5 ms·

What happened to dual licenses? Free for private and non-commercial use. $$ per seat for commercial use. This can still be completely open source.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
asylteltine 3y ago
People will come in and yell that non commercial license isn’t open source… but sorry it is! All my projects that are more than hobbies have non commercial licenses. It’s open source! If you want to profit it off of it, you can pay me part of that profit.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  ...so, how many major stakeholders have used your projects to-date?
  - asylteltine 3y ago
    I don’t know. Does that matter? I have written stuff that audio companies would love to steal but I provide for free to people who won’t make money from it. If there’s money to be made, I want some of it.
vedranm 3y ago
That's called source available.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- asylteltine 3y ago
  [dead]
teddyh 3y ago
According to the prevailing definitions, prohibiting commercial use is not Open Source.
- pickingdinner 3y ago
  Of what? the GPL? Software can be MIT + commercial. That's still perfectly open source.
  - pabs3 3y ago
    Of the Open Source Definition; no discrimination against fields of endeavor (such as selling software). https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
    - pickingdinner 3y ago
      You're not prohibiting anyone from using it. Nothing is stopping a business from using it, especially if the price is fair. So does OSI have complete authority over the definition of OS? Does their definition restrict dual licenses? Have they thought maybe creating more lucrative OS models/standards would help their cause?
      - teddyh 3y ago
        > So does OSI have complete authority over the definition of OS? Yes. > Does their definition restrict dual licenses? No.
        pickingdinner 3y ago
        > Yes Except GNU and OSI are in conflict? > No Then you can have an OS license with a business license or even an FU license (arbitrarily horrible license).
        ghaff 3y ago
candiddevmike 3y ago
How do you enforce that, especially as a small company/solo developer? How do you stop people from creating a FOSS alternative by reimplementing your freely available source code?
- pickingdinner 3y ago
  It really isn't about enforcing it. How do you enforce that is the question that even GPL struggles with. It's a simple value proposition and a simple premise. If you're commercial, we're commercial. If you're not making money, you can still have it. Compare that to just someone buying something. Individuals and especially businesses will buy what they need to buy. Imagine someone insisting "you don't have to buy me, but I am hungry". That's not even a business model. I find it's the value proposition is what is broken with most OSS. It's virtue signalling plus relying on donations. NPR does that, except they spend hours on the air begging for money. OSS might work if they were given the airtime too, but usually all the time they have is a few sentences the "shopper" reads before they hit the (free) download button (or enter the git command or whatever).
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    If you don't enforce your license, what's the point of having it? Lawyers aren't cheap, and international law is incredibly complex. How do you expect to make money if no one pays you for the commercial license because you don't enforce it?
    - pickingdinner 3y ago
      You could say that about any license. Every license has stipulations, including those not for profit. Otherwise it would be public domain. One could arguing enforcing open source is harder to afford specifically because you aren't making money off of it.
    - titoCA321 3y ago
      We have lots of people running around with "open source" projects worried about licenses when in reality they it provides them little if any protection against anything. This is owner of "open source" projects with dead community and fewer users worried about being exploited by "commercial" corporations and thus has foolishly believes that they can entrap "commercial user" with fancy IF/THEN/ELSE, statement in GUI license prompt. If tomorrow AT&T stiffs my bill with an extra $500 I and they refused to reverse the charges, I would probably eat those fees rather then waste more time and effort with money taking AT&T to court to get a judgment against them. Many of these "open source" projects don't need licensing because no one is using because they don't have anyone to license too. You can't pay a commercial user to use this code even if you wanted to. These projects are akin to the people that start side businesses but spend all the time and money registering for an LLC and SEO advertising but have no work or customers for their side business but appear busy day and night working on their hustle and reports losses on their income tax and pay the accountant extra to setup tax shelters for imaginary income that aren't coming but that's what they saw someone else do and thus they need this and that tax service as well.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

asylteltine 3y ago

People will come in and yell that non commercial license isn’t open source… but sorry it is! All my projects that are more than hobbies have non commercial licenses. It’s open source! If you want to profit it off of it, you can pay me part of that profit.

smoldesu 3y ago
...so, how many major stakeholders have used your projects to-date?
- asylteltine 3y ago
  I don’t know. Does that matter? I have written stuff that audio companies would love to steal but I provide for free to people who won’t make money from it. If there’s money to be made, I want some of it.

vedranm 3y ago

That's called source available.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
asylteltine 3y ago
[dead]

teddyh 3y ago

According to the prevailing definitions, prohibiting commercial use is not Open Source.

pickingdinner 3y ago
Of what? the GPL? Software can be MIT + commercial. That's still perfectly open source.
- pabs3 3y ago
  Of the Open Source Definition; no discrimination against fields of endeavor (such as selling software). https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
  - pickingdinner 3y ago
    You're not prohibiting anyone from using it. Nothing is stopping a business from using it, especially if the price is fair. So does OSI have complete authority over the definition of OS? Does their definition restrict dual licenses? Have they thought maybe creating more lucrative OS models/standards would help their cause?
    - teddyh 3y ago
      > So does OSI have complete authority over the definition of OS? Yes. > Does their definition restrict dual licenses? No.
      - pickingdinner 3y ago
        > Yes Except GNU and OSI are in conflict? > No Then you can have an OS license with a business license or even an FU license (arbitrarily horrible license).
        ghaff 3y ago

candiddevmike 3y ago

How do you enforce that, especially as a small company/solo developer? How do you stop people from creating a FOSS alternative by reimplementing your freely available source code?

pickingdinner 3y ago
It really isn't about enforcing it. How do you enforce that is the question that even GPL struggles with. It's a simple value proposition and a simple premise. If you're commercial, we're commercial. If you're not making money, you can still have it. Compare that to just someone buying something. Individuals and especially businesses will buy what they need to buy. Imagine someone insisting "you don't have to buy me, but I am hungry". That's not even a business model. I find it's the value proposition is what is broken with most OSS. It's virtue signalling plus relying on donations. NPR does that, except they spend hours on the air begging for money. OSS might work if they were given the airtime too, but usually all the time they have is a few sentences the "shopper" reads before they hit the (free) download button (or enter the git command or whatever).
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  If you don't enforce your license, what's the point of having it? Lawyers aren't cheap, and international law is incredibly complex. How do you expect to make money if no one pays you for the commercial license because you don't enforce it?
  - pickingdinner 3y ago
    You could say that about any license. Every license has stipulations, including those not for profit. Otherwise it would be public domain. One could arguing enforcing open source is harder to afford specifically because you aren't making money off of it.
  - titoCA321 3y ago
    We have lots of people running around with "open source" projects worried about licenses when in reality they it provides them little if any protection against anything. This is owner of "open source" projects with dead community and fewer users worried about being exploited by "commercial" corporations and thus has foolishly believes that they can entrap "commercial user" with fancy IF/THEN/ELSE, statement in GUI license prompt. If tomorrow AT&T stiffs my bill with an extra $500 I and they refused to reverse the charges, I would probably eat those fees rather then waste more time and effort with money taking AT&T to court to get a judgment against them. Many of these "open source" projects don't need licensing because no one is using because they don't have anyone to license too. You can't pay a commercial user to use this code even if you wanted to. These projects are akin to the people that start side businesses but spend all the time and money registering for an LLC and SEO advertising but have no work or customers for their side business but appear busy day and night working on their hustle and reports losses on their income tax and pay the accountant extra to setup tax shelters for imaginary income that aren't coming but that's what they saw someone else do and thus they need this and that tax service as well.