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All of the high-profile orgs I am aware of who once called their licensing "Apache + Commons Clause" have since changed the names of their licenses to something
by rectang 5y ago
All of the high-profile orgs I am aware of who once called their licensing "Apache + Commons Clause" have since changed the names of their licenses to something else.
The argument that "Apache + Commons Clause" is a "combination" is straightforward to counter. The "Commons Clause" is not additive — it fundamentally changes the license, making it more restrictive and taking away potential uses. Consumers could not count on being able to do the things with software under such a license that they would ordinarily expect to be able to do with "Apache" licensed software, which damages the "Apache" brand.
In any case, it's not clear that it's worthwhile to go up against a sympathetic defendant like the ASF and make such an argument for limited benefit.
- Drdrdrq 5y agoWhat did they change the license to? If you have some examples, I would be curious to see how they handled that. I was under the impression that it was Commons Clause that people started avoiding in favor of other "cloud protection licenses", both to avoid possible confusion and because Commons Clause got visceral reactions from some members of FLOSS community. Unfortunately, other similar licenses are less recognizable. The whole point of generic licenses is that they should be well known, widely used, and the legal departments already know their tradeoffs. If each company writes their own license then this makes it difficult for other companies to use their software, because legal departments need to check every license separately. Is there a generic license that is the same (in spirit) as Apache + Commons Clause?