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IANAL but the license (CCL) is quite permissive except for the one use case of building a competing SaaS offering to Confluent [1]; the same type of license mos

IANAL but the license (CCL) is quite permissive except for the one use case of building a competing SaaS offering to Confluent [1]; the same type of license most cloud providers are using these days. But source available is definitely a valid term as well. I really do hope people will use this code! [1]: https://www.confluent.io/confluent-community-license-faq/ https://www.confluent.io/confluent-community-license-faq/

freeqaz 4y ago
Have you considered using a license like Business Source License (BSL) that would eventually become a true OSI license, like Apache, after a few years? I think it's valuable for old source available code to not bitrot away when the value of it to the company decreases.
- reducks 4y ago
  Absolutely, we picked the path-of-least-resistance license for the initial release in order to get the code into the open, but we'll continuously evaluate and see whether switching to a license like BSL makes sense. It's been awesome to see the evolution of licenses in just the past few years, and there are a lot more options than when I started this project. Hoping that having the project public will enable us to build a community and gain continuous feedback that will help drive technical, licensing, and other decisions in the future.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    Considering how much Confluent depends on Kafka, maybe you should consider tying a future version to whatever license is used at Kafka, so you can give your users the freedoms that Kafka gave you.
ssddanbrown 4y ago
Sure, it is fairly permissive as licenses go but those added restrictions fundamentally make this not open source, the use of this project is no longer fully open for use due to the restrictions you've place upon it. It might seem overly pedantic, but it can be quite important since many companies try to blur the lines of what open source is for their own benefit. If interested, I go into a little more detail on this here: https://danb.me/blog/posts/why-open-source-term-is-important/ https://danb.me/blog/posts/why-open-source-term-is-important...
- ianbutler 4y ago
  I think this is an overly dogmatic way of looking at Open Source. I think this way of looking at Open Source, and more largely OSI's stances on the term are out of touch with the realities of successful open projects and the challenges their developers face from the current software market and further out of touch with how the term Open Source is colloquially used by a large amount of people. You should be able to share source, allow individuals to use and modify your work and build a community around that work without worrying that same work will be co-opted by an entity seeking to undermine the effort you and your community have done for years, by slapping a different name on it and hosting it, competing directly against you with your own work as a business. I'm fine if "Open Source" can't be used to describe these projects which are working with imperfect situations and looking to protect themselves while still providing their software with generally good intentions, but by the same token I then hope the software community will come up with a new good name for these type of projects, it becomes the common name, and the dogmatic definition of "Open Source" fades into the relative obscurity I think it deserves from being so divorced from reality.
  - microtonal 4y ago
    I think this is an overly dogmatic way of looking at Open Source. Open Source is a functional definition that served us for 25 years. E.g. if software is Open Source, it can be included in a Linux distribution. Most distributions do not accept software that is incompatible with the Open Source definition. Diluting the term open source makes it more difficult to talk about a certain class of software licenses. And why dilute the term if we have the perfect alternative term source available?
    - ianbutler 4y ago
      Is it now? I was under the assumption it was an ideological definition, at least that's how people present every time one of these projects are even a smidge off from the OSI definition. I don't think most major Open Source projects in the last 10 years have even once considered, 'E.g. if software is Open Source, it can be included in a Linux distribution.' That is exactly what I mean by "out of touch". If I had to guess the primary motivator for being Open Source, are the communal and moral aspects of it.
JoshTriplett 4y ago
> the same type of license most cloud providers are using these days Very few pieces of software are attempting to propagate those non-open licenses; far more software is just using Open Source licenses. If you want to call it "open source", use an Open Source license. If you don't, please use terms like "making the source available" or similar. (But please, consider just making it Open Source.)
alwayslikethis 4y ago
The software becoming source available is great, but calling it open source is still misleading. Open source implies an expectation that everyone is able to use it without restrictions, possibly on the condition that the derivatives should also remain under the same license.
ahachete 4y ago
"quite permissive" and "open source" are terms quite far apart. Open Source software provides certain clear guarantees to the users of that software. Even small changes to these guarantees probably render the software not open source. This is not pedantic rhetoric, there are clear reasons why open source software should be clearly told apart from proprietary (including source available): given the OSS guarantees, potential users of a given software may make usage / no usage decisions without further due diligence. If those guarantees are modified, due diligence and risk studies may be needed, specially for companies (what if we're not a competitor today but tomorrow we want to? what do you call competitor? etc). Open Source exists for a reason, which is to provide a firm ground on those who are good with the guarantees it provides. Please don't try to blur the line.

