4 ms·

> 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 arg

> 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.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  > 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. > What Non-Commercial license advocates are actually saying (whether they realize it or not) I’d appreciate it if you didn’t accuse me of being delusional or duplicitous, it’s not nice. Also, what world do you think I’m describing? Because it sure doesn’t seem to match the world I think I’m describing. Here, I’ll make it more clear for you with bullet points: 1. Tying “freedom” to commercialization is a framing that I think is misleading at best, manipulative at worst. It implies that open source creators are less moral people if they don’t want someone else making a profit off their work, which I think is nonsense. 2. A lot (but not all!) of open source contributors would be happier if they chose NC licenses even if it means fewer people use them. The proposed costs of doing so (no Debian, no commercial funding) is a non-factor for the vast majority of projects, while the lower adoption of NC projects might make the overall process more enjoyable and less stressful. 3. The exact definition of success for a project is up to the people creating and running it, not us. You might find it inconvenient if you can’t use someone else’s work because of a license incompatibility, but that doesn’t mean that that project is a failure or bad, it just means it’s not right (or even meant) for you. None of this comes anywhere close to all software being NC, although I think more people should make NC software for the joy of making things that other people will use (point 2). Plenty of open source founders will set high levels of adoption as their goal (point 3), and therefore adopt a commercial friendly license[0]. That’s fine, and I think it’s their right to pick the license that they think best meets their needs. What’s not fine is haranguing those who want their work to remain non-commercial for picking a “non-free” license (point 1). It’s their work, they can do with it as they see fit[0] without the unnecessary moralizing about “freedom”. 0 - Limited of course by the licenses of any libraries they bring in, since those creators have rights too.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    In order: 1. Tying "freedom" to the freedom to pursue commercialization is necessary if you want to fund your own projects, and it is necessary if you want your projects to be usable in a real commons. It is not necessary if you want to just release something that can't be used commercially -- that's fine, you can do that. I release proprietary software all the time, I'm employed by proprietary software. But don't say that you're contributing to a commons, you're not. A sustainable commons needs funding. 2. A lot (not all, but a lot) of Open Source contributors could not fund their own work if it was built on top of NC licensed software. I'm not talking about companies appropriating things, I'm talking about your ability to accept donations or to dual license or sell support for your own work that is already built on top of Open Source licensed code. None of what you're doing exists in a vacuum, I can almost guarantee that every single piece of software you've ever built was built on top of an Open base. So whether or not you intend it, if those developers had followed your model of licensing, it would be impossible for you today to even look for compensation for any of your software, FOSS or not. 3. I didn't say that the project was a failure or that it was bad, I said it was following a proprietary model of compensation, where software can not be used without the permission of the people building that software, and where those licenses trickle down into derivative works creating a chain of permissions. And that's fine, I have respect for people who follow proprietary models for their software. I just think we should be clear about what we're talking about here. I regularly find proprietary software inconvenient. I'm not calling that software a failure, or bad. But I'm also not obligated to call it Free/Libre, and I'm not obligated to pretend that rejecting the philosophy of Open Source is the solution to Open Source funding. ---- I don't think you're duplicitous or "delusional", but I think that you're missing that each individual Open Source project doesn't exist in a vaccuum, Open Source has always been built on top of other Open Source projects. I don't think you understand the implications of the world you are describing when you suggest that those derivative Open Source projects and those individuals should not be able to seek funding for their contributes to the world of FOSS. The entire point of a commons is that it is built on; that everyone contributes to it and everyone uses different pieces of it. What NC licenses do is they restrict future works within those commons so they can not be funded. That doesn't mean NC work is evil, but it's not a commons, it is explicitly rejecting the idea that future works within that commons should have the ability to fund themselves. It is saying that anyone contributing to the commons in the future and building on top of it must do so for free. That's not a moral judgement, in my experience most NC content is not intended to be part of a commons. The closest thing I have to a moral judgement here is that it feels a little weird to me that people are complaining about companies stealing their work at the same time that they build freely on top of an existing Open Source base while explicitly denying future Open Source developers the opportunity to fund the FOSS/CC software/content that they make. You stand on the shoulders of giants, and if you have been able to fund any of your projects, it is only because those giants didn't take your advice about licensing. But beyond that, I have no moral judgement at all. People are free to choose whatever license they want. It's just not a commons, and it's not sustainable, and it's not Free/Libre. The conversation that we're having now is an exact mirror of the conversations that we had back in the Microsoft days, where proprietary advocates argued that only proprietary software could guarantee funding for smaller devs. It's still a reasonable argument to make today. There are many software devs who believe that the FOSS movement is misguided and that an Open Source/Creative Commons approach is inherently the wrong way to develop content/software. If you view it as some kind of insult for me to say that what you're advocating for is a proprietary license, I'm not sure what to say, that's on you. Proprietary is not an insult, it's a different philosophy about how software should be built. > What’s not fine is haranguing those who want their work to remain non-commercial for picking a “non-free” license (point 1). Nobody is saying that people should be harangued for choosing a proprietary license. On the contrary, whenever these threads appear, it is always proprietary developers jumping in to say things like "A lot [...] of open source contributors would be happier if they chose NC licenses even if it means fewer people use them." Who exactly is evangelizing in this situation? Far from "haranguing" developers, the original article says: > The non-commercial licenses are good at doing what they are meant to do, that is, prevent commercial exploitation of your work. If that is what you want, the non-commercial licenses are perfect for you. I'm not sure how else to tell you that accurately defining Open Source/Libre software isn't an insult to your character.

