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> they allow a carefully chosen, closed set of use cases I would argue that they prohibit far less use cases than they are open for. In any case, how would yo

> they allow a carefully chosen, closed set of use cases I would argue that they prohibit far less use cases than they are open for. In any case, how would you describe these licenses? I don't feel like "source available" is an accurate descriptor in this case.

chc 6y ago
I agree. My personal term for this sort of "We're OK with little people using the software but we don't want any competition" arrangement is "private-use source license," but I wouldn't be so bold as to argue that's The Best Name. My point is just that I don't think broadening "open-source" is a good answer, because all that does is make it harder to talk about the differences in licenses.
- bentlegen 6y ago
  Disclosure: I work at Sentry. > My personal term for this sort of "We're OK with little people using the software but we don't want any competition" Large companies are free to use Sentry. There are Fortune 50 companies running Sentry at scale internally without paying us a cent. That's totally cool. You're also free to compete with Sentry. You're not free to repackage Sentry for the purposes of competing with us. There are lots of competing error and performance monitoring products out there that do perfectly fine without it. I should also note that many components of Sentry are distributed with OSI-approved licenses that you are free to use to compete with us. For example, our Symbolication service (https://github.com/getsentry/symbolicator https://github.com/getsentry/symbolicator) ships with an MIT license, and it's an important part of our business.
  - 8note 6y ago
    What's sentry's incentive to not relicense in the future so those fortune 50 companies have to pay you instead? That seems like an obvious growth opportunity when investors need to see numbers go up
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    - bentlegen 6y ago
      The incentive is that running the infrastructure required to host Sentry is challenging and requires engineering resources. You can choose to use our hosted services for a fraction of the cost (engineers are expensive). Aside, there seems to be confusion about what “relicensing” means. Even in this hypothetical scenario you’ve outlined, we can’t “relicense” already released software. Many users hosting Sentry internally are using years-old versions happily; they would continue to be able to do so. They could also choose to fork the last permissible version and maintain it themselves. Personally, I think this scenario (relicensing such that self-hosted users could no longer do so) is incredibly unlikely. I don’t believe it would really do anything to grow the company.
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foolmeonce 6y ago
I would describe it as "Restricted use" software which has existed for decades, generally as closed source. Sure the SaaS server licenses are more or less open use with caveat, but why won't a process paralleling tivoization occur? I wouldn't find it odd for a hardware vendor to release source code, "for review" without the rights to use it on any other hardware as some do for binaries. In a way that could be worse than closed source as that is similar to the problem of suspicion of reading leaked source code, maybe you are tainted and can't actually write software licensable for competing hardware. Maybe you never read the code yet it will appear that way, but you shouldn't check. Given the oddities of IP and copyright infringement, it is often the case that only the owner benefits from a process of publishing. I.e. what good is the disclosure of a modern patent?
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Yup, this is a huge thing. Get students to use the code, get comfortable with it, then when they write something for their local city or whatever, now that local city is potentially in violation. It’s kind of like that thing where software vendors give cheap or free licenses to educational users in order to get them hooked and then charge whatever company they might work for an arm and a leg to keep using it.

chc 6y ago

I agree. My personal term for this sort of "We're OK with little people using the software but we don't want any competition" arrangement is "private-use source license," but I wouldn't be so bold as to argue that's The Best Name. My point is just that I don't think broadening "open-source" is a good answer, because all that does is make it harder to talk about the differences in licenses.

bentlegen 6y ago
Disclosure: I work at Sentry. > My personal term for this sort of "We're OK with little people using the software but we don't want any competition" Large companies are free to use Sentry. There are Fortune 50 companies running Sentry at scale internally without paying us a cent. That's totally cool. You're also free to compete with Sentry. You're not free to repackage Sentry for the purposes of competing with us. There are lots of competing error and performance monitoring products out there that do perfectly fine without it. I should also note that many components of Sentry are distributed with OSI-approved licenses that you are free to use to compete with us. For example, our Symbolication service (https://github.com/getsentry/symbolicator https://github.com/getsentry/symbolicator) ships with an MIT license, and it's an important part of our business.
- 8note 6y ago
  What's sentry's incentive to not relicense in the future so those fortune 50 companies have to pay you instead? That seems like an obvious growth opportunity when investors need to see numbers go up
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bentlegen 6y ago
    The incentive is that running the infrastructure required to host Sentry is challenging and requires engineering resources. You can choose to use our hosted services for a fraction of the cost (engineers are expensive). Aside, there seems to be confusion about what “relicensing” means. Even in this hypothetical scenario you’ve outlined, we can’t “relicense” already released software. Many users hosting Sentry internally are using years-old versions happily; they would continue to be able to do so. They could also choose to fork the last permissible version and maintain it themselves. Personally, I think this scenario (relicensing such that self-hosted users could no longer do so) is incredibly unlikely. I don’t believe it would really do anything to grow the company.
- deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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foolmeonce 6y ago

I would describe it as "Restricted use" software which has existed for decades, generally as closed source. Sure the SaaS server licenses are more or less open use with caveat, but why won't a process paralleling tivoization occur? I wouldn't find it odd for a hardware vendor to release source code, "for review" without the rights to use it on any other hardware as some do for binaries. In a way that could be worse than closed source as that is similar to the problem of suspicion of reading leaked source code, maybe you are tainted and can't actually write software licensable for competing hardware. Maybe you never read the code yet it will appear that way, but you shouldn't check. Given the oddities of IP and copyright infringement, it is often the case that only the owner benefits from a process of publishing. I.e. what good is the disclosure of a modern patent?

Robotbeat 6y ago
Yup, this is a huge thing. Get students to use the code, get comfortable with it, then when they write something for their local city or whatever, now that local city is potentially in violation. It’s kind of like that thing where software vendors give cheap or free licenses to educational users in order to get them hooked and then charge whatever company they might work for an arm and a leg to keep using it.