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> However, given that we are aware of the fact that the FOSS (and Creative Commons) world is so underfunded, it seems particularly weird to be championing licen

> However, given that we are aware of the fact that the FOSS (and Creative Commons) world is so underfunded, it seems particularly weird to be championing licenses that make it harder for small developers and small communities to fund Creative-Commons content or to sustainably build on Copyleft work. This presumes that commercially friendly licenses help provide funding for FOSS development. While there might be a handful of high profile cases where this happens (Blender comes to mind), more often than not the relationship between FOSS and commercial enterprises is a fundamentally extractive process. If you run an open source project the best case scenario is that someone else uses your project to make their business more successful (and give nothing back), the worst case is having AWS straight up sell your product, making millions off your work and cutting you out from any hope of making money.

danShumway 5y ago
> This presumes that commercially friendly licenses help provide funding for FOSS development. Yes, definitely, when compared against a license that bans funding your project. I'm not here to argue that the current state of funding in FOSS is great, I'm here to argue that banning funding is not going to help it. Blender can't use an NC licensed asset in the program, because their software is a commercial product that they are making money off of. What an NC licensed commons does is it guarantees that anyone building on top of the commons can not do so in a sustainable way, regardless of whether or not they're building FOSS software. I think what people miss when they talk about the commons is that FOSS projects are built on top of FOSS projects, and questions about funding necessarily affect not just the immediate developer that releases a project, but the ability of every single downstream CC/FOSS project that is trying to build on top of a shared commons. Philosophically, the idea of a shared commons is that having an open collection of software/content that everyone both contributes to and that everyone builds on top of will be better for society. It is reasonable for people to disagree with that philosophy and to argue that closing down and forcing people to get permission to build anything large on top of the commons is a better model -- that is the model of proprietary software. But people should be aware what they're arguing for. Non-Commercial licenses are an assertion that any other commons material built on top of that content must be unfunded. Future creative commons works can not include content under proprietary dual-licenses to your stuff while remaining FOSS/CC themselves. So they have choice. Either have no funding at all, or reject the Creative Commons and build proprietary stuff using assets that are licensed under Non-Free agreements. In the current world, an assertion that the Creative Commons should require Non-Commercial usage is an assertion that Creative Commons content should not be funded.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  > Yes, when compared against a license that bans funding your project. I'm not here to argue that the current state of funding in FOSS is great, I'm here to argue that banning funding is not going to help it. Banning funding that doesn’t exist for most projects isn’t harmful. 50% less than $0 is still $0. Most open source projects get nothing from companies, and count on the free labor of the founder and those “buy me a coffee” buttons (which would still be fine for a non-commercial project). In fact, it’s extremely common to have open source library writers complain that their product is used by unicorns and Fortune 500 companies, yet they’re forced to support development of a product that helps others profit. This is part of why we see such public burnout and ragequits here from time to time. It’s fine to say “well banning commercial funding won’t help”, but let’s be honest; for profit companies aren’t going to give anything back without being forced to do so. We’re covering huge chunks of their labor cost for free, without some mechanism to force them to pay, they never will. > Blender can't use an NC licensed asset in the program, because their software is a commercial product that they are making money off of. What an NC licensed commons does is it guarantees that anyone building on top of the commons can not do so in a sustainable way. Blender is in extremely rarified territory for a FOSS program; it gets direct cash subsidies from for profit companies who see benefit in its development. While it’s obviously true that Blender going NC would ruin them, looking at such outliers to judge the median is like looking at a lottery winner when planning out your finances; you’re going to get a skewed sense of reality. Also, Blender isn’t getting funded by Epic out of the goodness of their hearts or a concern for the commons. Epic sees profit in making it easier for other people to make video games for their platform. Very, very few open source projects will ever end up in this position.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    > Banning funding that doesn’t exist for most projects isn’t harmful. Yes it is, if you ever want to get funding. Right now, we are trying to figure out ways to fund FOSS/CC software/content. It's very hard. But at least we don't have legal restrictions stopping us from doing so. > for profit companies aren’t going to give anything back without being forced to do so We also have licenses for this. CC Share Alike. The entire point of the GPL and Share Alike licenses are to force companies to contribute back to the commons and to operate on the same terms as the people making software/commons content. There are some issues that those licenses don't plug, like SaaS software. Those issues will be better solved by targeted licenses like AGPL than they will be by rejecting FOSS concepts entirely. > Also, Blender isn’t getting funded by Epic out of the goodness of their hearts. Who the heck cares? "Very, very few" is better than zero. > We’re covering huge chunks of their labor cost for free And I want to push back on this as well. How much of your software are you actually writing from scratch? The entirety of Open Source today is built on existing Open Source projects. Some of them were developed by exploited developers, some of those developers were compensated. But in every single one of those cases, your ability to even look for funding today is only possible because those developers in the past gave you permission to do so. The fact that we're even talking about funding in any form indicates to me that you don't really want to live in the world you're describing. How would you feel if you went to put your current Open Source project on Patreon and found out you can't because the libraries it's built on restrict you from trying to fund its development? It is difficult to solve the current funding problems in Open Source. But it is impossible to build a sustainable FOSS ecosystem on NC-licensed content. Not unless your idea is that every single FOSS project will reinvent the entire computing stack from scratch for everything they release. What Non-Commercial license advocates are actually saying (whether they realize it or not) is that software built on top of the commons should not be funded. If people want a proprietary world and they want everyone to license every library they use, and they want copyright licenses to propagate down the tech stack like they currently do in the proprietary world of software, then they should just say that.

