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> I'm curious to see if some vocal people here will still not be satisfied with anything short of a OSI-approved FOSS license. I don't have a problem with the

> I'm curious to see if some vocal people here will still not be satisfied with anything short of a OSI-approved FOSS license. I don't have a problem with the terms of their license. Use whatever license you want — just don't call it "open source"! From the blog post... This is problematic: > open-source in spirit It ain't. It is firmly in the spirit of "source available" licenses, which have a decades-long history and almost all of which do the same thing this license does: impose a field-of-use restriction to limit commercial competition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software By corrupting the term "open source", they are leeching off of the goodwill created by the Open Source movement, and they shouldn't expect people to stop complaining about it until they stop.

rabidrat 6y ago
Hard disagree. The OSI may have "Open Source" in its name, but we decide what "open source" means. And I agree with the 'spirit' of open source, which is based in RMS' inability to replace code on his printer. The right to study the code running on your hardware, the right to make modifications to it, the right to distribute those modifications. This "it's not open-source unless you allow Amazon to profit from your charitable work" is horse hockey. I don't care if this is how a hardliner sees it. Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive, and this is important enough that I support the migration of "open-source" to include these restrictions. Which, as they point out, affect none of the people using their code, and only the corporations (not people!) who would abuse the goodwill created by the Open Source movement.
- boogies 6y ago
  What about the AGPL? Wouldn’t it grant “the right to study the code running on your hardware, the right to make modifications to it, the right to distribute those modifications” and provide protection from FAANG profiting without reciprocating, while being OSI and FSF approved?
  - carlhjerpe 6y ago
    The problem with agpl is that no companies want to touch it. It's too restrictive if you ever want to integrate something with your internal proprietary moneymaking code.
    - cercatrova 6y ago
      Doesn't that accomplish the goal then? Make your project AGPL and with a commercial license, so only you will be able to make it a commercial business as other big cloud companies don't want to touch it.
      - tormeh 6y ago
        The problem is that it is not truly impossible to integrate into a commercial company. It's more that the license practically requires a lawyer to look at exactly how it'll be used and approve that use. AWS certainly does not shy away from hosting AGPL software. It does prevent AWS from taking the code and running with it though, at least not without a shim. A more permissive license can lead to the Athena/Presto situation where Athena is, to my knowledge, a proprietary fork of Presto.
        _msw_ 6y ago
        Disclosure: I work at AWS on infrastructure services I am personally currently unaware of any AGPLv3 licensed software in use in an AWS service. That said, I would be skeptical of advice to use AGPLv3 due to any particular organization's current policy on the license. Regarding Presto, work on the service includes changes that should go upstream. For the changes that are appropriate for upstream (e.g., ones that are generally useful, not only of benefit or interest to AWS), PRs are sent. For example: https://github.com/prestosql/presto/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Apettyjamesm https://github.com/prestosql/presto/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3... Practically speaking, it is difficult to maintain a development branch of any software project with sufficient change velocity if you have a goal of continuing to integrate improvements from the upstream version.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I would tend to agree. Saying "our software is free for anyone to do anything they want with, except Amazon to profit from" may not be free in letter, but I certainly see it free in spirit. I fear we're letting perfect be the enemy of the good here, and letting the FOSS ecosystem wither and lose incalculable value by letting trillion-dollar corporations exploit the hard work of people for free. If the choice is between "cheap Timescale on AWS run by Amazon" and "slightly less cheap Timescale on AWS run by Timescale", I'll take the latter. I think banning FAANG from competing with the single source of revenue these FOSS companies have is a small price to pay to ensure a thriving FOSS ecosystem, and I think insisting on absolute freedom is killing the ecosystem.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    The trillion dollar companies don't get it "for free", they still have to pay employees, contractors and consultants to actually run the software. And as you know, the salaries tend to be a lot higher at bigger companies. Pick your poison.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      If you give me a couch for free but I have to bring a truck to take it away on, does that make it not-free?
      - cycloptic 6y ago
        If you had to pay to rent a truck and also pay to hire workers to move it in and out of the truck and then up 10 floors to your apartment, then yes, it wasn't free, there is a real cost to you. A cost that you saved me because I didn't have to pay someone to take it to the landfill. So I would actually be saving money despite that it looks like I gave it to you "for free". And if I was really crafty I'd have suggested for you to use a particular moving company and then I'd have charged them a referral fee. (Of course this is a somewhat cynical view, and this isn't even getting into the other costs associated with second hand furniture -- anything with upholstery carries a risk of containing mold or vermin and you may need to pay more to get it cleaned/sanitized)
- rectang 6y ago
  You'd be in good company with Microsoft circa 2001 with their (source-available) Shared Source Initiative, because your argument is the same one that people have been making back then and ever since: that banning field-of-use restrictions imposes too much of a burden on commercial entities. But disallowing such field-of-use restrictions is exactly what makes open source collaboration between otherwise competing companies possible. It is a fundamental difference between Open Source and Source Available licenses.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Can you elaborate? What collaboration do you mean?
    - StopHammoTime 6y ago
      Uhh, kubernetes would be an immediate example. A massive piece of software that has been adapted into every major cloud provider, with all those cloud providers working on that same piece of software. While Google may have done it to make their own Cloud offering better, it ultimately has succeeded in saturating the container compute market and with their own success has brought plenty of competition.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        On the contrary, Google made Kubernetes precisely so they could commoditize every other cloud provider and then offer the strongest Kubernetes provider there is. When AWS is just a layer under Kubernetes, you can move your entire infrastructure to GCP by pushing your Kubernetes config to a different endpoint. They succeeded quite well in that.
- Spivak 6y ago
