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Well, I'm obviously not a lawyer, but that definitely was not my intent when I said offer "hosted version of Hibiki HTML" :/ . I meant hosted, like offering a

by sawka 5y ago

Well, I'm obviously not a lawyer, but that definitely was not my intent when I said offer "hosted version of Hibiki HTML" :/ . I meant hosted, like offering a service like Netlify, Next.js, or Heroku or as an integrated development experience (not like a CDN). Also it is 100% fine for anyone to use Hibiki on Netlify or Heroku or any generic hosting service. Since it was already confusing, I'll work on clarifying that point specifically in the future. https://github.com/dashborg/hibiki/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/dashborg/hibiki/blob/main/LICENSE , tried to make it clear that any generic hosting was fine, and also 100% free if it is used for internal tools.

notRobot 5y ago
Even if it wasn't your intent, it does read that way. Writing precise, clear and enforceable software licenses is very, very hard work. I've worked with lawyers who do it in the past, and it takes forever. Please do consider just good ol' MIT or (A)GPL. It'll actually allow people to make use of this really cool code that you've written. As for the SaaS concern: nothing will stop someone motivated enough from writing a compatible drop-in library that does the exact same thing with the exact same syntax. And honestly there's nothing that you can do about it.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  To expand on this: Even if your custom license is concise and theoretically great, there are legal departments in companies that will disallow using your software because they aren't fully certain about the implications of the terms. While one of the standard licenses may not cover the exact terms you would like, I would still recommend to consider using one because it makes adoption so much easier.
Ycros 5y ago
If you're going to create a custom license, please hire a lawyer to do so.
- graderjs 5y ago
  or better yet just use some already written by lawyers. Check out the polyform licenses https://polyformproject.org/licenses/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/
  - notRobot 5y ago
    That is not "better".
    - graderjs 5y ago
      why not? (Just a question. I may add more comments to this, whether you reply or not. As I think about it :))
zmmmmm 5y ago
ElasticSearch basically had the same problem so you could consider adopting their license (or adapting it in extremely well defined way): https://www.elastic.co/blog/elastic-license-v2 https://www.elastic.co/blog/elastic-license-v2 At least you will have a chance of not scaring off anyone with a legal department.
- sawka 5y ago
  Cool, thanks, I'll check this out
franciscop 5y ago
As a fellow dev who is in a similar situation but scared of jumping there, thanks for writing a non-standard license. I think the licenses like MIT, while great for many, many projects, some times they are not the best for other projects that are either "larger/complex" (in a very abstract sense, think a DB) or more product-like. I also think this should become more common and developers should get used to read the licenses of the code they use, at least until few of these "don't copy all my work and just resell it" licenses catch on and some become standard.
- Uehreka 5y ago
  If you think there’s a new kind of license that should exist, that’s one thing. Maybe other people agree, and you can start (or better, join) a movement around getting that license recognition and usage. But if you’re not talking about adding a new license to “the canon”, and are instead advocating that developers should write their own licenses, that’s not a good idea. It’s not that developers would need to “actually read the license”. The problem is that every time someone makes a new license they’re effectively putting untested legal code “into production”. Legal departments know what MIT, BSD and the GPL are (not just that they’ve heard of them, I mean they know them deeply). There’s decades of precedent and analysis around them. Newer licenses like ISC have to be carefully worded to make use of that precedent and are then scrutinized before being approved. I’d also note that if the license you want doesn’t exist, it also might be because it’s legally impossible, unenforceable or just unappealing to users. “Don’t copy all my work and just resell it” sounds like CC Non-Commercial, which isn’t often used for open source libraries because the intent of open source libraries is for people to copy them (down to their hard drive) and resell them (integrated into a larger product).
  - franciscop 5y ago
    Yes I'd love for a new license to exist and join that, but with 2-3 alterations; a bit like how with copyright you have the CC and multiple alternatives. So for all, as the author in this case, limit the ability to just host the project itself and charge for it. People would still be able to modify the software and use that themselves, and share the modified code/fixes, or contribute upstream. I'd argue that this still follows the ideals of open source/free software, just avoiding abuse in 2022. Then for some other projects, just no forks. With this variant, you can only modify it for yourself and cannot publish modified/derivative projects. This is IMHO no longer in the spirit of free software, but users can still read the code, modify it themselves and fix bugs, which is waaay better than current proprietary code. Alt: I believe some people might want to add am ethical clause and a big/small/indie developer clauses.
jancsika 5y ago
Just a general tip, for all time-- you should treat custom modifications of OSI licenses exactly the same as HN would treat custom modifications to cryptographic primitives. In both cases, don't do them, for the same reasons-- you don't have the domain expertise to understand the implications of what you're doing. And for any case that truly matters, you're almost guaranteed to find out the hard way that the real-life implications are different than what you were aiming for.[1] Anyway, looks below like you're considering a regular 3-clause MIT, so good going on that. :) 1: Hell, even for long-standing OSI licenses the real-life legal implications may be different than what the OSI community assumed. But at least there you'd be in a billion dollar yacht with many others, as opposed to stranded on a desert island with your modified MIT.
- caterama 5y ago
  There was a recent link posted exactly about this... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30068020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30068020 Early versions of Creative Commons (CC) license had a bug in which the license would terminate on breach of terms. The terms were easy to mess up, like requiring attribution and linking to source. There is now a new form of copyright troll that is basically fishing for CC violations.
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dspillett 5y ago
> Well, I'm obviously not a lawyer, but that definitely was not my intent I think “don't roll your own licence (unless you have relevant legal expertise)” should be a regular mantra much like “don't roll your own crypto (unless you have significant cryptography expertise)”. With the joint caveat of “unless it is for a personal project or plaything, for learning/practising/gaining that expertise, that you don't expect others to use” of course. No matter how careful and well-intentioned your efforts are in either case, the chance of unintended consequences causing faf (for you in this case, needing to explain and/or reword in order to reclarify and smooth edge case interactions with other common licences).

