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Is the controversy here that the Commons Clause piggy backs on top of existing free software licenses and thus could mislead users to think that software using

Is the controversy here that the Commons Clause piggy backs on top of existing free software licenses and thus could mislead users to think that software using it is free software when it's in fact proprietary by their definitions? As a part-time independent developer of software myself, I personally find the combination of a free software license + Commons Clause to be very compelling. I'm willing to grant to the user every right offered by free software licenses with the exception of rights to commercial use. If that means my software has to be labeled as proprietary by the FSF, so be it, but at the same time I'd prefer not to mislead users into thinking my software is being offered under a vanilla free software license. Is there a proprietary license I can release my software under, with the properties of a free software + commons clause license, that doesn't run the risk of misleading users? If not, I'll likely continue releasing my software under a free software + commons clause license, along with some kind of disclaimer above the license section in the project's readme.

matthewbauer 8y ago
I think there is a creative commons license that comes pretty close.
- bigiain 8y ago
  BY-NC sounds philosophically like exactly what OP wants, but those licenses are not intended for software and the CC org themselves say: "We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative."
  - kemitchell 8y ago
    Here's a modern permissive license, plus CC-style noncommercial limit, with a built-in, thirty-two-day trial: https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity
    - tordanik 8y ago
      I would have a lot more sympathy for this effort if it wasn't for the misleading marketing. So you are selling software with a free 32-day trial? Nothing wrong with that. You're also allowing non-commercial users to use and modify their software for free? That's nice, and probably even makes sense financially if your market is mostly business users anyway. But then you just have to use a name and logo that's strongly reminiscent of the CC-Zero and brand yourselves "a new way to support open software developers". Except the "prosperity" license is not actually an open source license, and devs using it for their software are therefore not open source developers. The PR surrounding it follows the same pattern. It very much feels as if you are trying to benefit from the positive reputation that open source has built. Yes, the information is all there if you read the license text or readme, but it still seems intentionally designed to give an incorrect first impression to people who don't look too closely. Which is probably most people.
      - kemitchell 8y ago
        > devs using it for their software are therefore not open source developers Using a non-OSI license for one project doesn't make a developer not an open source developer, any more than Open Core makes companies stewarding open source projects not open source companies. Most examples of financially self-sustaining, independent open source developers I know make money on contracts for closed development. A few standouts avoid that by running their own proprietary software businesses, offering additional features on top of their open work. Prosperity helps those developers who want to make the source for their paid-only features publicly available, and to make it free to many users who could never buy. Prosperity, the noncommercial license, is one of two public licenses published under the project. The other is a very strong copyleft, or "free for open source" license. Both are controversial. I maintain, and have maintained, that the latter conforms to OSI's Open Source Definition, and that it's net-positive for software freedom, eschewing ruinous compromises. I remain far more personally passionate about the share-alike option, but it's just not functionally sufficient to create license-based opportunity for all projects. Freestanding applications not used to build other software, in particular. None of the branding issues here have been easy. Part of the reason I renamed the public licenses to remove all mention of License Zero itself was to decouple communication problems. Also to emphasize their independence from L0. The licenses are perfectly usable without