  I'm really surprised that people are trying to make open source something it's not because closed source has become such a boogyman. There is a very real practical need for companies that write software to use Copyright to protect their business -- there's nothing evil about it! It's what Copyright is for! This kind of "screw the big guys" is something I can totally get behind -- power to them for setting the terms of their relationship with them but it's not and shouldn't be open source. And that should be okay. The right to run a piece of software for any purpose whatsoever is fundamental to the spirit of open source.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  RMS created Free Software, not Open Source. Open Source is something that the OSI made up.
  - ptman 6y ago
    IIRC OSI didn't make it up. OSI was created to codify the existing use of the term
- marcinzm 6y ago
  You statement on what is open source: >The right to study the code running on your hardware, the right to make modifications to it, the right to distribute those modifications. Description of the license from the linked articles: > Rights still disallowed under Timescale License: > No right to distribute modified Source > No right to distribute modified Binaries, unless as part of a Value Added Product I'm very confused on how you're reconciling your stated view on the definition of open source and the directly conflicting text of this license.
  - rabidrat 6y ago
    That's fair, I didn't look closely enough at the specific terms to make sure it conformed to my view of "open-source". I specifically disagreed with the parent comment and others, which declare that "it's not open source unless [Amazon is free to profit from the software]".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- danShumway 6y ago
  > but we decide what "open source" means Well, "we" in the Open Source movement decided that it means not restricting what users do with their code. I don't understand what's so hard about this. Overwhelmingly, the biggest players in the Open Source ecosystem have consistently been saying, "call it whatever you want, just be clear that you're not the same as us." And the response from a lot of people has been, "no, you have to let us call ourselves the same as you." Source Available has been a term for a really long time, and its generally understood what it means, and plenty of people use the term with plenty of good will. This shouldn't be a controversy, it's such a straightforward, easy concession. There's nothing wrong with being Source Available. So why do we need to come up with a new term that describes the freedoms we've been consistently preaching for decades just because a couple of for-profit companies want the good will that we've generated? This isn't language evolving over time, it's people outside the community trying to decide how we're allowed to define ourselves within in the community. Yes, language is descriptive, but that doesn't mean you can just redefine anything you want any time you want. Even more than that, the fact that language is descriptive does not mean it's a bad thing for communities to try and publicize and preserve the descriptive language that already exists. Open Source advocates are hardliners on this issue specifically because we recognize that language is descriptive, and that our ability to preserve the meaning of the words that describe our community is dependent on us taking the time to educate and correct people who are genericizing those terms.
  - ericb 6y ago
    > Well, "we" in the Open Source movement decided that it means not restricting what users do with their code. The "GPL" is way more onerous. You see, one can only be truly unrestricted by being restricted into taking certain actions. Nothing Orwellian to see here.
    - thristian 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- ifmpx 6y ago
  Then I'm afraid you're just wrong. Open source is a well-defined term with a well-defined meaning. In fact, it was coined precisely because "Free Software" was considered to be too ambiguous. Words have meaning. You can't just change the meaning of a well defined term to suite your views.
OJFord 6y ago
> > open-source in spirit > It ain't. It is firmly in the spirit of "source available" licenses Let's put a few more of the OP's words around that: > a source-available license that was open-source in spirit, but
eloff 6y ago
I have a different take on this. It is open source in spirit. It has all the same freedoms of an OSI open source license with one restriction that matters to maybe half a dozen companies like AWS. Open source is the closest established concept to compare this to. So to say it's open source in spirit, or similar to open source seems to be a legitimate communication device. That's like trying to describe a nectarine without talking about peaches or plums. You could do it, but you could communicate more effectively if you could make comparisons to the most similar well known concept. They are somewhat careful to make the distinction and refer to it as source available, open source in spirit, etc. I think that's fine and legitimate communication. Source available is a less controversial term, but it's also less descriptive. It can be a wide variety of software licenses. Whereas open source is much closer to this license. I don't see the problem here, how would you communicate it if you worked in their marketing department, if you're being honest?
- rectang 6y ago
  > how would you communicate it if you worked in their marketing department, if you're being honest? I'd emphasize that both an "Open Source" offering and a more complete "Permissive Source Available" offering were available. The goal would be to contrast the source-available offering favorably with closed-source proprietary offerings, rather than to invite, needlessly, a possibly unflattering comparison with Open Source. But how about just not picking a fight with the Open Source community? The argument over field-of-use restrictions is anything but new, so going in with the notion you're going to either win everybody over or that people are going to quietly roll over is foolish. The other possibility is that you deliberately pick a fight with the Open Source community for the sake of publicity. Some marketers are cynical enough to do that, but I'm not — and Timescale are not taking a combative approach and don't seem to be either. But people really ought to know by now that attempting to coopt the term "Open Source" is certain to provoke an infuriated and vocal response. This latest wave has been going on for what, a year or two by now?
  - eloff 6y ago
    I don't see it is a picking a fight at all, and I'm petty sure that's counter to their intentions. I really don't get why some people get upset here. Nobody is saying it is OSI open source. But it's the next closest thing, so a comparison is natural and effective communication.
brainless 6y ago
The definitions of almost everything in our lives change over time. I would want to be practical and live in a world where words don't only mean what they used to when they were created but also are revised. Open source is a philosophy which I have always admired and it motivated my way of thinking. But I can not accept that a few large corporations want to apply their monopoly and scale to single handedly reap the benifits. Stopping them is vitally important to preserve those exact freedoms that open source gives us. The Open source movement was not created in an environment where there was such massive centralisation of computing resources and their financial implications. How do you know if the Open source movement itself wouldn't have started differently in an environment like today's?
- eloff 6y ago
  I think fundamentally open source has to evolve to reflect the new realities of the cloud world, or it will cease to be relevant for commercial software. And maybe that's fine, maybe open source becomes something only used for non commercial software with no profit angle behind it. And some new thing closer to this timescale license will replace it in the for profit but still open domain.

