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> My suggestion would be to have a license that makes the software free to use for anyone and companies with a maximum net profit of (say) $1M. But wouldn't th

> My suggestion would be to have a license that makes the software free to use for anyone and companies with a maximum net profit of (say) $1M. But wouldn't that make it non-free software? (according to the FSF definition).

panta 6y ago
Yes, but mega-corps are exploiting free software and killing it in a way. Personally I believe it would be in everyone’s interest to fight back. Maybe we could have “human-scale free software” alongside the traditional model.
- 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
  "mega-corps" have been using free software in the same way for 20 years. If they were killing it, wouldn't it be dead by now?
amelius 6y ago
No, because paying for the software is now a luxury-problem. You make money from the software, so you're effectively paying a negative amount already. Anyway, this is not about definitions. In the end, it might be in the interest of companies too if every company paid for their FOSS. Right now, it is not in the interest of companies to pay because that would be an advantage to their competitors. So in a way, it's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.
- enriquto 6y ago
  > Anyway, this is not about definitions. But it is. If people cannot run your software freely, for any purpose, then it is not free software (and that includes users who are big companies). There's really no way around that. If you are worried that companies may use your software without giving back to the community, the best is to use a copyleft license like GPL or AGPL. You can also dual-license your software as AGPL/proprietary, and sell proprietary licenses at different prices according to the client. This is a fairly common setup, and many companies appreciate it (the only issue is that all external contributors to your project must surrender their copyright to you).
  - amelius 6y ago
    Correct. It's FOSS. But for companies it is OSS. In other words, it's free software. But for big companies not free as in beer. Perhaps you should explain your objections against big companies paying for open-source software? That would be more helpful than focusing on whether it's called free or not, or on how organizations defined things in the past. GPL isn't always adequate because some OSS authors might want their software to help entrepreneurs bootstrap their businesses.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      > Perhaps you should explain your objections against big companies paying for open-source software? My own objection is against non-free software. It's alright that companies pay for software. In my experience big companies are really happy to pay for free software (regardless of its license), as long as they can steer the software towards their needs, have an assurance that development does not break their tests and use cases, etc. The GPL has no provision against entrepreneurs using it for bootstrapping their businesses; I do not understand your remark in that sense.
- 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
  > Right now, it is not in the interest of companies to pay because that would be an advantage to their competitors. This is illogical. This would mean companies would never pay for any software - proprietary or FOSS - because either way, whoever is getting that money is turning around and also giving/selling the software to your competitor. Literally the only reason companies don't pay for FOSS is they are pathologically disinclined to buy things if they don't have to. They're perfectly happy to spend money to make products, however, which is why they'll spend $500K on development of some half-baked internal tool rather than spend $200K on a license. (they also have no control over their bloated tech departments, who are full of engineers who'd rather churn out new backend tech shit than build good products for end users) Forcing them to pay for FOSS will just result in them building more crappy things. They don't care that the result will suck or be a waste, they just don't want to buy things.

panta 6y ago

Yes, but mega-corps are exploiting free software and killing it in a way. Personally I believe it would be in everyone’s interest to fight back. Maybe we could have “human-scale free software” alongside the traditional model.

0xbadcafebee 6y ago
"mega-corps" have been using free software in the same way for 20 years. If they were killing it, wouldn't it be dead by now?

amelius 6y ago

No, because paying for the software is now a luxury-problem. You make money from the software, so you're effectively paying a negative amount already. Anyway, this is not about definitions. In the end, it might be in the interest of companies too if every company paid for their FOSS. Right now, it is not in the interest of companies to pay because that would be an advantage to their competitors. So in a way, it's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.

enriquto 6y ago
> Anyway, this is not about definitions. But it is. If people cannot run your software freely, for any purpose, then it is not free software (and that includes users who are big companies). There's really no way around that. If you are worried that companies may use your software without giving back to the community, the best is to use a copyleft license like GPL or AGPL. You can also dual-license your software as AGPL/proprietary, and sell proprietary licenses at different prices according to the client. This is a fairly common setup, and many companies appreciate it (the only issue is that all external contributors to your project must surrender their copyright to you).
- amelius 6y ago
  Correct. It's FOSS. But for companies it is OSS. In other words, it's free software. But for big companies not free as in beer. Perhaps you should explain your objections against big companies paying for open-source software? That would be more helpful than focusing on whether it's called free or not, or on how organizations defined things in the past. GPL isn't always adequate because some OSS authors might want their software to help entrepreneurs bootstrap their businesses.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    > Perhaps you should explain your objections against big companies paying for open-source software? My own objection is against non-free software. It's alright that companies pay for software. In my experience big companies are really happy to pay for free software (regardless of its license), as long as they can steer the software towards their needs, have an assurance that development does not break their tests and use cases, etc. The GPL has no provision against entrepreneurs using it for bootstrapping their businesses; I do not understand your remark in that sense.
0xbadcafebee 6y ago
> Right now, it is not in the interest of companies to pay because that would be an advantage to their competitors. This is illogical. This would mean companies would never pay for any software - proprietary or FOSS - because either way, whoever is getting that money is turning around and also giving/selling the software to your competitor. Literally the only reason companies don't pay for FOSS is they are pathologically disinclined to buy things if they don't have to. They're perfectly happy to spend money to make products, however, which is why they'll spend $500K on development of some half-baked internal tool rather than spend $200K on a license. (they also have no control over their bloated tech departments, who are full of engineers who'd rather churn out new backend tech shit than build good products for end users) Forcing them to pay for FOSS will just result in them building more crappy things. They don't care that the result will suck or be a waste, they just don't want to buy things.