any dual licensing, or without licensezero.com in particular. But while I want to be sure to get my messages across clearly, I strongly reject the idea that open source, however defined---OSI has not approved CC0-1.0, for example---deserves a special branding "buffer zone", that it's on other approaches to distinguish themselves, rather than for whoever wants to define "open source" to be clear what they mean. Open source branding itself takes advantage of lots of benefits attributable to mere source availability, and to public licensing more generally. It takes advantage of momentum from developers participating in a movement, some of whom reject any license-based definition of that movement, and some of whose needs, aspirations, and history orgs like OSI no longer seem to honor. I named License Zero as a I did to reflect its goal: zero out friction in dual licensing, even for projects built with many deps, as through npm. Due to the documentation, and the readability of the licenses themselves, I believe it's actually far easier for developers to tell what's going on with L0 and L0 licenses than for most open source terms and business approaches. But I haven't stopped publishing as much as I can to help with those approaches. For example: Popular: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-by-Line.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-b... Recent: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/10/24/How-to-Speak-Copyleft.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/10/24/How-to-Speak-Copyl...
roenxi 8y ago
I don't know there is any controversy as such. The FSF is doing its job and reminding everyone that freedom includes the freedom to make money. If your software is licensed under something that includes the Commons Clause then it isn't free software, because users are not free to do what they want with it (being limited by the Commons Clause, funnily enough). I'd hazard the only reason this is worth a mention is because "Commons Clause" sounds a lot like "Creative Commons" and, as the article mentions, it is a also misleading because it is attached to licenses in a way that changes them from Free Software licenses to [-O-p-e-n-S-o-u-r-c-e- +] proprietary software licenses. Someone scanning the license could think "oh, this is xyz license that is free, all is good" and not pick up on the Commons Clause. It is a bit insidious like that. + EDIT - Scratch that, it isn't even open source.
bigiain 8y ago
> I'm willing to grant to the user every right offered by free software licenses with the exception of rights to commercial use. From the FSF's point of view - that's fine, but it's no longer "free software". Which I agree with. They're somewhat grumpy, I think understandably, that companies like RedisLabs and MongoDB take the name and all of the text of a free license - and then make it non-free while keeping most of the brand recognition of the free license. As you suspect, it's misleading to end users. I think the Creative Commons people did some good work on this front, having the concept of things like "non-commercial" and "No derivatives" as explicit modifiers added to tne name/title of a license, to make it very clear up fromnt. wonder if the FSF would be happier if, for example, RedisLabs had chosen to use something like "Apache2 non commercial" instead of the less self explanatory "Apache 2.0 modified with Commons Clause" ???
kemitchell 8y ago
You might find this license useful: https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity In essence, a modern permissive license, plus noncommercial language similar to that in CC-BY-NC licenses, with a built-in, free, thirty-two day trial period.
e12e 8y ago
You are of course free to license your work as you whish - but might I ask why you would want to limit "commercial" use? Do you dual license your software?
greglindahl 8y ago
Free only for "non-commercial use" is a license style that failed in the software ecosystem a long time ago. Feel free to choose that if you think it's right for you and your goals, but if you were hoping to form a successful community around your code, that's pretty unlikely.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  I would say that forming a successful community around code is a slim prospect under any license. The median contributor count on an open project is one or two, depending on how you count. Strongly recommend: https://youtu.be/vBknF2yUZZ8?t=80 https://youtu.be/vBknF2yUZZ8?t=80

