And selling warranty on software is already a thing.

mikekchar 8y ago

The overwhelming thing I get from reading this article is that the author fundamentally misunderstands the point behind software freedom. While many people (even RMS) characterise it as a moral struggle, the situation is far more nuanced than "doing it that way is bad and doing it this way is good". It's much more that there are outcomes that are desirable and outcomes that are not. Some people believe that the undesirable outcomes are immoral, but I think it is disingenuous to characterise it simply as a moral issue without discussing the various set of outcomes. When we buy some physical object, like a screw driver, nobody tells us what we can use the screw driver for. It doesn't come with a license agreement forbidding you from opening paint cans with it. It doesn't say, "This screw driver is licensed for your projects only. If you want to using it at your friends house, you'll have to buy another screw driver". It doesn't say, "You can't attach this screw driver to an electric drill, thereby fashioning an electric drill". It doesn't say, "You can't sell or even give away this screw driver to someone else. You can't sharpen the blade. You can't attach the handle more securely. You certainly can't show someone else how to sharpen the blade, or attach the handle more securely. You can't forge a copy of this screw driver and give it to your friend. And you especially can't forge a copy of this screw driver and sell it!". In contrast, this is exactly the kind of thing we are told we must accept for software. Of course, it isn't just software. This TV has no user serviceable parts. We've jury-rigged this ink container so that it is a DMCA violation to refill it (that was a WTF moment in customer abuse if there ever was one). It's illegal to fix your tractor. You can't adjust the fuel/air ratios for your car (and especially you can't sell a device that does it for the average person!!!) The list goes on. We're just lucky that 35 years ago or so, somebody realised what was happening and thought critically about it with respect to software. I totally understand that many companies want creative licenses that allow them to more easily control the market place. I understand that they wish to allow some of the 4 freedoms, but wish to curtail others. They feel that they can't make a viable business plan without these controls. They don't want to aid others in competing in their market. I'm not unsympathetic to that point of view. I'm still not going to purchase their software/service if I have any other choice. Especially as a programmer, I value the 4 freedoms. I exercise those freedoms. I'm willing to pay for those freedoms. Perhaps not very many people agree with that, but I'll tell you that there are a hell of a lot more these days than there were 35 odd years ago. There is no need for the FSF to compromise. In fact, there is no reason that they should. The only point for the existence of the FSF is to promote the 4 freedoms. The outcomes for the consumer are much better off with those freedoms intact. If some companies what to make weird hybrid licenses, then they are allowed to do it. If it is marginally better than the really abusive crap that you sometimes get, then that's a plus. It's not a plus that the FSF exists to pursue, though. The "Free As Long As It Doesn't Impact Our Bottom Line Software Foundation" doesn't really roll off the tongue anyway. "We'll only stop you from making full use of the software if doing so impacts our ability to dominate the market. We promise" is just not something that needs protecting or promoting. While parts of this post is tongue in cheek, I hope it makes the situation more clear. Businesses have genuine hardships when trying to create free software businesses. It would be great if the FSF did more work to try to find solutions to help those businesses within the confines of free software, they aren't going to be doing anything useful by compromising on the 4 freedoms. Free software is a movement on behave of the consumer. It would be like CAMRA abandoning real ale as long as it was profitable for the breweries -- it just doesn't make any sense.

ggm 8y ago

I remember the original BSD licence, regents of the university and all the hassle it was renewing it to get the 4.2 tapes. Same signatory had to re-sign. What? we're a university: he moved on.. tough. no sign, no licence. Beautiful piece of paper. I seem to recall they invested time and effort re-creating the university logo in T/Roff. The one we had was the first US legal paper I'd seen. I think it even had embossing for the crest. I know you meant the BSD 4 clause hold harmless, but there was another meaning of BSD licence, before this

kemitchell 8y ago
Every virtue of history is a sin of omission. Not yet forgotten, but remind us why we should remember...

comex 8y ago

This post refers to the Commons Clause and SSPL as patching "loopholes". Here's the reality: - The Commons Clause bans large categories of uses, including providing "consulting/support services", or selling any "product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software". - The SSPL requires users who want to "offer[] a service that accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the Software or modified version" to license all relevant "monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software" under the terms of the SSPL – which is likely impossible if that software is, say, licensed under the GPL. The Commons Clause is not meant to prohibit the listed activities entirely, but require people who want to do them to get a commercial license from the original developer. However, this fundamentally leaves the ability to fork the software at the mercy of that developer. If the developer refused to provide commercial licenses for the forked version, or just disappeared, the community could theoretically maintain the fork under the Commons Clause-adorned license, but they'd be stuck with software that nobody could provide "consulting/support services" for. You can argue that the definition of "open source" ought to be broader than what the OSI or FSF would permit; maybe "freedom zero" isn't essential, maybe broader-reaching copyleft rules are acceptable. Maybe. But the ability to fork is fundamental. "Open source" you can't fork doesn't even remotely deserve to be called that. That's not innovation in license terms; that's just taking proprietary software and calling it something else. As for the SSPL... I'm not sure whether the impractical/impossible redistribution requirements are meant to effectively achieve the same outcome as the Commons Clause – forcing users to get a commercial license – or if it was just poorly drafted. At best, it seems like the idea that people might actually take advantage of the license as written, and make derived works without paying in return for open sourcing the whole thing, as more of an afterthought compared to the commercial license route. Perhaps MongoDB will come up with an updated version of the license that addresses some of the concerns, but that remains to be seen. The broadness and vagueness of "monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software" makes it a bit hard to see the license as a good faith offer, but I could be wrong.

deleted 8y ago
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yorwba 8y ago

di4na 8y ago

There is only one small ppint missing when ypu talk of business not caring if community yells. What if these upstarts needs the community contribution to go through the first hump to adoption. And this break in trust between community and upstart stop people from contributing? Or if devs begin to walk away for personal disagreements with their company license. This is not that far stretch and it is what will cost these companies. The value of open source for business is that the community participate and developers were happy. If that breaks... then you lose.

austincheney 8y ago

This licensing nonsense is clearly people trying to force their political opinions or business interests upon software consumption. To step aside from the political nonsense and business liability I prefer the most militant permissive license, CCO-1.0, in my own software. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

Avamander 8y ago
I prefer AGPLv3 on my software because I've been burned by non-GPL software not respecting my wishes and I don't want any of my users to suffer the same fate. Calling it nonsense is short-sighted.
- austincheney 8y ago
  > non-GPL software not respecting my wishes Why would you want to force your desires upon a consumer of your software?
  - Avamander 8y ago
    Why do car manufacturers force their desires upon customers and build seatbelts into their cars?
    - austincheney 8y ago
      Bad analogy. Car manufacturers provide a legally mandated feature, but the manufacturer does not dictate usage and is not obligated to. The user can choose to not use the seatbelt, which is not going to change the design of the car.
      - Avamander 8y ago
        So if software developing had a law that software must give the four essential user freedoms then it'd be okay to give but otherwise it's not okay? Please.

zzzcpan 8y ago

So, ideally Mongo and Redis Labs and everyone using AGPL would unite and get FSF to embrace a new stronger user freedom protecting license. Strong user freedom works well for companies that want to protect themselves from megacorps. It's too bad that megacorps gained so much influence over FSF and it's not true to its ideals anymore.

klez 8y ago
> It's too bad that megacorps gained so much influence over FSF and it's not true to its ideals anymore. Wait, what? Can you please provide an example?

kemitchell 8y ago

A visual aid that I might edit into the post later: https://twitter.com/kemitchell/status/1059574111733657600 https://twitter.com/kemitchell/status/1059574111733657600