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Trying to pressure the OSI into accepting a license is not the way to go. There are valid reasons that they rejected it. This isn't exactly some cabal of lawyer

Trying to pressure the OSI into accepting a license is not the way to go. There are valid reasons that they rejected it. This isn't exactly some cabal of lawyers trying to make you miserable, the SSPL was also independently banned by Debian and Fedora for not meeting their own guidelines on open source licenses. The review process for all of these organizations was lengthy and public and still available if you want to find it.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
I've read much of the review processes, and the OSI's position as I understand it, is pretty shameful. They seem happy to just decide they don't need to solve this problem. They seem perfectly happy to let open source businesses die while they hold a position solely beneficial to Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. I have no particular attachment to the SSPL or it's exact terms, but if the OSI was worthy of the high position they've been granted, they would actually gather up the lawyers behind SSPL, Commons Clause, BSL, etc. and hammer out a solution that was agreeable to all parties. Open source as a movement will live or die on whether or not either the OSI addresses this issue, or we unseat our caring for the OSI's position.
- cycloptic 7y ago
  >They seem perfectly happy to let open source businesses die while they hold a position solely beneficial to Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Approving discriminatory licenses is not a solution and would put even more power in the hands of those large companies. I guarantee your company would be pretty damn unhappy if Amazon, Microsoft, and Google said something you wanted was open source and then it turned out it was SSPL/Commons Clause/BSL. >they would actually gather up the lawyers behind SSPL, Commons Clause, BSL, etc. The OSI does not gather up lawyers. They are a charity. You submit them a license and then they review it and decide whether to endorse it or not. That's what they do. Funding a large group of lawyers to make a new license is out of scope for them. I actually agree with you that something like this should happen in the long-term, and the OSI should be involved, but they are not the ones you need to lean on to kick-start the process. >Open source as a movement will live or die on whether or not either the OSI addresses this issue, or we unseat our caring for the OSI's position. There is nothing to address. MongoDB didn't address any of the community's concerns and then pulled out of the license review process instead of fixing the license. Like I said, pressuring the OSI is not the way to go and these threats (?) are misdirected and totally irrelevant on HN anyway -- Official OSI discussion doesn't happen here, and trying to dilute the term "open source" for marketing reasons benefits nobody, not even when it's your company. If you have concerns about the process, you should bring it up with MongoDB. The ball apparently is in their court.
  - soumyadeb 7y ago
    Let's come up with another term then. Maybe, Non-OSI-Approved open-source? 99% of our users love us and appreciate the fact that they have an alternative to Segment which lets them host it however way they want and keep complete ownership of their data AND to modify the code to suit their needs and don't have to pay gazillions of dollars. Stopping projects like us from reaching out to them will not serve the OSS in the long run. Look, we are a small project and no-body cares about us now - neither the OSI community nor the cloud service providers. The reason we picked SSPL was that it is much easier to go from SSPL to a less restrictive license if required than the other way around when we become big.
    - cycloptic 7y ago
      You can just say "source available" or "freeware with source", either one of those work. I don't understand this obsession with trying to co-opt the term "open source". It has a specific meaning, trying to use it for marketing purposes when your project doesn't fit that meaning is misleading to your users. You don't win any points for using it when they later find out that it's not true.
      - soumyadeb 7y ago
        From WikiPedia "Any software is source available software as long its source code is distributed along with it, even if the user has no legal rights to use, share, modify or even compile it." If you are telling me that we are closer to a source-available license (e.g. which doesn't even allow its users to compile the code) than an open-source license, that is being unfair. Yes, that preserves the "sanctity of open-source" but does it help the community in the long run? The world will only have vendor locked in SaaS like Segment and volunteer-run open-source products (which no doubt has produced great products but at a much much smaller scale). We are not trying to mislead our users. We make our license very clear and that's why I am trying to defend it on this thread too. I could have not replied on the top thread and stayed silent - would have saved some karma points from all the downvotes :) We are engineers, not a licensing expert nor do we have the money to pay for attorneys so whatever we are saying is self-learnt. SSPL may not be the right license but we need to find a solution. But just kicking us out saying we are not open-source by the book will not help the movement.
belorn 7y ago
From reading that review process, the main reason Debian banned it seems to be that in their view you can not use Debian together with SSPL licensed software and be compliant with the conditions of SSPL. The guideline (DFSG) does not specify what to do in this situation, which is acknowledged in the discussion, so the reason for banning the license comes down the fact that inclusion would not benefit the goal of the project. The OSI seems more focused on the OSD 9, which depend on the interpretation of Services as derived works. This a different discussion and a very large grey zone. The review request did however get withdrawn we won't get a definitive answer.
- cycloptic 7y ago
  To me that illustrates the point further which is that it's not just about some random definition of the term "open source", there were very real practical concerns that prevented its adoption and were not addressed.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

