18 ms·

Scapegoating free software’s failures

150 points by _frkl 7y ago

catern 7y ago
While this article's tone is somewhat angry and personal, it makes some quite interesting points and takes a perspective that I've never heard before. Before reading the article I was tentatively in favor of more expansive copyleft licenses such as Mongo's SSPL, for various reasons. But I hadn't considered something implied by that position, which this article says directly: The FSF and what one might call "mainstream copyleft" are aggressively defending corporate interests by attacking such licenses. Perhaps they (the FSF et al) don't do it intentionally, but that's nevertheless their effect...
- api 7y ago
  I've thought this for years: the aggressive defense of super liberal OSS licenses with no sort of "SaaS clause" or other limits turns FOSS into free labor for SaaS companies. SaaS is more closed than closed: you control nothing, not even your data, and can trivially be spied on and monetized in other questionable ways. The fact that some of the pieces of a SaaS site are open source is meaningless and changes nothing. If all code must be free "as in beer" for all uses then this kind of SaaS (paid or "free" and paid for via surveillance capitalism) is literally the only possible business model. Well that and traditional 100% closed. The Googles and Facebooks of the world are fine with that.
  - kemitchell 7y ago
    > SaaS is more closed than closed Nice turn of phrase. I'd add only that services not only can be more closed than software, it's normal and in some sense acceptable that they are. Whether it's freedom rhetoric or business advice, there's a strange disconnect between received wisdom for software and received wisdom for services.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - closeparen 7y ago
    >free labor for SaaS companies Approximately all then open source software I work with on a daily basis is SaaS companies pooling efforts on the problems they have in common, yes.
    - api 7y ago
      That's by no means all of open source. Some of us are working on things designed to re-enable a peer to peer personal computing model.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    Just as a side note, "free labor" is common and not necessarily a bad thing. Whenever you give someone a gift, whatever work you did on it is effectively free labor. You could also think of donations to charity that way when you fund them out of your salary, not to mention volunteering. It's true that often people don't want to do that, though, and this is certainly understandable.
    - api 7y ago
      I don't want to give free gifts to surveillance capitalist companies.
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    > SaaS is more closed than closed: you control nothing, not even your data, and can trivially be spied on and monetized in other questionable ways Spot on, and those companies managed to subvert and violate the spirit of FLOSS in many ways.
- phkahler 7y ago
  Two point he made that I've often wondered about. 1) why wasn't AGPL used for GPLv3? 2) why should companies be able to keep proprietary version from being distributed? The second one I can see being possible by having employees agree not to exercise their GPL redistribution rights as a condition of employment. Still it seems like a large group of companies could all agree to that kind of thing to effectively take a GPLed work private. But yeah why have AGPL as a separate thing?
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    Maybe because it would upset developers who had chosen GPL2-or-later version. They might see it as overreach. That could hurt adoption.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    employees agree not to exercise their GPL redistribution rights If you prepare a derivative of a GPL app as a work for hire, what GPL rights would you have? You don't own the copyright on the modifications, the employer does.
    - pygy_ 7y ago
      Hypothetically: the employer gave you a copy of the modified software (by having you modify it). He's bound by the license and so are you?
      - pratyushc 7y ago
        Interesting. If you were given the copy on a computer owned by your employer, is it your copy or theirs?
        newnewpdro 7y ago
        I believe it's theirs. If I loan you my laptop brimming with free software, and you use it for a day, have I redistributed the software to you? No. You had use of a computer you didn't own executing the software, no copy was made. It's no different from the well-known SaaS loophole the AGPL attempts to close.
- simonh 7y ago
  The FSF is not 'attacking' such licenses, they're just arguing that they aren't free libre software licenses. It's the SSPL people and others, by trying to co-opt the free and Libre software movement by claim their licenses are something they are not, which are mounting the assault. And let's be clear it is a pernicious, aggressive and deliberate attack threatening, and in some cases knowingly intended to fundamentally undermine free software principles. This is an existential threat to the FSF. If they just went away and propagated and argued for their licenses on their own terms, the FSF wouldn't have anything in particular to say about it.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    And the FSF has even come up with their own license for network services, namely the AGPL - that is a full free-software license, since compared to the GPL it only clarifies requirements around public performance of the covered work (which unlike mere "use" of the software, is something that copyright law expressly grants as an exclusive right of the copyright holder!)
    - kemitchell 7y ago
      SSPL was a direct response to perceived loopholes and inadequacies in AGPL. I’ve written about that here: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/04/Copyleft-Bust-Up.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/04/Copyleft-Bust-Up.h... Most people never get that far, because they write the license off as an attack on principles. The debate about the substance didn’t really get to happen. As for public performance, I’m not aware of any case law to suggest that the public performance right applies to software as you suggest. And I’ve never seen FSF or independent legal counsel argue that GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are functionally equivalent due to background law. The FSF theorists I’ve read describe AGPL as “synthesizing” a public performance right for software that doesn’t otherwise exist under current copyright law. They do so out of two existing exclusive rights: the right to prepare derivative works (making changes or building larger programs) and the right to reproduce in copies (incidental to use).