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.

ashtonkem 5y ago
> 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. > What Non-Commercial license advocates are actually saying (whether they realize it or not) I’d appreciate it if you didn’t accuse me of being delusional or duplicitous, it’s not nice. Also, what world do you think I’m describing? Because it sure doesn’t seem to match the world I think I’m describing. Here, I’ll make it more clear for you with bullet points: 1. Tying “freedom” to commercialization is a framing that I think is misleading at best, manipulative at worst. It implies that open source creators are less moral people if they don’t want someone else making a profit off their work, which I think is nonsense. 2. A lot (but not all!) of open source contributors would be happier if they chose NC licenses even if it means fewer people use them. The proposed costs of doing so (no Debian, no commercial funding) is a non-factor for the vast majority of projects, while the lower adoption of NC projects might make the overall process more enjoyable and less stressful. 3. The exact definition of success for a project is up to the people creating and running it, not us. You might find it inconvenient if you can’t use someone else’s work because of a license incompatibility, but that doesn’t mean that that project is a failure or bad, it just means it’s not right (or even meant) for you. None of this comes anywhere close to all software being NC, although I think more people should make NC software for the joy of making things that other people will use (point 2). Plenty of open source founders will set high levels of adoption as their goal (point 3), and therefore adopt a commercial friendly license[0]. That’s fine, and I think it’s their right to pick the license that they think best meets their needs. What’s not fine is haranguing those who want their work to remain non-commercial for picking a “non-free” license (point 1). It’s their work, they can do with it as they see fit[0] without the unnecessary moralizing about “freedom”. 0 - Limited of course by the licenses of any libraries they bring in, since those creators have rights too.
- danShumway 5y ago
  In order: 1. Tying "freedom" to the freedom to pursue commercialization is necessary if you want to fund your own projects, and it is necessary if you want your projects to be usable in a real commons. It is not necessary if you want to just release something that can't be used commercially -- that's fine, you can do that. I release proprietary software all the time, I'm employed by proprietary software. But don't say that you're contributing to a commons, you're not. A sustainable commons needs funding. 2. A lot (not all, but a lot) of Open Source contributors could not fund their own work if it was built on top of NC licensed software. I'm not talking about companies appropriating things, I'm talking about your ability to accept donations or to dual license or sell support for your own work that is already built on top of Open Source licensed code. None of what you're doing exists in a vacuum, I can almost guarantee that every single piece of software you've ever built was built on top of an Open base. So whether or not you intend it, if those developers had followed your model of licensing, it would be impossible for you today to even look for compensation for any of your software, FOSS or not. 3. I didn't say that the project was a failure or that it was bad, I said it was following a proprietary model of compensation, where software can not be used without the permission of the people building that software, and where those licenses trickle down into derivative works creating a chain of permissions. And that's fine, I have respect for people who follow proprietary models for their software. I just think we should be clear about what we're talking about here. I regularly find proprietary software inconvenient. I'm not calling that software a failure, or bad. But I'm also not obligated to call it Free/Libre, and I'm not obligated to pretend that rejecting the philosophy of Open Source is the solution to Open Source funding. ---- I don't think you're duplicitous or "delusional", but I think that you're missing that each individual Open Source project doesn't exist in a vaccuum, Open Source has always been built on top of other Open Source projects. I don't think you understand the implications of the world you are describing when you suggest that those derivative Open Source projects and those individuals should not be able to seek funding for their contributes to the world of FOSS. The entire point of a commons is that it is built on; that everyone contributes to it and everyone uses different pieces of it. What NC licenses do is they restrict future works within those commons so they can not be funded. That doesn't mean NC work is evil, but it's not a commons, it is explicitly rejecting the idea that future works within that commons should have the ability to fund themselves. It is saying that anyone contributing to the commons in the future and building on top of it must do so for free. That's not a moral judgement, in my experience most NC content is not intended to be part of a commons. The closest thing I have to a moral judgement here is that it feels a little weird to me that people are complaining about companies stealing their work at the same time that they build freely on top of an existing Open Source base while explicitly denying future Open Source developers the opportunity to fund the FOSS/CC software/content that they make. You stand on the shoulders of giants, and if you have been able to fund any of your projects, it is only because those giants didn't take your advice about licensing. But beyond that, I have no moral judgement at all. People are free to choose whatever license they want. It's just not a commons, and it's not sustainable, and it's not Free/Libre. The conversation that we're having now is an exact mirror of the conversations that we had back in the Microsoft days, where proprietary advocates argued that only proprietary software could guarantee funding for smaller devs. It's still a reasonable argument to make today. There are many software devs who believe that the FOSS movement is misguided and that an Open Source/Creative Commons approach is inherently the wrong way to develop content/software. If you view it as some kind of insult for me to say that what you're advocating for is a proprietary license, I'm not sure what to say, that's on you. Proprietary is not an insult, it's a different philosophy about how software should be built. > What’s not fine is haranguing those who want their work to remain non-commercial for picking a “non-free” license (point 1). Nobody is saying that people should be harangued for choosing a proprietary license. On the contrary, whenever these threads appear, it is always proprietary developers jumping in to say things like "A lot [...] of open source contributors would be happier if they chose NC licenses even if it means fewer people use them." Who exactly is evangelizing in this situation? Far from "haranguing" developers, the original article says: > The non-commercial licenses are good at doing what they are meant to do, that is, prevent commercial exploitation of your work. If that is what you want, the non-commercial licenses are perfect for you. I'm not sure how else to tell you that accurately defining Open Source/Libre software isn't an insult to your character.