rabidrat 6y ago

Hard disagree. The OSI may have "Open Source" in its name, but we decide what "open source" means. And I agree with the 'spirit' of open source, which is based in RMS' inability to replace code on his printer. The right to study the code running on your hardware, the right to make modifications to it, the right to distribute those modifications. This "it's not open-source unless you allow Amazon to profit from your charitable work" is horse hockey. I don't care if this is how a hardliner sees it. Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive, and this is important enough that I support the migration of "open-source" to include these restrictions. Which, as they point out, affect none of the people using their code, and only the corporations (not people!) who would abuse the goodwill created by the Open Source movement.

boogies 6y ago
What about the AGPL? Wouldn’t it grant “the right to study the code running on your hardware, the right to make modifications to it, the right to distribute those modifications” and provide protection from FAANG profiting without reciprocating, while being OSI and FSF approved?
- carlhjerpe 6y ago
  The problem with agpl is that no companies want to touch it. It's too restrictive if you ever want to integrate something with your internal proprietary moneymaking code.
  - cercatrova 6y ago
    Doesn't that accomplish the goal then? Make your project AGPL and with a commercial license, so only you will be able to make it a commercial business as other big cloud companies don't want to touch it.
    - tormeh 6y ago
      The problem is that it is not truly impossible to integrate into a commercial company. It's more that the license practically requires a lawyer to look at exactly how it'll be used and approve that use. AWS certainly does not shy away from hosting AGPL software. It does prevent AWS from taking the code and running with it though, at least not without a shim. A more permissive license can lead to the Athena/Presto situation where Athena is, to my knowledge, a proprietary fork of Presto.
      - _msw_ 6y ago
        Disclosure: I work at AWS on infrastructure services I am personally currently unaware of any AGPLv3 licensed software in use in an AWS service. That said, I would be skeptical of advice to use AGPLv3 due to any particular organization's current policy on the license. Regarding Presto, work on the service includes changes that should go upstream. For the changes that are appropriate for upstream (e.g., ones that are generally useful, not only of benefit or interest to AWS), PRs are sent. For example: https://github.com/prestosql/presto/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Apettyjamesm https://github.com/prestosql/presto/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3... Practically speaking, it is difficult to maintain a development branch of any software project with sufficient change velocity if you have a goal of continuing to integrate improvements from the upstream version.
StavrosK 6y ago
I would tend to agree. Saying "our software is free for anyone to do anything they want with, except Amazon to profit from" may not be free in letter, but I certainly see it free in spirit. I fear we're letting perfect be the enemy of the good here, and letting the FOSS ecosystem wither and lose incalculable value by letting trillion-dollar corporations exploit the hard work of people for free. If the choice is between "cheap Timescale on AWS run by Amazon" and "slightly less cheap Timescale on AWS run by Timescale", I'll take the latter. I think banning FAANG from competing with the single source of revenue these FOSS companies have is a small price to pay to ensure a thriving FOSS ecosystem, and I think insisting on absolute freedom is killing the ecosystem.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  The trillion dollar companies don't get it "for free", they still have to pay employees, contractors and consultants to actually run the software. And as you know, the salaries tend to be a lot higher at bigger companies. Pick your poison.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    If you give me a couch for free but I have to bring a truck to take it away on, does that make it not-free?
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      If you had to pay to rent a truck and also pay to hire workers to move it in and out of the truck and then up 10 floors to your apartment, then yes, it wasn't free, there is a real cost to you. A cost that you saved me because I didn't have to pay someone to take it to the landfill. So I would actually be saving money despite that it looks like I gave it to you "for free". And if I was really crafty I'd have suggested for you to use a particular moving company and then I'd have charged them a referral fee. (Of course this is a somewhat cynical view, and this isn't even getting into the other costs associated with second hand furniture -- anything with upholstery carries a risk of containing mold or vermin and you may need to pay more to get it cleaned/sanitized)
rectang 6y ago