      - zozbot234 7y ago
StavrosK 7y ago
So if I want to write an OSS library that can't be used for monetary gain, what license do I release it under? AGPLv3? EDIT: Actually, I misspoke, since monetary gain isn't the problem. I should have said "used against user freedom", but that's much less well-defined. I want a license that is as "open" as possible, for whatever definition of "open".
- kemitchell 7y ago
  It sounds like you want a noncommercial license, which is a perfectly fine license to want, but not one traditionally honored as open. Consider https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/
  - mwcampbell 7y ago
    What's the difference between that license and the License Zero Prosperity license?
    - kemitchell 7y ago
      The current version of Prosperity uses Creative Commons' approach to prohibiting commercial use. Polyform uses a new, and in my opinion, much improved approach with practical "safe harbors" of clarity for predominantly noncommercial organizations, as well as common personal uses. Prosperity also includes a built-in free trial period for commercial users, while Creative Commons does not. The forthcoming version 3 of Prosperity will be written as a fork of Polyform Noncommercial, leveraging its improved approach, still with a built-in free trial. If you're interested in those terms, I'd greatly appreciate feedback: https://github.com/licensezero/prosperity-public-license/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/licensezero/prosperity-public-license/blo... If something in the terms isn't clear, that's the terms' fault, not yours. I'd appreciate an issue or an e-mail, so we can make it clear.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  You can't. It wouldn't be OSS if I couln't take your library and resell it. You could look at CC-BY-NC-SA, but it's not Open Source and not appropriate for software.
arminiusreturns 7y ago
All of the licenses this person defends have serious defects which are being ignored here. FSF saw and understood there were many weaknesses in gplv2 which is why they worked so hard on gplv3, which is the standard bearer for copy left in my opinion, including it's derivatives like a/l(gpl). The main criticism that is valid is the "gunshy enforcement" by FSF, but if you listen to people like Eben Moglen they are very open about the fact that they have been working on the long game of getting into a position where enforcement would be effective instead of weaken the copyleft movement via a failed enforcement action, and that they have known it would take many years and even decades before the law side would catch up and be ready. I do think they need to step it up, but these are things that FSF et al already acknowledge and are working to address. I have to admit a certain amount of conflicting views here, as I am at the same time sympathetic to entities afraid of doing work that others might then use and profit off of without contributing back (such as MangoDB claims), but I am also sensitive to claims that the licenses they are pursing could also be used as a cudgel to get more people towards paying them instead of using FOSS versions, and also to the fear of corps that SSPL could be a dangerous license if misconstrued. Which is why Mongo was dropped by RedHat, Fedora and Debian... In general I think that (a/l)gplv3 did most of the work actually needed to solve these issues, and that attempts like SSPL, however laudable, are likely to fracture and weaken FOSS as a whole and, being incompatible with gpl, I cannot support them. There are ideas there that are important and should be discussed however. I have put my actions where my mouth is on this issue. I have worked very hard to make the majority of my daily desktop and server stacks gpl or gpl compatible. (which means I steer far clear of mit/bsd licensed things if I can) The few exceptions are things I always keep an eye out for alternatives on. An interesting SO on the SSPL: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7522/sspl-and-the-open-source-definition https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7522/sspl-and... In essence, I mark it as a sign of honest discussion when someone admits the weaknesses to their arguments. There is none of that here, ergo...
- kemitchell 7y ago
  I believe I mentioned enforcement only in closing. As far as licenses go, my criticism was sharper: FSF licenses as intended allow substantial bodies of activist work to benefit venture capital-backed, closed-software companies. Those intentional drafting decisions are incongruous with a post-hoc politics of VC scapegoating. You mentioned Moglen's public writing on enforcement, and I think you summarize it fairly. But it is precisely that posture that I criticize as gunshy. The Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement lay it shorter and plainer. The idea that the law isn't ready for GPL enforcement is laid bare by other organizations' success enforcing GPLs. This has some folks within the FSF camp worried: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1mGG4JYurE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1mGG4JYurE They are losing the power to construct and enforce their own social truth about the licenses they published.
AlexMax 7y ago
