4 ms·

Yeah, that seems like contradictory gibberish. If you're closed source and have revenue over 1M you just have to obtain it from someone who is allowed to use it

Yeah, that seems like contradictory gibberish. If you're closed source and have revenue over 1M you just have to obtain it from someone who is allowed to use it according to the Apache 2.0 license rather than directly from MS? The license explicitly allows anyone to consume it as a transitive package dependency, so you just need to make a trivial open source library which imports it and then depend on that? They might as well just say that if you have revenue over $1M they'd appreciate if you gave them money since the license doesn't seem to actually impose any sort of legal obligation to do so.

modeless 4y ago
Maybe I'll start a business reselling Apache-licensed copies of ImageSharp. $10 each. As long as I don't get more than 100k customers I'll have less than $1m revenue and I'm good! This is definitely the stupidest license I've heard of. I'm currently in the same situation, thinking about how to open source one of my projects while retaining the ability to make some money somehow, and this is something I never even considered because it's so stupid.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  It isn't, because as long as the price for a direct license is reasonable, companies will pay it just to have the paperwork. SQLite is public domain, and makes money by selling "licenses" to such companies (they're called something else, but it allows the company buying it to file it in their "licenses" folder and tick a checkbox; https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html).
  - modeless 4y ago
    That doesn't make this license not stupid. Sure, SQLite sells licenses, there's nothing wrong with that, ImageSharp is welcome to do it too! But you'll notice that SQLite doesn't have a license like this one...
    - justin66 4y ago
      SQLite is also the most widely used open source library, or close to it, in the entire world. They can get by with a miniscule portion of one percent of users paying for a license.
  - plorkyeran 4y ago
    If the intent is for it to be Apache 2.0 with a completely optional paid license, you can just do that without a convoluted licensing scheme.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      That is exactly what they did originally, and it did not produce enough paid customers.
      - TillE 4y ago
        That's unfortunate, but will the license change actually solve that? Are a lot of companies going to pay an annual license for a .NET image library? In the longer term, I'm guessing this pushes everyone pretty strongly towards SkiaSharp instead.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - no_wizard 4y ago
    I think they make most of their money from the support contracts they sell, if I recall correctly. I think nearly every major company has one for instance and they’re pretty pricey
- blibble 4y ago
  if it's a library the classic model is to distribute it under the GPL and have a separate proprietary license that you charge for (doesn't stop mega-corps using it as a cloud service/internally though)
  - pooper 4y ago
    I think dual licensing AGPLv3 (or above) is the simplest approach. Include a separate paid (preferably straightforward) license and be done. Make it easy for people to pay you and make it easier to get refunds for any reason. Another option is to do what Duende did. I think Duende (Identity Server) handled the situation pretty well. https://duendesoftware.com/products/identityserver https://duendesoftware.com/products/identityserver > Standard License Pricing > Free for development, testing and personal projects—only pay for production. Try it now! Learn about our free Community Edition. > Our Community Edition license is feature equivalent to our Enterprise Edition, but only includes standard support. > Community Edition allows hosting IdentityServer on your own infrastructure (including your cloud). It is not for scenarios where you redistribute IdentityServer, or build software for third parties. In this case you either need a redistribution license, or the end-customer needs a standard license. > For-profit companies/individuals with less than 1M USD annual gross revenue > Non-profit organization with a published annual budget less than 1M USD > Registered charities
    - Macha 4y ago
      You'll note that Duende correctly does not call their model open source. Is source available a step up from fully closed source? Sure. But it's not the same as open source. So if your goal is to promote open source, I don't see why you would work with a product such as Duende, or ImageSharp if they hypothetically followed this example.
tomnipotent 4y ago
> impose any sort of legal obligation to do so The whole point of being in breach of contract is that you can be sued for it.

modeless 4y ago

Maybe I'll start a business reselling Apache-licensed copies of ImageSharp. $10 each. As long as I don't get more than 100k customers I'll have less than $1m revenue and I'm good! This is definitely the stupidest license I've heard of. I'm currently in the same situation, thinking about how to open source one of my projects while retaining the ability to make some money somehow, and this is something I never even considered because it's so stupid.

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
It isn't, because as long as the price for a direct license is reasonable, companies will pay it just to have the paperwork. SQLite is public domain, and makes money by selling "licenses" to such companies (they're called something else, but it allows the company buying it to file it in their "licenses" folder and tick a checkbox; https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html).
- modeless 4y ago
  That doesn't make this license not stupid. Sure, SQLite sells licenses, there's nothing wrong with that, ImageSharp is welcome to do it too! But you'll notice that SQLite doesn't have a license like this one...
  - justin66 4y ago
    SQLite is also the most widely used open source library, or close to it, in the entire world. They can get by with a miniscule portion of one percent of users paying for a license.
- plorkyeran 4y ago
  If the intent is for it to be Apache 2.0 with a completely optional paid license, you can just do that without a convoluted licensing scheme.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    That is exactly what they did originally, and it did not produce enough paid customers.
    - TillE 4y ago
      That's unfortunate, but will the license change actually solve that? Are a lot of companies going to pay an annual license for a .NET image library? In the longer term, I'm guessing this pushes everyone pretty strongly towards SkiaSharp instead.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- no_wizard 4y ago
  I think they make most of their money from the support contracts they sell, if I recall correctly. I think nearly every major company has one for instance and they’re pretty pricey
blibble 4y ago
if it's a library the classic model is to distribute it under the GPL and have a separate proprietary license that you charge for (doesn't stop mega-corps using it as a cloud service/internally though)
- pooper 4y ago
  I think dual licensing AGPLv3 (or above) is the simplest approach. Include a separate paid (preferably straightforward) license and be done. Make it easy for people to pay you and make it easier to get refunds for any reason. Another option is to do what Duende did. I think Duende (Identity Server) handled the situation pretty well. https://duendesoftware.com/products/identityserver https://duendesoftware.com/products/identityserver > Standard License Pricing > Free for development, testing and personal projects—only pay for production. Try it now! Learn about our free Community Edition. > Our Community Edition license is feature equivalent to our Enterprise Edition, but only includes standard support. > Community Edition allows hosting IdentityServer on your own infrastructure (including your cloud). It is not for scenarios where you redistribute IdentityServer, or build software for third parties. In this case you either need a redistribution license, or the end-customer needs a standard license. > For-profit companies/individuals with less than 1M USD annual gross revenue > Non-profit organization with a published annual budget less than 1M USD > Registered charities
  - Macha 4y ago
    You'll note that Duende correctly does not call their model open source. Is source available a step up from fully closed source? Sure. But it's not the same as open source. So if your goal is to promote open source, I don't see why you would work with a product such as Duende, or ImageSharp if they hypothetically followed this example.

tomnipotent 4y ago

> impose any sort of legal obligation to do so The whole point of being in breach of contract is that you can be sued for it.