danShumway 5y ago

> This presumes that commercially friendly licenses help provide funding for FOSS development. Yes, definitely, when compared against a license that bans funding your project. I'm not here to argue that the current state of funding in FOSS is great, I'm here to argue that banning funding is not going to help it. Blender can't use an NC licensed asset in the program, because their software is a commercial product that they are making money off of. What an NC licensed commons does is it guarantees that anyone building on top of the commons can not do so in a sustainable way, regardless of whether or not they're building FOSS software. I think what people miss when they talk about the commons is that FOSS projects are built on top of FOSS projects, and questions about funding necessarily affect not just the immediate developer that releases a project, but the ability of every single downstream CC/FOSS project that is trying to build on top of a shared commons. Philosophically, the idea of a shared commons is that having an open collection of software/content that everyone both contributes to and that everyone builds on top of will be better for society. It is reasonable for people to disagree with that philosophy and to argue that closing down and forcing people to get permission to build anything large on top of the commons is a better model -- that is the model of proprietary software. But people should be aware what they're arguing for. Non-Commercial licenses are an assertion that any other commons material built on top of that content must be unfunded. Future creative commons works can not include content under proprietary dual-licenses to your stuff while remaining FOSS/CC themselves. So they have choice. Either have no funding at all, or reject the Creative Commons and build proprietary stuff using assets that are licensed under Non-Free agreements. In the current world, an assertion that the Creative Commons should require Non-Commercial usage is an assertion that Creative Commons content should not be funded.

ashtonkem 5y ago
> Yes, when compared against a license that bans funding your project. I'm not here to argue that the current state of funding in FOSS is great, I'm here to argue that banning funding is not going to help it. Banning funding that doesn’t exist for most projects isn’t harmful. 50% less than $0 is still $0. Most open source projects get nothing from companies, and count on the free labor of the founder and those “buy me a coffee” buttons (which would still be fine for a non-commercial project). In fact, it’s extremely common to have open source library writers complain that their product is used by unicorns and Fortune 500 companies, yet they’re forced to support development of a product that helps others profit. This is part of why we see such public burnout and ragequits here from time to time. It’s fine to say “well banning commercial funding won’t help”, but let’s be honest; for profit companies aren’t going to give anything back without being forced to do so. We’re covering huge chunks of their labor cost for free, without some mechanism to force them to pay, they never will. > Blender can't use an NC licensed asset in the program, because their software is a commercial product that they are making money off of. What an NC licensed commons does is it guarantees that anyone building on top of the commons can not do so in a sustainable way. Blender is in extremely rarified territory for a FOSS program; it gets direct cash subsidies from for profit companies who see benefit in its development. While it’s obviously true that Blender going NC would ruin them, looking at such outliers to judge the median is like looking at a lottery winner when planning out your finances; you’re going to get a skewed sense of reality. Also, Blender isn’t getting funded by Epic out of the goodness of their hearts or a concern for the commons. Epic sees profit in making it easier for other people to make video games for their platform. Very, very few open source projects will ever end up in this position.
- danShumway 5y ago
  > Banning funding that doesn’t exist for most projects isn’t harmful. Yes it is, if you ever want to get funding. Right now, we are trying to figure out ways to fund FOSS/CC software/content. It's very hard. But at least we don't have legal restrictions stopping us from doing so. > for profit companies aren’t going to give anything back without being forced to do so We also have licenses for this. CC Share Alike. The entire point of the GPL and Share Alike licenses are to force companies to contribute back to the commons and to operate on the same terms as the people making software/commons content. There are some issues that those licenses don't plug, like SaaS software. Those issues will be better solved by targeted licenses like AGPL than they will be by rejecting FOSS concepts entirely. > Also, Blender isn’t getting funded by Epic out of the goodness of their hearts. Who the heck cares? "Very, very few" is better than zero. > We’re covering huge chunks of their labor cost for free And I want to push back on this as well. How much of your software are you actually writing from scratch? The entirety of Open Source today is built on existing Open Source projects. Some of them were developed by exploited developers, some of those developers were compensated. But in every single one of those cases, your ability to even look for funding today is only possible because those developers in the past gave you permission to do so. The fact that we're even talking about funding in any form indicates to me that you don't really want to live in the world you're describing. How would you feel if you went to put your current Open Source project on Patreon and found out you can't because the libraries it's built on restrict you from trying to fund its development? It is difficult to solve the current funding problems in Open Source. But it is impossible to build a sustainable FOSS ecosystem on NC-licensed content. Not unless your idea is that every single FOSS project will reinvent the entire computing stack from scratch for everything they release. What Non-Commercial license advocates are actually saying (whether they realize it or not) is that software built on top of the commons should not be funded. If people want a proprietary world and they want everyone to license every library they use, and they want copyright licenses to propagate down the tech stack like they currently do in the proprietary world of software, then they should just say that.