They mention it in one of the lines of this blog, but apparently this individual (perhaps with the help of others, it wasn't clear) has come up with two of their own software licenses, with a website and everything. https://guide.licensezero.com/ https://guide.licensezero.com/ > The Prosperity Public License (Prosperity) works a bit like a Creative Commons NonCommercial license, but for software. Prosperity gives everyone broad permission to use your software, but limits commercial use to a short trial period of 32 days. When a commercial user’s trial runs out, they need to buy a private license or stop using your software. > The Parity Public License (Parity) works a bit like AGPL, but requires users to release more of their own code, in more situations. Parity requires users who change, build on, or use your work to create software to release that software as open source, too. If users can’t or won’t release their work, they need to buy a private license that allows use without sharing back. I'm one of those folks that usually defaults to AGPL for their open source work for practical reasons - it's much easier to go from a copyleft license to a permissive one due to circumstance than the other way around. However, I always found it a bit strange that there were dozens of variants of the MIT and BSD license out there, but aside from the GPL and MPL no other popular license really took up the mantle of copyleft, aside from perhaps the old Sleepycat license. This looks like a very appealing license on its face, but the fact that it's specifically _not_ written in legalese is a little weird, though the fact that the author is a lawyer is some reassurance.
- kemitchell 7y ago
  I am in fact the prime mover behind License Zero (https://licensezero.com https://licensezero.com), but I am by no means alone in it. Parity and Prosperity would not be what they are without enormous amounts of feedback and suggestions from users and interested hackers. Some of those folks agreed to be listed here: https://licensezero.com/thanks https://licensezero.com/thanks There may be more copyleft licenses than you think. Blue Oak Council, in which I'm also involved, recently published this resource: https://blueoakcouncil.org/copyleft#copyleft-families https://blueoakcouncil.org/copyleft#copyleft-families That being said, you're absolutely right that we've seen more permissive licenses than copyleft license, by simple count. Compare: https://blueoakcouncil.org/list https://blueoakcouncil.org/list
- 7y ago
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Just my opinion, but the author sounds like a corporate shill (I realize he is a VC): “ The old, creaky pillars of the free software movement need convenient scapegoats, because the facts on the ground raise serious doubt about the effectiveness of their leadership and the byzantine, insular ideology of copyleft they impose.” The state of software development and benefits to society from FSF licenses are, I believe, manifest. I also support other open source licenses, I am not criticizing them, I am merely defending FSF licenses. I guess that my personal bullshit meter gets tripped up when something is an attack rather than a balanced discussion.
- detaro 7y ago
  > corporate shill (I realize he is a VC): [citation needed] Your comment seems more to prove his point than refute it.
  - mark_l_watson 7y ago
    The header said “Venture Capital Shill”, so I thought I was using a term he self identified with. Maybe I was wrong about that and it is just the title of the article.
    - detaro 7y ago
      You literally quoted part of the section that describes that the author considers that label an unfair attack made to allow people to ignore his arguments. And then used said label to attack him and ignore his arguments. The article is worth reading more carefully, even if you don't agree with him.
      - mark_l_watson 7y ago
        I will, thanks for your comments.
      - yabadabadoes 7y ago
        I read the article as carefully as I could given its style and I think the author is injecting the negative sentiment by self abasement to give himself license to anger, etc. The GPL was written by an institutional employee that was upset by VC backed plans to co-opt internal software and turn it into a profit vehicle. In that context the compatibility of everyone's interests but VC interests make perfect sense. The claim that copy left is failing and byzantine are haberdash. That many people don't understand GPL and that it is succeeding in its direction and not the one they assumed is an argument that could be made and should at a minimum be significant to VCs.
zbentley 7y ago
> GPLv2 and v3 gave hobbyists, students, and anti-corporate hackers a means to feel as though their work resists the evil empire of the software industry, while in fact serving it up with unpaid work product. From the VC point of view, the GPLs break the dam on that pool of labor, flooding venture prospects with freebie technology. That seems concerning and deeply cynical. Mostly because I worry that it may be accurate.
- baot 7y ago
  I think it's silly: the idea that free software is primarily done unpaid is just a myth, as can be seen from the attendees of any major free software conference, or the commit history of the major codebases. The killer feature of copyleft is as a way for standards to propagate within industries so that duplicate work can be avoided. Any benefits that end users get are a happy coincidence.
  - pmjordan 7y ago
    This is certainly true for the big headline projects. For every one of those, there's a hundred small but widely used libraries or tools whose sole maintainers (or tiny groups of maintainers) struggle under the workload of keeping it going, as they do so in addition to whatever pays their bills - with no obvious route to recompense for that unpaid labour. Worse, large users of the tool or library get to make modifications without sharing them with the original author and rest of the world. the idea that free software is primarily done unpaid is just a myth, as can be seen from the attendees of any major free software conference I'll point out that just because you mostly see delegates from big businesses to FOSS conferences, that doesn't mean this is a representative sample. It can just as well mean that the long tail of contributors isn't able to attend. Of course, had the maintainers of the small-but-popular tool/library chosen a license under which the big corporate users were forced to contribute any local modifications back, this may in itself have prevented the popularity of the tool or library in the first place. Because for many developers and companies, using an AGPL (or even GPL or LGPL) licensed tool or library is absolute anathema. (GPL in whatever form of course does not help with financially compensating independent developers, so it wouldn't fully solve the problem.)
purpleidea 7y ago
Despite all the points the author tries to make, he forgets to mention the most important one: license proliferation is not a positive thing for people who care about software freedom. He's responsible for proliferating, and I hope it stops. Lack of innovation in licensing isn't the problem. Corporate greed is.
