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I for one wouldn't use a library licensed like this. There are ideological reasons, but more practically, let's say I run a server that provides a public servic

by dvdkon 6y ago

I for one wouldn't use a library licensed like this. There are ideological reasons, but more practically, let's say I run a server that provides a public service. At some point, it gets a lot of traffic and I want to accept donations or use ads to fund the hosting. Under such a licence, I'd be completely at the mercy of the author, who could effectively shut down the server.

rusk 6y ago
Yep. That's the point. You have the option to use something with a more liberal license, develop something yourself, or pay for it. Yes, maybe at the end of the day I lose out to potential suitors, customers, collaborators etc. but that's my choice.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I don’t think anyone is suggesting that it isn’t your choice. Most people are likely assuming that the typical author intent behind the decision to open source is to increase usage and contributors over the default closed source/proprietary licensing.
michaelt 6y ago
Is the problem that you have to pay at all - or is the problem merely that in the absence of a listed price, there's no guarantee the price will be fair? Would you also reject a library with this license if you knew the commercial use license was pocket change?
- sokoloff 6y ago
  If the commercial license was literally pocket change, I’d be inclined to use it under that commercial license right out of the gate to increase my certainty going forward.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Or you could pay the author for his/her work from your income. I could be wrong but it seems obvious to me that semi-commercial licenses would explode the amount of open code available, because instead of devs working for corporations, corporations would end up working for them. Commercial licensing - open code, free for non-profits, per-seat or per-user pricing for for profits with an official license, forks are considered a derivative work, clean room clones aren't. There would be details, but there are always details, and they don't stop two hundred page EULAs from existing and being (mostly) binding. But we don't have this because Stallman is a zealot and he wanted to Make A Point about purity. So instead of creating a market where devs could actually get paid for original work and corporations would be the ones paying, corporations get millions of hours of development effort for free - because he thought he could somehow magically strong-arm them into playing to his rules.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  I see antitrust as a critical purpose of freedom-respecting software - suppose you pay the author for the rights to use the semis proprietary software. You go on a decade or two, and become critically reliant on it. But then they jack up the price a hundredfold. You can't do anything (short of rewriting), even if you could flat-out hire a replacement dev team for the entire project for cheaper than what they're charging you. OpenOffice and MariaDB are classic examples of Free Software solving this - the IP holder sandbagged, so the community forked and fucked off. Even despite that though, LibreOffice still suffers from losing its OpenOffice name, and plenty of users lose out because they're unknowingly using a barely-updated version due to abovementioned sandbagging. Proprietary software hands a default victory to the IP holder. Free Software hands a default victory to the user. It's either one or the other.
- josephcsible 6y ago
  > But we don't have this because Stallman is a zealot and he wanted to Make A Point about purity. Uh, he's okay with selling exceptions.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "I could be wrong but it seems obvious to me that semi-commercial licenses would explode the amount of open code available" More likely it would implode the open code available, since usage would drop like a rock. 1) Once you're required to pay money, people start comparison shopping and proprietary software is optimized to win that game. 2) Nobody wants to spend the engineering, accountant, and lawyer hours to keep track of assorted semi-commercial licenses for a zillion dependencies and what they're owed. Half the point of FOSS is that you don't have to keep track of licenses and compliance, as the periodic sob stories on HN/Slashdot about "Oh no, I got audited and wasn't in compliance and had to pay. I'm going to switch everything to FOSS; that'll show them!" show.

by dvdkon 6y ago

rusk 6y ago

Yep. That's the point. You have the option to use something with a more liberal license, develop something yourself, or pay for it. Yes, maybe at the end of the day I lose out to potential suitors, customers, collaborators etc. but that's my choice.

sokoloff 6y ago
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that it isn’t your choice. Most people are likely assuming that the typical author intent behind the decision to open source is to increase usage and contributors over the default closed source/proprietary licensing.

michaelt 6y ago

Is the problem that you have to pay at all - or is the problem merely that in the absence of a listed price, there's no guarantee the price will be fair? Would you also reject a library with this license if you knew the commercial use license was pocket change?

sokoloff 6y ago
If the commercial license was literally pocket change, I’d be inclined to use it under that commercial license right out of the gate to increase my certainty going forward.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Or you could pay the author for his/her work from your income. I could be wrong but it seems obvious to me that semi-commercial licenses would explode the amount of open code available, because instead of devs working for corporations, corporations would end up working for them. Commercial licensing - open code, free for non-profits, per-seat or per-user pricing for for profits with an official license, forks are considered a derivative work, clean room clones aren't. There would be details, but there are always details, and they don't stop two hundred page EULAs from existing and being (mostly) binding. But we don't have this because Stallman is a zealot and he wanted to Make A Point about purity. So instead of creating a market where devs could actually get paid for original work and corporations would be the ones paying, corporations get millions of hours of development effort for free - because he thought he could somehow magically strong-arm them into playing to his rules.

Qwertious 6y ago
I see antitrust as a critical purpose of freedom-respecting software - suppose you pay the author for the rights to use the semis proprietary software. You go on a decade or two, and become critically reliant on it. But then they jack up the price a hundredfold. You can't do anything (short of rewriting), even if you could flat-out hire a replacement dev team for the entire project for cheaper than what they're charging you. OpenOffice and MariaDB are classic examples of Free Software solving this - the IP holder sandbagged, so the community forked and fucked off. Even despite that though, LibreOffice still suffers from losing its OpenOffice name, and plenty of users lose out because they're unknowingly using a barely-updated version due to abovementioned sandbagging. Proprietary software hands a default victory to the IP holder. Free Software hands a default victory to the user. It's either one or the other.
josephcsible 6y ago
> But we don't have this because Stallman is a zealot and he wanted to Make A Point about purity. Uh, he's okay with selling exceptions.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "I could be wrong but it seems obvious to me that semi-commercial licenses would explode the amount of open code available" More likely it would implode the open code available, since usage would drop like a rock. 1) Once you're required to pay money, people start comparison shopping and proprietary software is optimized to win that game. 2) Nobody wants to spend the engineering, accountant, and lawyer hours to keep track of assorted semi-commercial licenses for a zillion dependencies and what they're owed. Half the point of FOSS is that you don't have to keep track of licenses and compliance, as the periodic sob stories on HN/Slashdot about "Oh no, I got audited and wasn't in compliance and had to pay. I'm going to switch everything to FOSS; that'll show them!" show.