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> Open Source is pretty clear cut: it does not discriminate. If you get the source, you can do with it what you want (within the terms of the license) and no ma

> Open Source is pretty clear cut: it does not discriminate. If you get the source, you can do with it what you want (within the terms of the license) and no matter who you are (within the terms of the license). However as Open Source is defined — and also how I see it — Open Source comes with no strings attached. The moment we restrict what you can do with it — like not compete — it becomes something else. I appreciate this distinction. I don't have anything against a company updating its licenses to remain profitable, as long as they're up-front about what they're doing. My only complaint about licenses of this nature has been when businesses try to use them to argue that they're still Open Source in spirit, or that the restrictions are just technicalities that everyone should ignore, or that Open Source is doomed and they're here to save everyone. Not everything needs to be Open Source, but Open Source should mean something.

jboynyc 7y ago
You might also be interested in this essay on "proprietary relicensing" from the Software Freedom Conservancy: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality...
- danShumway 7y ago
  I am! This was an interesting read, thanks. In particular, I fee like the comment on copyright assignment is an insightful way of explaining why these approaches to licensing often feel inconsistent with company claims to support 'Openness': > If an entity does not gladly bind itself by its own copyleft license (for example, by accepting third-party contributions to its codebases under that license), we should not treat that entity as a legitimate license steward, nor treat that license as a legitimate FOSS license.
anderspitman 7y ago
> My only complaint about licenses of this nature has been when businesses try to use them to argue that they're still Open Source in spirit If a project is still usable in 99.9% of the ways most developers would care about (ie everything except AWS hosting their own paid version), are you saying you don't like it when projects communicate that fact by saying things like, "we're almost open source, except X"?
- danShumway 7y ago
  A better way of stating that would be, "we're Source Available with permissive licenses." Aesprite handles this particularly well; it's very up-front with what its license allows. I don't inherently have a problem with people saying, "we're almost X, but not quite." However, I disagree that licenses like SSPL are "almost" Open Source, and I disagree that paid hosting is a particularly minor restriction. To again quote Sentry's post: > The moment we restrict what you can do with it — like not compete — it becomes something else. Blocking companies from offering paid hosting has implications, not just on an ideological level but also on a purely practical level. Part of the reason I trust technologies like Matrix or Postgresql is because I'm hopeful that their hosting will be somewhat commoditized. I know that when hosts compete there, they're competing purely on hosting quality, not on software licenses. If the official hosting services go sour for a truly Open Source project I have the option of self hosting -- but I also know that other companies will likely step up and provide alternative hosting solutions as well. When you restrict the ability to compete with your service, you make that less likely. So Open Source isn't just about the code I can run on my computer, it's also about my ability to delegate to other people. If you restrict my right to delegate hosting to an open market, that's not an insignificant restriction. And again, not everything has to be Open Source. I use proprietary SaaS services, I even use open-core services like Gitlab. But I recognize that products like Gitlab's enterprise offering comes with substantial limitations.
  - anderspitman 7y ago
    > I disagree that licenses like SSPL are "almost" Open Source Again, my definition of "almost" is what 99.9% of developers are actually likely to use it for. Most aren't interested in starting a competitor. > Blocking companies from offering paid hosting has implications, not just on an ideological level but also on a purely practical level. Part of the reason I trust technologies like Matrix or Postgresql is because I'm hopeful that their hosting will be somewhat commoditized. I know that when hosts compete there, they're competing purely on hosting quality, not on software licenses. There's nothing stopping companies from competing; they just can't use your code/binaries directly. They're free to implement your protocols themselves, which is very commonly done when people implement OSS implementations of Google or AWS APIs. Matrix isn't code; it's a protocol. If they had released their reference server as commons clause, you would be at exactly the same level of vendor lock-in you are now, because there are already multiple independent OSS server implementations. > I also know that other companies will likely step up and provide alternative hosting solutions as well. When you restrict the ability to compete with your service, you make that less likely Can you name a single example of this happening? From what I've seen, even moderately successful services (like Parse) simply die (aka self-hosting only). On the flipside, we have examples like AWS offering best-in-class hosted MongoDB that the mongo guys could never compete with, no matter how hard they try. Sorry if my response seems combative. I'm mostly trying to improve my own understanding of what I see as a tricky problem. I've released a couple services lately that I would love to open source in some fashion, but there don't seem to be any great solutions.