I've read much of the review processes, and the OSI's position as I understand it, is pretty shameful. They seem happy to just decide they don't need to solve this problem. They seem perfectly happy to let open source businesses die while they hold a position solely beneficial to Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. I have no particular attachment to the SSPL or it's exact terms, but if the OSI was worthy of the high position they've been granted, they would actually gather up the lawyers behind SSPL, Commons Clause, BSL, etc. and hammer out a solution that was agreeable to all parties. Open source as a movement will live or die on whether or not either the OSI addresses this issue, or we unseat our caring for the OSI's position.

cycloptic 7y ago
>They seem perfectly happy to let open source businesses die while they hold a position solely beneficial to Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Approving discriminatory licenses is not a solution and would put even more power in the hands of those large companies. I guarantee your company would be pretty damn unhappy if Amazon, Microsoft, and Google said something you wanted was open source and then it turned out it was SSPL/Commons Clause/BSL. >they would actually gather up the lawyers behind SSPL, Commons Clause, BSL, etc. The OSI does not gather up lawyers. They are a charity. You submit them a license and then they review it and decide whether to endorse it or not. That's what they do. Funding a large group of lawyers to make a new license is out of scope for them. I actually agree with you that something like this should happen in the long-term, and the OSI should be involved, but they are not the ones you need to lean on to kick-start the process. >Open source as a movement will live or die on whether or not either the OSI addresses this issue, or we unseat our caring for the OSI's position. There is nothing to address. MongoDB didn't address any of the community's concerns and then pulled out of the license review process instead of fixing the license. Like I said, pressuring the OSI is not the way to go and these threats (?) are misdirected and totally irrelevant on HN anyway -- Official OSI discussion doesn't happen here, and trying to dilute the term "open source" for marketing reasons benefits nobody, not even when it's your company. If you have concerns about the process, you should bring it up with MongoDB. The ball apparently is in their court.
- soumyadeb 7y ago
  Let's come up with another term then. Maybe, Non-OSI-Approved open-source? 99% of our users love us and appreciate the fact that they have an alternative to Segment which lets them host it however way they want and keep complete ownership of their data AND to modify the code to suit their needs and don't have to pay gazillions of dollars. Stopping projects like us from reaching out to them will not serve the OSS in the long run. Look, we are a small project and no-body cares about us now - neither the OSI community nor the cloud service providers. The reason we picked SSPL was that it is much easier to go from SSPL to a less restrictive license if required than the other way around when we become big.
  - cycloptic 7y ago
    You can just say "source available" or "freeware with source", either one of those work. I don't understand this obsession with trying to co-opt the term "open source". It has a specific meaning, trying to use it for marketing purposes when your project doesn't fit that meaning is misleading to your users. You don't win any points for using it when they later find out that it's not true.
    - soumyadeb 7y ago
      From WikiPedia "Any software is source available software as long its source code is distributed along with it, even if the user has no legal rights to use, share, modify or even compile it." If you are telling me that we are closer to a source-available license (e.g. which doesn't even allow its users to compile the code) than an open-source license, that is being unfair. Yes, that preserves the "sanctity of open-source" but does it help the community in the long run? The world will only have vendor locked in SaaS like Segment and volunteer-run open-source products (which no doubt has produced great products but at a much much smaller scale). We are not trying to mislead our users. We make our license very clear and that's why I am trying to defend it on this thread too. I could have not replied on the top thread and stayed silent - would have saved some karma points from all the downvotes :) We are engineers, not a licensing expert nor do we have the money to pay for attorneys so whatever we are saying is self-learnt. SSPL may not be the right license but we need to find a solution. But just kicking us out saying we are not open-source by the book will not help the movement.

belorn 7y ago

From reading that review process, the main reason Debian banned it seems to be that in their view you can not use Debian together with SSPL licensed software and be compliant with the conditions of SSPL. The guideline (DFSG) does not specify what to do in this situation, which is acknowledged in the discussion, so the reason for banning the license comes down the fact that inclusion would not benefit the goal of the project. The OSI seems more focused on the OSD 9, which depend on the interpretation of Services as derived works. This a different discussion and a very large grey zone. The review request did however get withdrawn we won't get a definitive answer.

cycloptic 7y ago
To me that illustrates the point further which is that it's not just about some random definition of the term "open source", there were very real practical concerns that prevented its adoption and were not addressed.