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I'm struggling to understand the vitriol toward this. It is a thoughtfully-crafted license, eminently readable, written by a skilled legal practitioner in this

I'm struggling to understand the vitriol toward this. It is a thoughtfully-crafted license, eminently readable, written by a skilled legal practitioner in this domain. I have no affiliation with the author of the license, but do appreciate his writings and contributions to the community. Whether it's OpenSSL, the recent PLC4X story, or Filippo Valsorda's recent posting, we are constantly reminded of how unsustainable it can be for the majority of FOSS developers. It's clear that relying on purely voluntary contributions to these developers does not work. Some model needs to be found that makes compensating more developers compulsory if we want to enable them to write/maintain their code as anything other than a hobby. This needs to be through a legal mechanism rather than social/moral pressure, because businesses understand legal requirements and most fulfill their legal obligations. I understand the pushback against calling this a Free/Open Source license, but the author never categorizes it as such. There is a strong good-faith foundation in this license of keeping it zero cost for those least able to pay, or most deterred by cost. It preserves the benefits of everybody being able to see the code they're running, make their own fixes/changes, etc. I get drawing some line around core OS components, etc., as needing to be GPL/BSD/MIT, but what alternative models to this kind of license are people proposing to deal with the sustainability gap? Nothing forces you as an author to use this type of license, nor are you forced to use products based on this license. I don't see a widespread way to address the sustainability gap while also religiously expecting all this code to be "no economic strings attached". If we all agree not to call it FOSS, does that tamp down the loud objections?

orangecat 5y ago
I'm struggling to understand the vitriol toward this. It is a thoughtfully-crafted license, eminently readable, written by a skilled legal practitioner in this domain. That's all well and good. It's still a proprietary license that rejects the most basic principle of open source, which is the ability of anyone to use and modify the software. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's silly to expect FOSS advocates to embrace it.
- HexDecOctBin 5y ago
  But why the assumption that it is aimed at FOSS advocates? The license doesn't even mention source code, it has nothing to do with FOSS. Does FOSS has a monopoly on releasing software free of cost? Should no new interesting shareware-esque licenses be shared on a website dedicated to startups, lest the FOSS advocates be offended?
- ThenAsNow 5y ago
  > It's still a proprietary license that rejects the most basic principle of open source, which is the ability of anyone to use and modify the software. Anyone is able to to use and modify the software, it's just that if your entity is large enough, you don't get to use it at zero compensation to the licensor. The reason I would expect more FOSS advocates to embrace it is that other than this or a limited few other models (e.g., open core, commercial licenses to relieve GPL copyleft terms), what other avenues do they propose to exploit to ensure developers/maintainers are able to fund continuing development and maintenance of the software commons? It's not like typical proprietary licenses to binaries where even if you pay, most likely you won't get the code (the exceptions are a low proportion of all proprietary licenses). "Shared source" as MS seems to define it makes you prove you're in one of their qualifying groups before you get to see the code - i.e., it's not like it's up on GitHub. And there are likely penalties if you share the code. Shareware was also rarely distributed in source form, often had nag mechanisms/crippling, and didn't tend to distinguish between personal or non-commercial users and large institutional users. So I don't think "shareware" is a great categorization of this either. My off-the-cuff label for this is a "Source Openly Available" license.

orangecat 5y ago

I'm struggling to understand the vitriol toward this. It is a thoughtfully-crafted license, eminently readable, written by a skilled legal practitioner in this domain. That's all well and good. It's still a proprietary license that rejects the most basic principle of open source, which is the ability of anyone to use and modify the software. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's silly to expect FOSS advocates to embrace it.

HexDecOctBin 5y ago
But why the assumption that it is aimed at FOSS advocates? The license doesn't even mention source code, it has nothing to do with FOSS. Does FOSS has a monopoly on releasing software free of cost? Should no new interesting shareware-esque licenses be shared on a website dedicated to startups, lest the FOSS advocates be offended?
ThenAsNow 5y ago
> It's still a proprietary license that rejects the most basic principle of open source, which is the ability of anyone to use and modify the software. Anyone is able to to use and modify the software, it's just that if your entity is large enough, you don't get to use it at zero compensation to the licensor. The reason I would expect more FOSS advocates to embrace it is that other than this or a limited few other models (e.g., open core, commercial licenses to relieve GPL copyleft terms), what other avenues do they propose to exploit to ensure developers/maintainers are able to fund continuing development and maintenance of the software commons? It's not like typical proprietary licenses to binaries where even if you pay, most likely you won't get the code (the exceptions are a low proportion of all proprietary licenses). "Shared source" as MS seems to define it makes you prove you're in one of their qualifying groups before you get to see the code - i.e., it's not like it's up on GitHub. And there are likely penalties if you share the code. Shareware was also rarely distributed in source form, often had nag mechanisms/crippling, and didn't tend to distinguish between personal or non-commercial users and large institutional users. So I don't think "shareware" is a great categorization of this either. My off-the-cuff label for this is a "Source Openly Available" license.