You'd be in good company with Microsoft circa 2001 with their (source-available) Shared Source Initiative, because your argument is the same one that people have been making back then and ever since: that banning field-of-use restrictions imposes too much of a burden on commercial entities. But disallowing such field-of-use restrictions is exactly what makes open source collaboration between otherwise competing companies possible. It is a fundamental difference between Open Source and Source Available licenses.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Can you elaborate? What collaboration do you mean?
  - StopHammoTime 6y ago
    Uhh, kubernetes would be an immediate example. A massive piece of software that has been adapted into every major cloud provider, with all those cloud providers working on that same piece of software. While Google may have done it to make their own Cloud offering better, it ultimately has succeeded in saturating the container compute market and with their own success has brought plenty of competition.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      On the contrary, Google made Kubernetes precisely so they could commoditize every other cloud provider and then offer the strongest Kubernetes provider there is. When AWS is just a layer under Kubernetes, you can move your entire infrastructure to GCP by pushing your Kubernetes config to a different endpoint. They succeeded quite well in that.
Spivak 6y ago
I'm really surprised that people are trying to make open source something it's not because closed source has become such a boogyman. There is a very real practical need for companies that write software to use Copyright to protect their business -- there's nothing evil about it! It's what Copyright is for! This kind of "screw the big guys" is something I can totally get behind -- power to them for setting the terms of their relationship with them but it's not and shouldn't be open source. And that should be okay. The right to run a piece of software for any purpose whatsoever is fundamental to the spirit of open source.
pessimizer 6y ago
RMS created Free Software, not Open Source. Open Source is something that the OSI made up.
- ptman 6y ago
  IIRC OSI didn't make it up. OSI was created to codify the existing use of the term
marcinzm 6y ago
You statement on what is open source: >The right to study the code running on your hardware, the right to make modifications to it, the right to distribute those modifications. Description of the license from the linked articles: > Rights still disallowed under Timescale License: > No right to distribute modified Source > No right to distribute modified Binaries, unless as part of a Value Added Product I'm very confused on how you're reconciling your stated view on the definition of open source and the directly conflicting text of this license.
- rabidrat 6y ago
  That's fair, I didn't look closely enough at the specific terms to make sure it conformed to my view of "open-source". I specifically disagreed with the parent comment and others, which declare that "it's not open source unless [Amazon is free to profit from the software]".
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
danShumway 6y ago
> but we decide what "open source" means Well, "we" in the Open Source movement decided that it means not restricting what users do with their code. I don't understand what's so hard about this. Overwhelmingly, the biggest players in the Open Source ecosystem have consistently been saying, "call it whatever you want, just be clear that you're not the same as us." And the response from a lot of people has been, "no, you have to let us call ourselves the same as you." Source Available has been a term for a really long time, and its generally understood what it means, and plenty of people use the term with plenty of good will. This shouldn't be a controversy, it's such a straightforward, easy concession. There's nothing wrong with being Source Available. So why do we need to come up with a new term that describes the freedoms we've been consistently preaching for decades just because a couple of for-profit companies want the good will that we've generated? This isn't language evolving over time, it's people outside the community trying to decide how we're allowed to define ourselves within in the community. Yes, language is descriptive, but that doesn't mean you can just redefine anything you want any time you want. Even more than that, the fact that language is descriptive does not mean it's a bad thing for communities to try and publicize and preserve the descriptive language that already exists. Open Source advocates are hardliners on this issue specifically because we recognize that language is descriptive, and that our ability to preserve the meaning of the words that describe our community is dependent on us taking the time to educate and correct people who are genericizing those terms.
- ericb 6y ago
  > Well, "we" in the Open Source movement decided that it means not restricting what users do with their code. The "GPL" is way more onerous. You see, one can only be truly unrestricted by being restricted into taking certain actions. Nothing Orwellian to see here.
  - thristian 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ifmpx 6y ago
Then I'm afraid you're just wrong. Open source is a well-defined term with a well-defined meaning. In fact, it was coined precisely because "Free Software" was considered to be too ambiguous. Words have meaning. You can't just change the meaning of a well defined term to suite your views.