- kemitchell 7y ago
  The licenses I’ve contributed to don’t rehash old licenses. They represent new choices. Some patch holes in old forms. Some break new ground. If “license proliferation” means something even stricter, like “no new licenses, even if they do new things”, there’s no good argument for it as a policy, other than protecting those currently “winning” who fear change. Database proliferation is not killing software. Nor is framework proliferation or markup language proliferation or programming language proliferation.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
thibaultamartin 7y ago
Frank Karlitschek (Nextcloud and Owncloud founder) has a very interesting take regarding open source and licences[1] [1]: https://karlitschek.de/2019/08/open-source-if-more-than-licenses/ https://karlitschek.de/2019/08/open-source-if-more-than-lice...
- kemitchell 7y ago
  Nice post. I’d say Van Lindberg’s Cryptographic Autonomy License and my own Icepick License respond to a number of its concerns.
machbio 7y ago
Are there any books to read about the complete list of software licenses ?
Proven 7y ago
I disagree with the author (and also with the FSF). To me main purpose of "free" software isn't to bring prosperity (to developers, but also anyone else for that matter), but freedom to its users. Which means no undue obligations. What's the point of using "free" software if I have to read the freaking license, count how many days it's been since some coworker installed some "free" software or spend money (legal, web site, internal reviews) in order to comply? Not only do I dislike these fake free software licenses, I also prefer to not contribute to any harassmentware (stuff licensed under GPLv3 and such) because it sometimes restricts users' freedom in ways more restrictive than closed source software, and it is always more restrictive than permissive libra software.
StreamBright 7y ago
> their work resists the evil empire of the software industry Not sure that the creators of BSD really cared about the things this article is talking about when created BSD license. Many of the opensource projects that I use are either created or maintained by the "evil empire of the software industry".
danShumway 7y ago
I recently developed a new vegan dish that addresses some of the practical problems with veganism as a whole by using bugs as a substitute protein source. Very promising, but these critics keep on attacking me, claiming I can't call my product vegan because "technically" it uses animal by-products. And I think this shows why the vegan community organizers and primary advocates are actually anti-innovation. If the vegan movement wants to actually achieve its ideals, we need to reject the old guard that ideologically insists that no vegan dishes can contain meat.
- claudiulodro 7y ago
  Your dish isn't vegan though. It may be an improvement over eating meat, but it still creates suffering for living creatures. I don't know why you need so strongly to apply the "vegan" label to whatever your dish is, especially when it seems to involve literally eating "meat" from insects. Just call it "sustainable omnivorism" or something.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    Now take the same reaction you just had, and apply it in the context of Kyle's post. > When I wrote a strong copyleft license for dev tools, the FSF faithful objected. Why wouldn’t a movement best known for dev tools and software freedom want a copyleft license that requires devs using dev tools to make their work free? Because it's not Free software. It may be an improvement over proprietary software, but it's still restricting user freedom. Just call it "Source Available" or something.
    - kemitchell 7y ago
      Why aren't SSPL, API Copyleft, Parity, CAL, and Icepick free software licenses? GPL restricts my freedom to build and share closed applications with free libraries, in order to prevent the creation of closed software that restricts others' freedom. AGPL restrict my freedom to build and share network applications as closed software with free code, in order to prevent the creation of closed software that restricts others' freedom. Why can't a license restrict my freedom to build closed applications with free dev tools, in order to prevent the creation of closed software that likewise restrict others' freedom?
ncmncm 7y ago
The author makes interesting points well illustrated by the abuses, by multinational corporations and internet fatcats, of the licenses we depend upon. But he neglects to mention the fundamental point that the community is not well served by a proliferation of licenses.
- jitschlit 7y ago
  So, what is the alternative? What am i supposed to do if I think there is no license that deals satisfactory with the problems I have, and I'm can't create a new one, because, well, it makes things a bit less straightforward for my users?
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    One alternative, for the author, would have been to mention it. Address it, even.
    - _frkl 7y ago
      To me, it's not really proliferation if the license addresses issues no other license addresses. Just because it adds one or more licenses to the number of existing licenses, doesn't mean those licenses should not exist. Also, as a developer I think choice is good. If users have to do a bit more work to figure out whether they can or want to use code because of its license then that is unfortunate, but not too much to ask. Why exactly do you think writing such a new license is doing more harm than good?
      - ncmncm 7y ago
        It might benefit the author, a little, but it imposes new costs on everybody else.
        _frkl 7y ago
        I guess that's where we disagree. I think the existence of such a license might be -- in some cases -- the one thing that motivates the author to create a project in the first place (its for me, anyway). And I don't think open-source has any obligation to come with 'no cost' for its users. Reading (and respecting) its license is the least one can do when using somebody elses code. If that takes time, then one just has to factor that in when deciding whether to re-use someone elses code or not.
FisDugthop 7y ago
It would be nice if there were a license that forbade corporate use entirely. Corporations are not really people, after all.