freeqaz 4y ago

Have you considered using a license like Business Source License (BSL) that would eventually become a true OSI license, like Apache, after a few years? I think it's valuable for old source available code to not bitrot away when the value of it to the company decreases.

reducks 4y ago
Absolutely, we picked the path-of-least-resistance license for the initial release in order to get the code into the open, but we'll continuously evaluate and see whether switching to a license like BSL makes sense. It's been awesome to see the evolution of licenses in just the past few years, and there are a lot more options than when I started this project. Hoping that having the project public will enable us to build a community and gain continuous feedback that will help drive technical, licensing, and other decisions in the future.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  Considering how much Confluent depends on Kafka, maybe you should consider tying a future version to whatever license is used at Kafka, so you can give your users the freedoms that Kafka gave you.

ssddanbrown 4y ago

Sure, it is fairly permissive as licenses go but those added restrictions fundamentally make this not open source, the use of this project is no longer fully open for use due to the restrictions you've place upon it. It might seem overly pedantic, but it can be quite important since many companies try to blur the lines of what open source is for their own benefit. If interested, I go into a little more detail on this here: https://danb.me/blog/posts/why-open-source-term-is-important/ https://danb.me/blog/posts/why-open-source-term-is-important...

ianbutler 4y ago
I think this is an overly dogmatic way of looking at Open Source. I think this way of looking at Open Source, and more largely OSI's stances on the term are out of touch with the realities of successful open projects and the challenges their developers face from the current software market and further out of touch with how the term Open Source is colloquially used by a large amount of people. You should be able to share source, allow individuals to use and modify your work and build a community around that work without worrying that same work will be co-opted by an entity seeking to undermine the effort you and your community have done for years, by slapping a different name on it and hosting it, competing directly against you with your own work as a business. I'm fine if "Open Source" can't be used to describe these projects which are working with imperfect situations and looking to protect themselves while still providing their software with generally good intentions, but by the same token I then hope the software community will come up with a new good name for these type of projects, it becomes the common name, and the dogmatic definition of "Open Source" fades into the relative obscurity I think it deserves from being so divorced from reality.
- microtonal 4y ago
  I think this is an overly dogmatic way of looking at Open Source. Open Source is a functional definition that served us for 25 years. E.g. if software is Open Source, it can be included in a Linux distribution. Most distributions do not accept software that is incompatible with the Open Source definition. Diluting the term open source makes it more difficult to talk about a certain class of software licenses. And why dilute the term if we have the perfect alternative term source available?
  - ianbutler 4y ago
    Is it now? I was under the assumption it was an ideological definition, at least that's how people present every time one of these projects are even a smidge off from the OSI definition. I don't think most major Open Source projects in the last 10 years have even once considered, 'E.g. if software is Open Source, it can be included in a Linux distribution.' That is exactly what I mean by "out of touch". If I had to guess the primary motivator for being Open Source, are the communal and moral aspects of it.

JoshTriplett 4y ago

> the same type of license most cloud providers are using these days Very few pieces of software are attempting to propagate those non-open licenses; far more software is just using Open Source licenses. If you want to call it "open source", use an Open Source license. If you don't, please use terms like "making the source available" or similar. (But please, consider just making it Open Source.)

alwayslikethis 4y ago

The software becoming source available is great, but calling it open source is still misleading. Open source implies an expectation that everyone is able to use it without restrictions, possibly on the condition that the derivatives should also remain under the same license.

ahachete 4y ago

"quite permissive" and "open source" are terms quite far apart. Open Source software provides certain clear guarantees to the users of that software. Even small changes to these guarantees probably render the software not open source. This is not pedantic rhetoric, there are clear reasons why open source software should be clearly told apart from proprietary (including source available): given the OSS guarantees, potential users of a given software may make usage / no usage decisions without further due diligence. If those guarantees are modified, due diligence and risk studies may be needed, specially for companies (what if we're not a competitor today but tomorrow we want to? what do you call competitor? etc). Open Source exists for a reason, which is to provide a firm ground on those who are good with the guarantees it provides. Please don't try to blur the line.