OJFord 6y ago

> > open-source in spirit > It ain't. It is firmly in the spirit of "source available" licenses Let's put a few more of the OP's words around that: > a source-available license that was open-source in spirit, but

eloff 6y ago

I have a different take on this. It is open source in spirit. It has all the same freedoms of an OSI open source license with one restriction that matters to maybe half a dozen companies like AWS. Open source is the closest established concept to compare this to. So to say it's open source in spirit, or similar to open source seems to be a legitimate communication device. That's like trying to describe a nectarine without talking about peaches or plums. You could do it, but you could communicate more effectively if you could make comparisons to the most similar well known concept. They are somewhat careful to make the distinction and refer to it as source available, open source in spirit, etc. I think that's fine and legitimate communication. Source available is a less controversial term, but it's also less descriptive. It can be a wide variety of software licenses. Whereas open source is much closer to this license. I don't see the problem here, how would you communicate it if you worked in their marketing department, if you're being honest?

rectang 6y ago
> how would you communicate it if you worked in their marketing department, if you're being honest? I'd emphasize that both an "Open Source" offering and a more complete "Permissive Source Available" offering were available. The goal would be to contrast the source-available offering favorably with closed-source proprietary offerings, rather than to invite, needlessly, a possibly unflattering comparison with Open Source. But how about just not picking a fight with the Open Source community? The argument over field-of-use restrictions is anything but new, so going in with the notion you're going to either win everybody over or that people are going to quietly roll over is foolish. The other possibility is that you deliberately pick a fight with the Open Source community for the sake of publicity. Some marketers are cynical enough to do that, but I'm not — and Timescale are not taking a combative approach and don't seem to be either. But people really ought to know by now that attempting to coopt the term "Open Source" is certain to provoke an infuriated and vocal response. This latest wave has been going on for what, a year or two by now?
- eloff 6y ago
  I don't see it is a picking a fight at all, and I'm petty sure that's counter to their intentions. I really don't get why some people get upset here. Nobody is saying it is OSI open source. But it's the next closest thing, so a comparison is natural and effective communication.

brainless 6y ago

The definitions of almost everything in our lives change over time. I would want to be practical and live in a world where words don't only mean what they used to when they were created but also are revised. Open source is a philosophy which I have always admired and it motivated my way of thinking. But I can not accept that a few large corporations want to apply their monopoly and scale to single handedly reap the benifits. Stopping them is vitally important to preserve those exact freedoms that open source gives us. The Open source movement was not created in an environment where there was such massive centralisation of computing resources and their financial implications. How do you know if the Open source movement itself wouldn't have started differently in an environment like today's?

eloff 6y ago
I think fundamentally open source has to evolve to reflect the new realities of the cloud world, or it will cease to be relevant for commercial software. And maybe that's fine, maybe open source becomes something only used for non commercial software with no profit angle behind it. And some new thing closer to this timescale license will replace it in the for profit but still open domain.