4 ms·

I love how you licensed it. I'm seeing a trend in how developers are being thoughtful about the licensing and how it will help monetize their efforts later. Exc

I love how you licensed it. I'm seeing a trend in how developers are being thoughtful about the licensing and how it will help monetize their efforts later. Excited to see how this goes.

privateSFacct 7y ago
Likely badly - this doesn't meet the OSI open source defintion, and while interesting, many developers are reluctant to contribute to various shared source / source available proprietary core products.
- janober 7y ago
  Which I think is quite interesting. I can totally understand if a person says "I do not want to contribute code to a project for free when somebody else can make money with it". But then they can not contribute code to any OSI approved Open Source licensed project. Because with that license everybody can make money with it. And very often is that somebody the wrong one (like for example Amazon). The only difference with the Commons Clause is that now still somebody can make money. But that somebody is now the entity behind the project. And they normally put that money right back into the project (by for example hiring developers) and make so sure that it improves and stays around a long time. So I personally would prefer to contribute code to a project which uses the Commons Clause then one which does not.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Thank you for picking the license you did. Developers should be able to earn from their hard work, versus having a Goliath cloud provider take it and profit from it without contributing anything back. No need to cater to potential contributors who have no skin in the game, but turn their nose up at a license they don't believe in.
  - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
    >I can totally understand if a person says "I do not want to contribute code to a project for free when somebody else can make money with it" It's not so much that somebody can make money with it. It's that you, the project maintainer, will be reaping all the monetary benefits for yourself. With open source software theoretically anyone can benefit. If you don't like what the maintainer is doing, you can fork it. In this case, though I believe the commons clause does allow you to fork it, you would still be the one reaping any monetary benefits from the fork. In my opinion the biggest issue with the commons clause is it no longer makes logical sense to fork the project. If the project dies because you couldn't make any money off it, and you don't go back and relicense your work, the code is practically dead as an 'open source' project. Well, that and that the consulting clause seems to be just sitting there waiting for a major court case to decide what it truly means (even the lawyer who led drafting the clause admitted as such [1]). [1] https://github.com/fossas/commons-clause/issues/4#issuecomment-415653257 https://github.com/fossas/commons-clause/issues/4#issuecomme...
    - certera 7y ago
      If it dies, there can be a point where the maintainer can re-license under more open terms, no? Until that point, the work and contributions are ensured to help sustain the creator. I'm planning on releasing my project under similar terms. I'm not particularly interested in community contributions, but rather for there to be trust in ensuring privacy and security. Sometimes, there isn't a one-size-fits-all with the available OSI licenses and I appreciate what op has done to do his best to find what works well for him and the community.
      - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
        It's less a community in that case than potential customers. Your creating a product, which is fine, but words like 'open source' and 'community' are quite misleading.
        smashthepants 7y ago
        The words 'community' and 'customers' are not mutually exclusive and using the word community to refer to your customers is not misleading in the slightest...
- certera 7y ago
  I'm not sure sure it will go "badly". I believe there's a fundamental issue with a class of software applications that the current OSI licenses don't do much for. Let me clarify that statement with some examples. If you're a developer of an "open source" library or database engine, you have great OSI licenses available to use. The consumers of your work will either open source their work or purchase a license (i.e. dual-licensing). If, however, you're creating a CMS or some standalone tool (like GIMP, for example), you're left to go down the road of open core (typically). So, the alternative here is to choose a license that's conducive of being able to monetize without depending on donations or support contracts. I think developers should pick a license that makes sense for them, not necessarily for the benefit of others. What is important though, is that some thought is taken and to try it out. You can always go more permissive later. I'm working on something that I want to monetize, but the OSI licenses aren't helpful for the kind of application I'm working on. I'm leaning towards a similar licensing structure and have been spending a great deal of time thinking about this and I hope to have more discussions on this very topic as it's extremely helpful for everyone. edit: typos

I love how you licensed it. I'm seeing a trend in how developers are being thoughtful about the licensing and how it will help monetize their efforts later. Excited to see how this goes.

privateSFacct 7y ago

Likely badly - this doesn't meet the OSI open source defintion, and while interesting, many developers are reluctant to contribute to various shared source / source available proprietary core products.

janober 7y ago
Which I think is quite interesting. I can totally understand if a person says "I do not want to contribute code to a project for free when somebody else can make money with it". But then they can not contribute code to any OSI approved Open Source licensed project. Because with that license everybody can make money with it. And very often is that somebody the wrong one (like for example Amazon). The only difference with the Commons Clause is that now still somebody can make money. But that somebody is now the entity behind the project. And they normally put that money right back into the project (by for example hiring developers) and make so sure that it improves and stays around a long time. So I personally would prefer to contribute code to a project which uses the Commons Clause then one which does not.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Thank you for picking the license you did. Developers should be able to earn from their hard work, versus having a Goliath cloud provider take it and profit from it without contributing anything back. No need to cater to potential contributors who have no skin in the game, but turn their nose up at a license they don't believe in.
- ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
  >I can totally understand if a person says "I do not want to contribute code to a project for free when somebody else can make money with it" It's not so much that somebody can make money with it. It's that you, the project maintainer, will be reaping all the monetary benefits for yourself. With open source software theoretically anyone can benefit. If you don't like what the maintainer is doing, you can fork it. In this case, though I believe the commons clause does allow you to fork it, you would still be the one reaping any monetary benefits from the fork. In my opinion the biggest issue with the commons clause is it no longer makes logical sense to fork the project. If the project dies because you couldn't make any money off it, and you don't go back and relicense your work, the code is practically dead as an 'open source' project. Well, that and that the consulting clause seems to be just sitting there waiting for a major court case to decide what it truly means (even the lawyer who led drafting the clause admitted as such [1]). [1] https://github.com/fossas/commons-clause/issues/4#issuecomment-415653257 https://github.com/fossas/commons-clause/issues/4#issuecomme...
  - certera 7y ago
    If it dies, there can be a point where the maintainer can re-license under more open terms, no? Until that point, the work and contributions are ensured to help sustain the creator. I'm planning on releasing my project under similar terms. I'm not particularly interested in community contributions, but rather for there to be trust in ensuring privacy and security. Sometimes, there isn't a one-size-fits-all with the available OSI licenses and I appreciate what op has done to do his best to find what works well for him and the community.
    - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
      It's less a community in that case than potential customers. Your creating a product, which is fine, but words like 'open source' and 'community' are quite misleading.
      - smashthepants 7y ago
        The words 'community' and 'customers' are not mutually exclusive and using the word community to refer to your customers is not misleading in the slightest...
certera 7y ago
I'm not sure sure it will go "badly". I believe there's a fundamental issue with a class of software applications that the current OSI licenses don't do much for. Let me clarify that statement with some examples. If you're a developer of an "open source" library or database engine, you have great OSI licenses available to use. The consumers of your work will either open source their work or purchase a license (i.e. dual-licensing). If, however, you're creating a CMS or some standalone tool (like GIMP, for example), you're left to go down the road of open core (typically). So, the alternative here is to choose a license that's conducive of being able to monetize without depending on donations or support contracts. I think developers should pick a license that makes sense for them, not necessarily for the benefit of others. What is important though, is that some thought is taken and to try it out. You can always go more permissive later. I'm working on something that I want to monetize, but the OSI licenses aren't helpful for the kind of application I'm working on. I'm leaning towards a similar licensing structure and have been spending a great deal of time thinking about this and I hope to have more discussions on this very topic as it's extremely helpful for everyone. edit: typos