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Charging for a commercial license is virtual closed-source. You have reinvented selling software, except with a “try before you buy” model that enables engineer

Charging for a commercial license is virtual closed-source. You have reinvented selling software, except with a “try before you buy” model that enables engineers to vet its utility first before paying, with free usage for non-profits (i.e. other non-profit devs). I’m not making any comment about the merits of this model. I strictly make and sell closed-source software (SaaS). But it’s funny to me that this is essentially the same business model, but you use the threat of legal action rather than API keys to enforce your rights. “Open Source” is in the name only.

kiba 3y ago
Open source licenses are commercial licenses, full stop. It doesn't prevent for profit uses.
slondr 3y ago
Free as in free speech, not as in free beer. This has been a slogan of free software for decades. Charging money for your software is not in any way incompatible with open source.
- chii 3y ago
  > Charging money for your software is not in any way incompatible with open source of course not. But nobody has successfully been able to charge for it, without additional things such as services/support etc.
- chaxor 3y ago
  The main important part of open source, regardless of license, is that you have the ability to run it locally to ensure that the code written and provided is what is used for your interaction with the code (since obviously a company or entity can lie and provide code that is different than what is used as the SaS. Tailscale and Headscale come to mind.
godelski 3y ago
I really think these kinds of comments are counter productive to people seeing source available software (SAS, OSS, FOSS, or all three). Free to the public but not corporate is clearly not "try before you buy" and is a gross misinterpretation of this. I don't care what Citizens United ruling said, corporations are not the same as people and we should distinguish them as such. This model is in no way functionally similar to closed-source software and the comparison is laughable. The source is right there! __Stop gatekeeping__ Source available software with commercial licensing still helps the main intended target: hackers, builders, inventors, creators, learners, researchers, pen testers, and so on. Opened source code makes programs safer and encourages creativity. The article is right that you can't just live on donations and pure good will, as much as we'd love to see this you gotta pay the bills. Accountability is low in large societies and social pressure means little. SAS still helps the people, but it also puts restrictions on those that would profit off of your work and leave you high and dry. Comments like these only encourage closed source hardware as well as the lack of free software. The fucking name OSS confuses people and this has been an utter disaster. Your name should clearly indicate what is being advocated and should not conflict with a reasonable but distinctly different definition (there's a lot of this for some fucking reason). Especially when the reasonable interpretation makes more sense! Even you say that it is in the name only and we see these fights almost weekly here. Words mean what people use them as. I don't care what OSI says, OSS and SAS are the same thing. Corporations lose trademarks as words/phrases enter the lexicon, I don't know why we should defend OSI's inane definition. They have not won the culture war on what the term means.
- ezekg 3y ago
  > Words mean what people use them as. I don't care what OSI says, OSS and SAS are the same thing. I completely agree. I’ve avoided using the term “open source” where possible for my SAS, instead opting for word-play like “open, source-available”, but it was frustrating that I felt I even needed to do that to avoid backlash from the zealots. And I’ve loosened my reigns there a bit as well as time has gone by. I think it’s silly. I want to use “open source” because that’s what it is. As an example, there’s no reason Elastic should have had to cave to OSI and start using “free & open” everywhere in place of “open source.” The reality is SAS licenses like ELv2 may not be “Open Source (tm)” but they sure as hell are “open source” to most people in our industry. FOSS !== OSS.
csdreamer7 3y ago
> Charging for a commercial license is virtual closed-source. You have reinvented selling software, except with a “try before you buy” model that enables engineers to vet its utility first before paying, with free usage for non-profits (i.e. other non-profit devs). You really do not understand what rights Open Source licenses give you. The GPL in particular really only affects you if you distribute it (a js library vs nginx). There is no 'non-profit' exception in the GPL. > but you use the threat of legal action rather than API keys to enforce your rights. “Open Source” is in the name only. Every software company has a license that governs it's use. I am pretty certain your company will use legal threats if it's source code got out or it's frontend code was being abused. There are likely legal clauses in your employment contract over the source code that you have signed.
memefrog 3y ago
It is not "virtually closed source" to license something as GPLv3 and also under a proprietary license. In fact, it is something explicitly advocated for by Richard Stallman himself and the Free Software Foundation generally: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions He's got mixed feelings, but says "I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed." If of all people rms considers something acceptable, then whatever that thing is, it certainly can't be described as "virtually closed source". If you release something as open source software, then it is open source software. The end. That's what the term means. Also licensing it under a proprietary license doesn't change that. Free software licensing is not "try before you buy", and it is not "free usage for non-profits". Open source and "not for profit" are not synonyms de facto or de jure. You can use GPL'd software in commercial products and in fact many people do, frequently. You probably have a dozen copies of Linux in your house in various appliances that you don't even know are there. There are many other examples.
- ximm 3y ago
  There is a subtle but important difference here though: If you publish a piece of software under two licenses, one open source and one commercial, why would anybody pick the commercial one? You cannot say "corporations have to pick the commercial one". The only way to do that would be to include a term in the open source license so it cannot be used by corporations. But then it would no longer meet the open source definition. "Free for private use but payed for commercial use" is not open source! But if the open source license is copyleft (e.g. GPL), any software that uses it would also have to be open source. So dual licensing allows corporations to pay to keep their own code a secret. This implies that dual licensing is pointless for non-copyleft licenses like MIT, and also for developer tooling that is not directly used in the final product.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    You might want the logos
cttet 3y ago
> “Open Source” is in the name only. Hard to imagine this can be upvoted to this high. "Open Source" just means that the source code is open, not closed. Some people just like the source code to be open (e.g. for security reasons to examine the source code.). It is just as simple as that.
mejutoco 3y ago
Open source has a specific meaning clarified in each license (like truffle, truffle-flavoured in food). Each license is unambiguous about what one is allowed to do. Some licenses favor the freedom of the user, and some the freedom of the developer, in different degrees. It is not a "name only" thing, unless we insist on misinterpreting it.