by sawka 5y ago

notRobot 5y ago

Even if it wasn't your intent, it does read that way. Writing precise, clear and enforceable software licenses is very, very hard work. I've worked with lawyers who do it in the past, and it takes forever. Please do consider just good ol' MIT or (A)GPL. It'll actually allow people to make use of this really cool code that you've written. As for the SaaS concern: nothing will stop someone motivated enough from writing a compatible drop-in library that does the exact same thing with the exact same syntax. And honestly there's nothing that you can do about it.

solarkraft 5y ago
To expand on this: Even if your custom license is concise and theoretically great, there are legal departments in companies that will disallow using your software because they aren't fully certain about the implications of the terms. While one of the standard licenses may not cover the exact terms you would like, I would still recommend to consider using one because it makes adoption so much easier.

Ycros 5y ago

If you're going to create a custom license, please hire a lawyer to do so.

graderjs 5y ago
or better yet just use some already written by lawyers. Check out the polyform licenses https://polyformproject.org/licenses/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/
- notRobot 5y ago
  That is not "better".
  - graderjs 5y ago
    why not? (Just a question. I may add more comments to this, whether you reply or not. As I think about it :))

zmmmmm 5y ago

ElasticSearch basically had the same problem so you could consider adopting their license (or adapting it in extremely well defined way): https://www.elastic.co/blog/elastic-license-v2 https://www.elastic.co/blog/elastic-license-v2 At least you will have a chance of not scaring off anyone with a legal department.

sawka 5y ago
Cool, thanks, I'll check this out

franciscop 5y ago

As a fellow dev who is in a similar situation but scared of jumping there, thanks for writing a non-standard license. I think the licenses like MIT, while great for many, many projects, some times they are not the best for other projects that are either "larger/complex" (in a very abstract sense, think a DB) or more product-like. I also think this should become more common and developers should get used to read the licenses of the code they use, at least until few of these "don't copy all my work and just resell it" licenses catch on and some become standard.

Uehreka 5y ago
If you think there’s a new kind of license that should exist, that’s one thing. Maybe other people agree, and you can start (or better, join) a movement around getting that license recognition and usage. But if you’re not talking about adding a new license to “the canon”, and are instead advocating that developers should write their own licenses, that’s not a good idea. It’s not that developers would need to “actually read the license”. The problem is that every time someone makes a new license they’re effectively putting untested legal code “into production”. Legal departments know what MIT, BSD and the GPL are (not just that they’ve heard of them, I mean they know them deeply). There’s decades of precedent and analysis around them. Newer licenses like ISC have to be carefully worded to make use of that precedent and are then scrutinized before being approved. I’d also note that if the license you want doesn’t exist, it also might be because it’s legally impossible, unenforceable or just unappealing to users. “Don’t copy all my work and just resell it” sounds like CC Non-Commercial, which isn’t often used for open source libraries because the intent of open source libraries is for people to copy them (down to their hard drive) and resell them (integrated into a larger product).
- franciscop 5y ago
  Yes I'd love for a new license to exist and join that, but with 2-3 alterations; a bit like how with copyright you have the CC and multiple alternatives. So for all, as the author in this case, limit the ability to just host the project itself and charge for it. People would still be able to modify the software and use that themselves, and share the modified code/fixes, or contribute upstream. I'd argue that this still follows the ideals of open source/free software, just avoiding abuse in 2022. Then for some other projects, just no forks. With this variant, you can only modify it for yourself and cannot publish modified/derivative projects. This is IMHO no longer in the spirit of free software, but users can still read the code, modify it themselves and fix bugs, which is waaay better than current proprietary code. Alt: I believe some people might want to add am ethical clause and a big/small/indie developer clauses.

jancsika 5y ago

Just a general tip, for all time-- you should treat custom modifications of OSI licenses exactly the same as HN would treat custom modifications to cryptographic primitives. In both cases, don't do them, for the same reasons-- you don't have the domain expertise to understand the implications of what you're doing. And for any case that truly matters, you're almost guaranteed to find out the hard way that the real-life implications are different than what you were aiming for.[1] Anyway, looks below like you're considering a regular 3-clause MIT, so good going on that. :) 1: Hell, even for long-standing OSI licenses the real-life legal implications may be different than what the OSI community assumed. But at least there you'd be in a billion dollar yacht with many others, as opposed to stranded on a desert island with your modified MIT.

caterama 5y ago
There was a recent link posted exactly about this... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30068020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30068020 Early versions of Creative Commons (CC) license had a bug in which the license would terminate on breach of terms. The terms were easy to mess up, like requiring attribution and linking to source. There is now a new form of copyright troll that is basically fishing for CC violations.

deleted 5y ago

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deleted 5y ago

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dspillett 5y ago

> Well, I'm obviously not a lawyer, but that definitely was not my intent I think “don't roll your own licence (unless you have relevant legal expertise)” should be a regular mantra much like “don't roll your own crypto (unless you have significant cryptography expertise)”. With the joint caveat of “unless it is for a personal project or plaything, for learning/practising/gaining that expertise, that you don't expect others to use” of course. No matter how careful and well-intentioned your efforts are in either case, the chance of unintended consequences causing faf (for you in this case, needing to explain and/or reword in order to reclarify and smooth edge case interactions with other common licences).