150 points by _frkl 7y ago

While this article's tone is somewhat angry and personal, it makes some quite interesting points and takes a perspective that I've never heard before. Before reading the article I was tentatively in favor of more expansive copyleft licenses such as Mongo's SSPL, for various reasons. But I hadn't considered something implied by that position, which this article says directly: The FSF and what one might call "mainstream copyleft" are aggressively defending corporate interests by attacking such licenses. Perhaps they (the FSF et al) don't do it intentionally, but that's nevertheless their effect...

api 7y ago
I've thought this for years: the aggressive defense of super liberal OSS licenses with no sort of "SaaS clause" or other limits turns FOSS into free labor for SaaS companies. SaaS is more closed than closed: you control nothing, not even your data, and can trivially be spied on and monetized in other questionable ways. The fact that some of the pieces of a SaaS site are open source is meaningless and changes nothing. If all code must be free "as in beer" for all uses then this kind of SaaS (paid or "free" and paid for via surveillance capitalism) is literally the only possible business model. Well that and traditional 100% closed. The Googles and Facebooks of the world are fine with that.
- kemitchell 7y ago
  > SaaS is more closed than closed Nice turn of phrase. I'd add only that services not only can be more closed than software, it's normal and in some sense acceptable that they are. Whether it's freedom rhetoric or business advice, there's a strange disconnect between received wisdom for software and received wisdom for services.
- deleted 7y ago
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- closeparen 7y ago
  >free labor for SaaS companies Approximately all then open source software I work with on a daily basis is SaaS companies pooling efforts on the problems they have in common, yes.
  - api 7y ago
    That's by no means all of open source. Some of us are working on things designed to re-enable a peer to peer personal computing model.
- skybrian 7y ago
  Just as a side note, "free labor" is common and not necessarily a bad thing. Whenever you give someone a gift, whatever work you did on it is effectively free labor. You could also think of donations to charity that way when you fund them out of your salary, not to mention volunteering. It's true that often people don't want to do that, though, and this is certainly understandable.
  - api 7y ago
    I don't want to give free gifts to surveillance capitalist companies.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  > SaaS is more closed than closed: you control nothing, not even your data, and can trivially be spied on and monetized in other questionable ways Spot on, and those companies managed to subvert and violate the spirit of FLOSS in many ways.
phkahler 7y ago
Two point he made that I've often wondered about. 1) why wasn't AGPL used for GPLv3? 2) why should companies be able to keep proprietary version from being distributed? The second one I can see being possible by having employees agree not to exercise their GPL redistribution rights as a condition of employment. Still it seems like a large group of companies could all agree to that kind of thing to effectively take a GPLed work private. But yeah why have AGPL as a separate thing?
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Maybe because it would upset developers who had chosen GPL2-or-later version. They might see it as overreach. That could hurt adoption.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  employees agree not to exercise their GPL redistribution rights If you prepare a derivative of a GPL app as a work for hire, what GPL rights would you have? You don't own the copyright on the modifications, the employer does.
  - pygy_ 7y ago
    Hypothetically: the employer gave you a copy of the modified software (by having you modify it). He's bound by the license and so are you?
    - pratyushc 7y ago
      Interesting. If you were given the copy on a computer owned by your employer, is it your copy or theirs?
      - newnewpdro 7y ago
        I believe it's theirs. If I loan you my laptop brimming with free software, and you use it for a day, have I redistributed the software to you? No. You had use of a computer you didn't own executing the software, no copy was made. It's no different from the well-known SaaS loophole the AGPL attempts to close.
simonh 7y ago
The FSF is not 'attacking' such licenses, they're just arguing that they aren't free libre software licenses. It's the SSPL people and others, by trying to co-opt the free and Libre software movement by claim their licenses are something they are not, which are mounting the assault. And let's be clear it is a pernicious, aggressive and deliberate attack threatening, and in some cases knowingly intended to fundamentally undermine free software principles. This is an existential threat to the FSF. If they just went away and propagated and argued for their licenses on their own terms, the FSF wouldn't have anything in particular to say about it.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  And the FSF has even come up with their own license for network services, namely the AGPL - that is a full free-software license, since compared to the GPL it only clarifies requirements around public performance of the covered work (which unlike mere "use" of the software, is something that copyright law expressly grants as an exclusive right of the copyright holder!)
  - kemitchell 7y ago
    SSPL was a direct response to perceived loopholes and inadequacies in AGPL. I’ve written about that here: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/04/Copyleft-Bust-Up.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/04/Copyleft-Bust-Up.h... Most people never get that far, because they write the license off as an attack on principles. The debate about the substance didn’t really get to happen. As for public performance, I’m not aware of any case law to suggest that the public performance right applies to software as you suggest. And I’ve never seen FSF or independent legal counsel argue that GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are functionally equivalent due to background law. The FSF theorists I’ve read describe AGPL as “synthesizing” a public performance right for software that doesn’t otherwise exist under current copyright law. They do so out of two existing exclusive rights: the right to prepare derivative works (making changes or building larger programs) and the right to reproduce in copies (incidental to use).
    - zozbot234 7y ago

