6 ms·
Ask HN: What license should I choose for my software?
I've been building a platform that is going to make DevOps work on any cloud 10x easier and faster, meaning you either won't need to deal with DevOps at all or you will do only the tiny part which is really specific to you.
I've managed to build a lot of the features I wanted and now I want to make it open-source/code available.
My question is what license is the best? Can I start with CC and move to MIT later?
https://github.com/utopiops/utopiops
- bombcar 4y agoDo you want the widest possible usage of it, including companies taking it and reselling it? Then MIT might work. Do you want it to only be used and not sold? Probably AGPL or something. Do you want to sell it also? Then AGPL with a separate commercial license for those who want to pay.
- kamrani 4y agoI think the last one then. I want to be able to sell it (exclusively), and anyone should be able to use the open-source version for free if they want (there is a SaaS offering for whoever wants it).
- crystoloxy 4y agoI don’t think that is “open source” then, more like you have a source-available freemium model? People can see the source code, and use it for free, but that’s all? If someone makes their own changes can they distribute them? Can they charge money for them? Or is the idea that people can contribute code, but only back to you, which you can sell? I’ll be curious to hear what you settle on.
- pabs3 4y agoThe AGPL doesn't prevent competitors selling the software, complying with it is reasonably easy even for a SaaS company.
- kamrani 4y agoThen I think it's not what I want.
- pabs3 4y agoIts beginning to sound like you don't want an open source license, but a proprietary one instead.
- kamrani 4y agoI just want to make sure people can use it for free if they want but I don't want to give the right to sell.
- pabs3 4y agoA license that says that couldn't be classed as Open Source or Free Software, but maybe as Ethical Source. https://ethicalsource.dev/principles/ https://ethicalsource.dev/principles/
- bigiain 4y ago> Can I start with CC and move to MIT later? If it's all your own code, you can give it to whoever you want under whatever license suits you at the time. If you're open sourcing it to try and encourage contributions from other people though, you need to think about whether you are going to need to get a contributor agreement to assign IP/copyright to you (or some legal entity crated around the software) if you ever want to do that down the track. Another thing to consider is what the impact of Amazon packaging up or forking your project and selling it "as a service" without contributing anything back to the project? Do you need to investigate one of the no longer "open source" licences like Mongo/Redis have done to restrict them from doing that? In my opinion (and knowing nothing about your project or goals) depending on your philosophy, you either go "full software freedom purity" and GPL it (which will mean places like Google will avoid it like the plague), or you go maximal freedom wit5h MIT/BSD. (Or possibly even dual licence like Perl which lets you choose between either Artistic Lic else or GPL)
- kamrani 4y agoThat's exactly what I'm trying to do. My concern is that a large enterprise like Amazon jumps in and in a few months I see exactly the scenario you describe. I'll add a contributor agreement right away and it seems a dual license is the way.
- mooreds 4y agoI wrote a blog post about this year ago that might be a fun read for you: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3438 https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3438 I don't think it'd be a few months, unless your software is fantastically, wildly, mind-blowingly successful (or very very very unique). But if you are massively successful in a few years and the license is right, the cloud providers will probably come for you.
- kamrani 4y agoThanks it's a good read.
- 4y ago
- elviejo 4y agoAGPL will protect you, your users in the future and prevent companies like Amazon from profiting from your hard work and give nothing back to the community. See what happened to elastic search: https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/opinion/Elastic-vs-AWS-highlights-open-source-monetization-dilemma https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/opinion/Elas...
- kamrani 4y agoThanks, sounds like what I need. Not sure if with AGPL still I have to use a dual license approach. Also it's very true about what happened to elastic search or was about to happen to Sentry.
- ThePhysicist 4y agoFor standalone tools that people use in their workflows without linking them to their own code (A)GPL is mostly fine. If it's something that should be used as a library I'd use a more permissive license like BSD-3 or Apache 2.0, as otherwise you'll have adoption problems especially for larger enterprises that use proper open-source license management tools (as those will flag GPL licenses as high risk). That said think of licensing as one part of your open-source strategy. From my experience licenses won't keep your competitors from copying your code or circumventing your license terms. The best thing is still to keep your most business-critical code closed-source.
- kamrani 4y agoFair points. It's not a library and it's actually going to be provided as a SaaS product and as you mentioned I think it's best not to share the critical parts of code. At least that's what I'm doing.