jboynyc 7y ago

You might also be interested in this essay on "proprietary relicensing" from the Software Freedom Conservancy: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality...

danShumway 7y ago
I am! This was an interesting read, thanks. In particular, I fee like the comment on copyright assignment is an insightful way of explaining why these approaches to licensing often feel inconsistent with company claims to support 'Openness': > If an entity does not gladly bind itself by its own copyleft license (for example, by accepting third-party contributions to its codebases under that license), we should not treat that entity as a legitimate license steward, nor treat that license as a legitimate FOSS license.

anderspitman 7y ago

> My only complaint about licenses of this nature has been when businesses try to use them to argue that they're still Open Source in spirit If a project is still usable in 99.9% of the ways most developers would care about (ie everything except AWS hosting their own paid version), are you saying you don't like it when projects communicate that fact by saying things like, "we're almost open source, except X"?

danShumway 7y ago
A better way of stating that would be, "we're Source Available with permissive licenses." Aesprite handles this particularly well; it's very up-front with what its license allows. I don't inherently have a problem with people saying, "we're almost X, but not quite." However, I disagree that licenses like SSPL are "almost" Open Source, and I disagree that paid hosting is a particularly minor restriction. To again quote Sentry's post: > The moment we restrict what you can do with it — like not compete — it becomes something else. Blocking companies from offering paid hosting has implications, not just on an ideological level but also on a purely practical level. Part of the reason I trust technologies like Matrix or Postgresql is because I'm hopeful that their hosting will be somewhat commoditized. I know that when hosts compete there, they're competing purely on hosting quality, not on software licenses. If the official hosting services go sour for a truly Open Source project I have the option of self hosting -- but I also know that other companies will likely step up and provide alternative hosting solutions as well. When you restrict the ability to compete with your service, you make that less likely. So Open Source isn't just about the code I can run on my computer, it's also about my ability to delegate to other people. If you restrict my right to delegate hosting to an open market, that's not an insignificant restriction. And again, not everything has to be Open Source. I use proprietary SaaS services, I even use open-core services like Gitlab. But I recognize that products like Gitlab's enterprise offering comes with substantial limitations.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  > I disagree that licenses like SSPL are "almost" Open Source Again, my definition of "almost" is what 99.9% of developers are actually likely to use it for. Most aren't interested in starting a competitor. > Blocking companies from offering paid hosting has implications, not just on an ideological level but also on a purely practical level. Part of the reason I trust technologies like Matrix or Postgresql is because I'm hopeful that their hosting will be somewhat commoditized. I know that when hosts compete there, they're competing purely on hosting quality, not on software licenses. There's nothing stopping companies from competing; they just can't use your code/binaries directly. They're free to implement your protocols themselves, which is very commonly done when people implement OSS implementations of Google or AWS APIs. Matrix isn't code; it's a protocol. If they had released their reference server as commons clause, you would be at exactly the same level of vendor lock-in you are now, because there are already multiple independent OSS server implementations. > I also know that other companies will likely step up and provide alternative hosting solutions as well. When you restrict the ability to compete with your service, you make that less likely Can you name a single example of this happening? From what I've seen, even moderately successful services (like Parse) simply die (aka self-hosting only). On the flipside, we have examples like AWS offering best-in-class hosted MongoDB that the mongo guys could never compete with, no matter how hard they try. Sorry if my response seems combative. I'm mostly trying to improve my own understanding of what I see as a tricky problem. I've released a couple services lately that I would love to open source in some fashion, but there don't seem to be any great solutions.