kiba 3y ago

Open source licenses are commercial licenses, full stop. It doesn't prevent for profit uses.

slondr 3y ago

Free as in free speech, not as in free beer. This has been a slogan of free software for decades. Charging money for your software is not in any way incompatible with open source.

chii 3y ago
> Charging money for your software is not in any way incompatible with open source of course not. But nobody has successfully been able to charge for it, without additional things such as services/support etc.
chaxor 3y ago
The main important part of open source, regardless of license, is that you have the ability to run it locally to ensure that the code written and provided is what is used for your interaction with the code (since obviously a company or entity can lie and provide code that is different than what is used as the SaS. Tailscale and Headscale come to mind.

godelski 3y ago

I really think these kinds of comments are counter productive to people seeing source available software (SAS, OSS, FOSS, or all three). Free to the public but not corporate is clearly not "try before you buy" and is a gross misinterpretation of this. I don't care what Citizens United ruling said, corporations are not the same as people and we should distinguish them as such. This model is in no way functionally similar to closed-source software and the comparison is laughable. The source is right there! __Stop gatekeeping__ Source available software with commercial licensing still helps the main intended target: hackers, builders, inventors, creators, learners, researchers, pen testers, and so on. Opened source code makes programs safer and encourages creativity. The article is right that you can't just live on donations and pure good will, as much as we'd love to see this you gotta pay the bills. Accountability is low in large societies and social pressure means little. SAS still helps the people, but it also puts restrictions on those that would profit off of your work and leave you high and dry. Comments like these only encourage closed source hardware as well as the lack of free software. The fucking name OSS confuses people and this has been an utter disaster. Your name should clearly indicate what is being advocated and should not conflict with a reasonable but distinctly different definition (there's a lot of this for some fucking reason). Especially when the reasonable interpretation makes more sense! Even you say that it is in the name only and we see these fights almost weekly here. Words mean what people use them as. I don't care what OSI says, OSS and SAS are the same thing. Corporations lose trademarks as words/phrases enter the lexicon, I don't know why we should defend OSI's inane definition. They have not won the culture war on what the term means.

ezekg 3y ago
> Words mean what people use them as. I don't care what OSI says, OSS and SAS are the same thing. I completely agree. I’ve avoided using the term “open source” where possible for my SAS, instead opting for word-play like “open, source-available”, but it was frustrating that I felt I even needed to do that to avoid backlash from the zealots. And I’ve loosened my reigns there a bit as well as time has gone by. I think it’s silly. I want to use “open source” because that’s what it is. As an example, there’s no reason Elastic should have had to cave to OSI and start using “free & open” everywhere in place of “open source.” The reality is SAS licenses like ELv2 may not be “Open Source (tm)” but they sure as hell are “open source” to most people in our industry. FOSS !== OSS.

csdreamer7 3y ago

> Charging for a commercial license is virtual closed-source. You have reinvented selling software, except with a “try before you buy” model that enables engineers to vet its utility first before paying, with free usage for non-profits (i.e. other non-profit devs). You really do not understand what rights Open Source licenses give you. The GPL in particular really only affects you if you distribute it (a js library vs nginx). There is no 'non-profit' exception in the GPL. > but you use the threat of legal action rather than API keys to enforce your rights. “Open Source” is in the name only. Every software company has a license that governs it's use. I am pretty certain your company will use legal threats if it's source code got out or it's frontend code was being abused. There are likely legal clauses in your employment contract over the source code that you have signed.

memefrog 3y ago

It is not "virtually closed source" to license something as GPLv3 and also under a proprietary license. In fact, it is something explicitly advocated for by Richard Stallman himself and the Free Software Foundation generally: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions He's got mixed feelings, but says "I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed." If of all people rms considers something acceptable, then whatever that thing is, it certainly can't be described as "virtually closed source". If you release something as open source software, then it is open source software. The end. That's what the term means. Also licensing it under a proprietary license doesn't change that. Free software licensing is not "try before you buy", and it is not "free usage for non-profits". Open source and "not for profit" are not synonyms de facto or de jure. You can use GPL'd software in commercial products and in fact many people do, frequently. You probably have a dozen copies of Linux in your house in various appliances that you don't even know are there. There are many other examples.

ximm 3y ago
There is a subtle but important difference here though: If you publish a piece of software under two licenses, one open source and one commercial, why would anybody pick the commercial one? You cannot say "corporations have to pick the commercial one". The only way to do that would be to include a term in the open source license so it cannot be used by corporations. But then it would no longer meet the open source definition. "Free for private use but payed for commercial use" is not open source! But if the open source license is copyleft (e.g. GPL), any software that uses it would also have to be open source. So dual licensing allows corporations to pay to keep their own code a secret. This implies that dual licensing is pointless for non-copyleft licenses like MIT, and also for developer tooling that is not directly used in the final product.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  You might want the logos

cttet 3y ago

> “Open Source” is in the name only. Hard to imagine this can be upvoted to this high. "Open Source" just means that the source code is open, not closed. Some people just like the source code to be open (e.g. for security reasons to examine the source code.). It is just as simple as that.

mejutoco 3y ago

Open source has a specific meaning clarified in each license (like truffle, truffle-flavoured in food). Each license is unambiguous about what one is allowed to do. Some licenses favor the freedom of the user, and some the freedom of the developer, in different degrees. It is not a "name only" thing, unless we insist on misinterpreting it.