StavrosK 7y ago

So if I want to write an OSS library that can't be used for monetary gain, what license do I release it under? AGPLv3? EDIT: Actually, I misspoke, since monetary gain isn't the problem. I should have said "used against user freedom", but that's much less well-defined. I want a license that is as "open" as possible, for whatever definition of "open".

kemitchell 7y ago
It sounds like you want a noncommercial license, which is a perfectly fine license to want, but not one traditionally honored as open. Consider https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/
- mwcampbell 7y ago
  What's the difference between that license and the License Zero Prosperity license?
  - kemitchell 7y ago
    The current version of Prosperity uses Creative Commons' approach to prohibiting commercial use. Polyform uses a new, and in my opinion, much improved approach with practical "safe harbors" of clarity for predominantly noncommercial organizations, as well as common personal uses. Prosperity also includes a built-in free trial period for commercial users, while Creative Commons does not. The forthcoming version 3 of Prosperity will be written as a fork of Polyform Noncommercial, leveraging its improved approach, still with a built-in free trial. If you're interested in those terms, I'd greatly appreciate feedback: https://github.com/licensezero/prosperity-public-license/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/licensezero/prosperity-public-license/blo... If something in the terms isn't clear, that's the terms' fault, not yours. I'd appreciate an issue or an e-mail, so we can make it clear.
jobigoud 7y ago
You can't. It wouldn't be OSS if I couln't take your library and resell it. You could look at CC-BY-NC-SA, but it's not Open Source and not appropriate for software.

arminiusreturns 7y ago

All of the licenses this person defends have serious defects which are being ignored here. FSF saw and understood there were many weaknesses in gplv2 which is why they worked so hard on gplv3, which is the standard bearer for copy left in my opinion, including it's derivatives like a/l(gpl). The main criticism that is valid is the "gunshy enforcement" by FSF, but if you listen to people like Eben Moglen they are very open about the fact that they have been working on the long game of getting into a position where enforcement would be effective instead of weaken the copyleft movement via a failed enforcement action, and that they have known it would take many years and even decades before the law side would catch up and be ready. I do think they need to step it up, but these are things that FSF et al already acknowledge and are working to address. I have to admit a certain amount of conflicting views here, as I am at the same time sympathetic to entities afraid of doing work that others might then use and profit off of without contributing back (such as MangoDB claims), but I am also sensitive to claims that the licenses they are pursing could also be used as a cudgel to get more people towards paying them instead of using FOSS versions, and also to the fear of corps that SSPL could be a dangerous license if misconstrued. Which is why Mongo was dropped by RedHat, Fedora and Debian... In general I think that (a/l)gplv3 did most of the work actually needed to solve these issues, and that attempts like SSPL, however laudable, are likely to fracture and weaken FOSS as a whole and, being incompatible with gpl, I cannot support them. There are ideas there that are important and should be discussed however. I have put my actions where my mouth is on this issue. I have worked very hard to make the majority of my daily desktop and server stacks gpl or gpl compatible. (which means I steer far clear of mit/bsd licensed things if I can) The few exceptions are things I always keep an eye out for alternatives on. An interesting SO on the SSPL: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7522/sspl-and-the-open-source-definition https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7522/sspl-and... In essence, I mark it as a sign of honest discussion when someone admits the weaknesses to their arguments. There is none of that here, ergo...

kemitchell 7y ago
I believe I mentioned enforcement only in closing. As far as licenses go, my criticism was sharper: FSF licenses as intended allow substantial bodies of activist work to benefit venture capital-backed, closed-software companies. Those intentional drafting decisions are incongruous with a post-hoc politics of VC scapegoating. You mentioned Moglen's public writing on enforcement, and I think you summarize it fairly. But it is precisely that posture that I criticize as gunshy. The Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement lay it shorter and plainer. The idea that the law isn't ready for GPL enforcement is laid bare by other organizations' success enforcing GPLs. This has some folks within the FSF camp worried: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1mGG4JYurE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1mGG4JYurE They are losing the power to construct and enforce their own social truth about the licenses they published.