matthewbauer 8y ago

I think there is a creative commons license that comes pretty close.

bigiain 8y ago
BY-NC sounds philosophically like exactly what OP wants, but those licenses are not intended for software and the CC org themselves say: "We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative."
- kemitchell 8y ago
  Here's a modern permissive license, plus CC-style noncommercial limit, with a built-in, thirty-two-day trial: https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity
  - tordanik 8y ago
    I would have a lot more sympathy for this effort if it wasn't for the misleading marketing. So you are selling software with a free 32-day trial? Nothing wrong with that. You're also allowing non-commercial users to use and modify their software for free? That's nice, and probably even makes sense financially if your market is mostly business users anyway. But then you just have to use a name and logo that's strongly reminiscent of the CC-Zero and brand yourselves "a new way to support open software developers". Except the "prosperity" license is not actually an open source license, and devs using it for their software are therefore not open source developers. The PR surrounding it follows the same pattern. It very much feels as if you are trying to benefit from the positive reputation that open source has built. Yes, the information is all there if you read the license text or readme, but it still seems intentionally designed to give an incorrect first impression to people who don't look too closely. Which is probably most people.
    - kemitchell 8y ago
      > devs using it for their software are therefore not open source developers Using a non-OSI license for one project doesn't make a developer not an open source developer, any more than Open Core makes companies stewarding open source projects not open source companies. Most examples of financially self-sustaining, independent open source developers I know make money on contracts for closed development. A few standouts avoid that by running their own proprietary software businesses, offering additional features on top of their open work. Prosperity helps those developers who want to make the source for their paid-only features publicly available, and to make it free to many users who could never buy. Prosperity, the noncommercial license, is one of two public licenses published under the project. The other is a very strong copyleft, or "free for open source" license. Both are controversial. I maintain, and have maintained, that the latter conforms to OSI's Open Source Definition, and that it's net-positive for software freedom, eschewing ruinous compromises. I remain far more personally passionate about the share-alike option, but it's just not functionally sufficient to create license-based opportunity for all projects. Freestanding applications not used to build other software, in particular. None of the branding issues here have been easy. Part of the reason I renamed the public licenses to remove all mention of License Zero itself was to decouple communication problems. Also to emphasize their independence from L0. The licenses are perfectly usable without any dual licensing, or without licensezero.com in particular. But while I want to be sure to get my messages across clearly, I strongly reject the idea that open source, however defined---OSI has not approved CC0-1.0, for example---deserves a special branding "buffer zone", that it's on other approaches to distinguish themselves, rather than for whoever wants to define "open source" to be clear what they mean. Open source branding itself takes advantage of lots of benefits attributable to mere source availability, and to public licensing more generally. It takes advantage of momentum from developers participating in a movement, some of whom reject any license-based definition of that movement, and some of whose needs, aspirations, and history orgs like OSI no longer seem to honor. I named License Zero as a I did to reflect its goal: zero out friction in dual licensing, even for projects built with many deps, as through npm. Due to the documentation, and the readability of the licenses themselves, I believe it's actually far easier for developers to tell what's going on with L0 and L0 licenses than for most open source terms and business approaches. But I haven't stopped publishing as much as I can to help with those approaches. For example: Popular: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-by-Line.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-b... Recent: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/10/24/How-to-Speak-Copyleft.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/10/24/How-to-Speak-Copyl...

roenxi 8y ago

I don't know there is any controversy as such. The FSF is doing its job and reminding everyone that freedom includes the freedom to make money. If your software is licensed under something that includes the Commons Clause then it isn't free software, because users are not free to do what they want with it (being limited by the Commons Clause, funnily enough). I'd hazard the only reason this is worth a mention is because "Commons Clause" sounds a lot like "Creative Commons" and, as the article mentions, it is a also misleading because it is attached to licenses in a way that changes them from Free Software licenses to [-O-p-e-n-S-o-u-r-c-e- +] proprietary software licenses. Someone scanning the license could think "oh, this is xyz license that is free, all is good" and not pick up on the Commons Clause. It is a bit insidious like that. + EDIT - Scratch that, it isn't even open source.

bigiain 8y ago

> I'm willing to grant to the user every right offered by free software licenses with the exception of rights to commercial use. From the FSF's point of view - that's fine, but it's no longer "free software". Which I agree with. They're somewhat grumpy, I think understandably, that companies like RedisLabs and MongoDB take the name and all of the text of a free license - and then make it non-free while keeping most of the brand recognition of the free license. As you suspect, it's misleading to end users. I think the Creative Commons people did some good work on this front, having the concept of things like "non-commercial" and "No derivatives" as explicit modifiers added to tne name/title of a license, to make it very clear up fromnt. wonder if the FSF would be happier if, for example, RedisLabs had chosen to use something like "Apache2 non commercial" instead of the less self explanatory "Apache 2.0 modified with Commons Clause" ???

kemitchell 8y ago

You might find this license useful: https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity https://licensezero.com/licenses/prosperity In essence, a modern permissive license, plus noncommercial language similar to that in CC-BY-NC licenses, with a built-in, free, thirty-two day trial period.

e12e 8y ago

You are of course free to license your work as you whish - but might I ask why you would want to limit "commercial" use? Do you dual license your software?

greglindahl 8y ago

Free only for "non-commercial use" is a license style that failed in the software ecosystem a long time ago. Feel free to choose that if you think it's right for you and your goals, but if you were hoping to form a successful community around your code, that's pretty unlikely.

kemitchell 8y ago
I would say that forming a successful community around code is a slim prospect under any license. The median contributor count on an open project is one or two, depending on how you count. Strongly recommend: https://youtu.be/vBknF2yUZZ8?t=80 https://youtu.be/vBknF2yUZZ8?t=80