AlexMax 7y ago

They mention it in one of the lines of this blog, but apparently this individual (perhaps with the help of others, it wasn't clear) has come up with two of their own software licenses, with a website and everything. https://guide.licensezero.com/ https://guide.licensezero.com/ > The Prosperity Public License (Prosperity) works a bit like a Creative Commons NonCommercial license, but for software. Prosperity gives everyone broad permission to use your software, but limits commercial use to a short trial period of 32 days. When a commercial user’s trial runs out, they need to buy a private license or stop using your software. > The Parity Public License (Parity) works a bit like AGPL, but requires users to release more of their own code, in more situations. Parity requires users who change, build on, or use your work to create software to release that software as open source, too. If users can’t or won’t release their work, they need to buy a private license that allows use without sharing back. I'm one of those folks that usually defaults to AGPL for their open source work for practical reasons - it's much easier to go from a copyleft license to a permissive one due to circumstance than the other way around. However, I always found it a bit strange that there were dozens of variants of the MIT and BSD license out there, but aside from the GPL and MPL no other popular license really took up the mantle of copyleft, aside from perhaps the old Sleepycat license. This looks like a very appealing license on its face, but the fact that it's specifically _not_ written in legalese is a little weird, though the fact that the author is a lawyer is some reassurance.

kemitchell 7y ago
I am in fact the prime mover behind License Zero (https://licensezero.com https://licensezero.com), but I am by no means alone in it. Parity and Prosperity would not be what they are without enormous amounts of feedback and suggestions from users and interested hackers. Some of those folks agreed to be listed here: https://licensezero.com/thanks https://licensezero.com/thanks There may be more copyleft licenses than you think. Blue Oak Council, in which I'm also involved, recently published this resource: https://blueoakcouncil.org/copyleft#copyleft-families https://blueoakcouncil.org/copyleft#copyleft-families That being said, you're absolutely right that we've seen more permissive licenses than copyleft license, by simple count. Compare: https://blueoakcouncil.org/list https://blueoakcouncil.org/list
7y ago

mark_l_watson 7y ago

Just my opinion, but the author sounds like a corporate shill (I realize he is a VC): “ The old, creaky pillars of the free software movement need convenient scapegoats, because the facts on the ground raise serious doubt about the effectiveness of their leadership and the byzantine, insular ideology of copyleft they impose.” The state of software development and benefits to society from FSF licenses are, I believe, manifest. I also support other open source licenses, I am not criticizing them, I am merely defending FSF licenses. I guess that my personal bullshit meter gets tripped up when something is an attack rather than a balanced discussion.

detaro 7y ago
> corporate shill (I realize he is a VC): [citation needed] Your comment seems more to prove his point than refute it.
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  The header said “Venture Capital Shill”, so I thought I was using a term he self identified with. Maybe I was wrong about that and it is just the title of the article.
  - detaro 7y ago
    You literally quoted part of the section that describes that the author considers that label an unfair attack made to allow people to ignore his arguments. And then used said label to attack him and ignore his arguments. The article is worth reading more carefully, even if you don't agree with him.
    - mark_l_watson 7y ago
      I will, thanks for your comments.
    - yabadabadoes 7y ago
      I read the article as carefully as I could given its style and I think the author is injecting the negative sentiment by self abasement to give himself license to anger, etc. The GPL was written by an institutional employee that was upset by VC backed plans to co-opt internal software and turn it into a profit vehicle. In that context the compatibility of everyone's interests but VC interests make perfect sense. The claim that copy left is failing and byzantine are haberdash. That many people don't understand GPL and that it is succeeding in its direction and not the one they assumed is an argument that could be made and should at a minimum be significant to VCs.

zbentley 7y ago

> GPLv2 and v3 gave hobbyists, students, and anti-corporate hackers a means to feel as though their work resists the evil empire of the software industry, while in fact serving it up with unpaid work product. From the VC point of view, the GPLs break the dam on that pool of labor, flooding venture prospects with freebie technology. That seems concerning and deeply cynical. Mostly because I worry that it may be accurate.

baot 7y ago
I think it's silly: the idea that free software is primarily done unpaid is just a myth, as can be seen from the attendees of any major free software conference, or the commit history of the major codebases. The killer feature of copyleft is as a way for standards to propagate within industries so that duplicate work can be avoided. Any benefits that end users get are a happy coincidence.
- pmjordan 7y ago
  This is certainly true for the big headline projects. For every one of those, there's a hundred small but widely used libraries or tools whose sole maintainers (or tiny groups of maintainers) struggle under the workload of keeping it going, as they do so in addition to whatever pays their bills - with no obvious route to recompense for that unpaid labour. Worse, large users of the tool or library get to make modifications without sharing them with the original author and rest of the world. the idea that free software is primarily done unpaid is just a myth, as can be seen from the attendees of any major free software conference I'll point out that just because you mostly see delegates from big businesses to FOSS conferences, that doesn't mean this is a representative sample. It can just as well mean that the long tail of contributors isn't able to attend. Of course, had the maintainers of the small-but-popular tool/library chosen a license under which the big corporate users were forced to contribute any local modifications back, this may in itself have prevented the popularity of the tool or library in the first place. Because for many developers and companies, using an AGPL (or even GPL or LGPL) licensed tool or library is absolute anathema. (GPL in whatever form of course does not help with financially compensating independent developers, so it wouldn't fully solve the problem.)

purpleidea 7y ago

Despite all the points the author tries to make, he forgets to mention the most important one: license proliferation is not a positive thing for people who care about software freedom. He's responsible for proliferating, and I hope it stops. Lack of innovation in licensing isn't the problem. Corporate greed is.

kemitchell 7y ago
The licenses I’ve contributed to don’t rehash old licenses. They represent new choices. Some patch holes in old forms. Some break new ground. If “license proliferation” means something even stricter, like “no new licenses, even if they do new things”, there’s no good argument for it as a policy, other than protecting those currently “winning” who fear change. Database proliferation is not killing software. Nor is framework proliferation or markup language proliferation or programming language proliferation.
deleted 7y ago
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thibaultamartin 7y ago

Frank Karlitschek (Nextcloud and Owncloud founder) has a very interesting take regarding open source and licences[1] [1]: https://karlitschek.de/2019/08/open-source-if-more-than-licenses/ https://karlitschek.de/2019/08/open-source-if-more-than-lice...

kemitchell 7y ago
Nice post. I’d say Van Lindberg’s Cryptographic Autonomy License and my own Icepick License respond to a number of its concerns.

machbio 7y ago

Are there any books to read about the complete list of software licenses ?

Proven 7y ago

I disagree with the author (and also with the FSF). To me main purpose of "free" software isn't to bring prosperity (to developers, but also anyone else for that matter), but freedom to its users. Which means no undue obligations. What's the point of using "free" software if I have to read the freaking license, count how many days it's been since some coworker installed some "free" software or spend money (legal, web site, internal reviews) in order to comply? Not only do I dislike these fake free software licenses, I also prefer to not contribute to any harassmentware (stuff licensed under GPLv3 and such) because it sometimes restricts users' freedom in ways more restrictive than closed source software, and it is always more restrictive than permissive libra software.

StreamBright 7y ago

> their work resists the evil empire of the software industry Not sure that the creators of BSD really cared about the things this article is talking about when created BSD license. Many of the opensource projects that I use are either created or maintained by the "evil empire of the software industry".

danShumway 7y ago

I recently developed a new vegan dish that addresses some of the practical problems with veganism as a whole by using bugs as a substitute protein source. Very promising, but these critics keep on attacking me, claiming I can't call my product vegan because "technically" it uses animal by-products. And I think this shows why the vegan community organizers and primary advocates are actually anti-innovation. If the vegan movement wants to actually achieve its ideals, we need to reject the old guard that ideologically insists that no vegan dishes can contain meat.

claudiulodro 7y ago
Your dish isn't vegan though. It may be an improvement over eating meat, but it still creates suffering for living creatures. I don't know why you need so strongly to apply the "vegan" label to whatever your dish is, especially when it seems to involve literally eating "meat" from insects. Just call it "sustainable omnivorism" or something.
- danShumway 7y ago
  Now take the same reaction you just had, and apply it in the context of Kyle's post. > When I wrote a strong copyleft license for dev tools, the FSF faithful objected. Why wouldn’t a movement best known for dev tools and software freedom want a copyleft license that requires devs using dev tools to make their work free? Because it's not Free software. It may be an improvement over proprietary software, but it's still restricting user freedom. Just call it "Source Available" or something.
  - kemitchell 7y ago
    Why aren't SSPL, API Copyleft, Parity, CAL, and Icepick free software licenses? GPL restricts my freedom to build and share closed applications with free libraries, in order to prevent the creation of closed software that restricts others' freedom. AGPL restrict my freedom to build and share network applications as closed software with free code, in order to prevent the creation of closed software that restricts others' freedom. Why can't a license restrict my freedom to build closed applications with free dev tools, in order to prevent the creation of closed software that likewise restrict others' freedom?

ncmncm 7y ago

The author makes interesting points well illustrated by the abuses, by multinational corporations and internet fatcats, of the licenses we depend upon. But he neglects to mention the fundamental point that the community is not well served by a proliferation of licenses.

jitschlit 7y ago
So, what is the alternative? What am i supposed to do if I think there is no license that deals satisfactory with the problems I have, and I'm can't create a new one, because, well, it makes things a bit less straightforward for my users?
- ncmncm 7y ago
  One alternative, for the author, would have been to mention it. Address it, even.
  - _frkl 7y ago
    To me, it's not really proliferation if the license addresses issues no other license addresses. Just because it adds one or more licenses to the number of existing licenses, doesn't mean those licenses should not exist. Also, as a developer I think choice is good. If users have to do a bit more work to figure out whether they can or want to use code because of its license then that is unfortunate, but not too much to ask. Why exactly do you think writing such a new license is doing more harm than good?
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      It might benefit the author, a little, but it imposes new costs on everybody else.
      - _frkl 7y ago
        I guess that's where we disagree. I think the existence of such a license might be -- in some cases -- the one thing that motivates the author to create a project in the first place (its for me, anyway). And I don't think open-source has any obligation to come with 'no cost' for its users. Reading (and respecting) its license is the least one can do when using somebody elses code. If that takes time, then one just has to factor that in when deciding whether to re-use someone elses code or not.

FisDugthop 7y ago

It would be nice if there were a license that forbade corporate use entirely. Corporations are not really people, after all.