5 ms·

> My understanding is that if I wanted to fork a piece of software, this licence would prevent me from doing so for two years. Then after those two years, I wou

> My understanding is that if I wanted to fork a piece of software, this licence would prevent me from doing so for two years. Then after those two years, I would essentially be stuck using an old version of the source and have to play catch-up with the devs, who would be able to use my work for free but I would not be allowed to use theirs. The answer is a bit of yes, and a bit of no. If the project is actively maintained then that company that does so, has the first mover advantage. If that company slows down / does something dodgy, you can fork it that very moment. You can't commercially compete for two years which is correct, but it opens up that opportunity. > Had this license not been used there would be nothing preventing me from forking the software. Except potentially an even worse license or an open core model where the best bits are not public at all. I do not believe this to be a better model. You're right that in the hypothetical situation a project could be open source without any restrictions and the original developers can reap the benefits without any free-riders coming along. But our experience has shown that just appealing to the good in people doesn't work. > All those examples you cited weren't using this licence, and probably would have had a much harder job creating their forks if this license was used. I would argue that that is not the case. Xapian under a hypothetical FSL would long have been able to commercialize it. MariaDB had more options for commercialization than they do today because of the GPL limitations. That said, I'm not working there so I cannot say how much the GPL was a hindrance.

mcny 3y ago
What are your thoughts on AGPL? Is it not good enough? Do you think (lets say it out loud because we all know what we are talking about) Amazon Web Services will have advantage over you if you picked AGPL as your license? At the end of the day, I think your sales team has to earn its salary. It can't just phone it in like (I assume) Microsoft sales does with Microsoft SQL Server. Why isn't AGPL good enough? Genuinely asking, what change does it need to make it better? Edit: previously on hn https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34768668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34768668
- the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
  > What are your thoughts on AGPL? Is it not good enough? I'm generally not a fan of GPL based licensed because it means that you create a massive dis-balance between the original copyright holder (who can dual license for commercialization) and everybody else. It might be fine for Sentry or another SaaS business, but then you cannot even take pieces of code and use it in another project that cannot be GPL licensed because for instance it needs to go the app store etc. GPL (and AGPL in particular) is considered such a tainted environment that many steer away from it entirely. AGPL also is from the v3 family of GPL licenses which have outright bans in many commercial environments. But GPL in general is a too complex topic to address in a HN comment for me.
  - pabs3 3y ago
    What about GPL projects without a CLA that have multiple copyright holders, so that none of them can dual license?
  - mcny 3y ago
    > I'm generally not a fan of GPL based licensed because it means that you create a massive dis-balance between the original copyright holder (who can dual license for commercialization) and everybody else. It might be fine for Sentry or another SaaS business, but then you cannot even take pieces of code and use it in another project that cannot be GPL licensed because for instance it needs to go the app store etc. > GPL (and AGPL in particular) is considered such a tainted environment that many steer away from it entirely. AGPL also is from the v3 family of GPL licenses which have outright bans in many commercial environments. But GPL in general is a too complex topic to address in a HN comment for me. This is very helpful, thank you. I have no insider information about elastic or sentry. Everything I know about the whole thing is from comments such as from HN. What I am hearing from you is that you don't see big cloud providers such as AWS as a threat but rather as an insurance policy so as users you can feel relatively safe in picking a SaaS product knowing that in the future (two years from now?) if the vendor were to go tits up, you can still have someone else who will step in and fill the void. I thought your intention was to make it as difficult as possible for another SaaS provider to compete against you but... clearly not? I appreciate the thoughtfulness of all of this and the pain of SaaS customers because just having the source code isn't enough. Often times, I am simply not qualified to run something like sentry myself and it is a matter of either spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on a SaaS or spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on another dedicated employee. That being said, what I am reading from your comment is that the problem with GPL at least from the perspective of the user is all about perception and not about substance. From what I understand as a hobbyist, I can essentially disregard licenses altogether. I am not distributing anything. You could license flask as Oracle Evil License (not actual name of the license, just making it up) and it wouldn't matter as a hobbyist because all I am doing is learning about flask. What I mean is AGPLv3 should be fine for companies who are not SaaS providers and those who are SaaS providers, should contribute back. What makes you not a fan of GPL?
James_K 3y ago
> Xapian under a hypothetical FSL would long have been able to commercialize it. I feel like you still aren't understanding what I'm saying here. Suppose a hypothetical version of the Xapian devs existed that were willing to use the FSL, but didn't because it didn't exist at the time. I could email those people, and ask "can you give me an Apache licensed version of your code from two years ago". They would then give me a copy of that code. The license is just a written expression of what a developer is willing to do. The existence of this licence doesn't actually change what devs are willing to do. It doesn't solve any problems. Anyone not using this license can still release old versions of their software under a different licence. Likewise anyone using the licence can always stop using it for future revisions of their software. It doesn't enable you to do anything, and it doesn't provide much of a guarantee to users.
- the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
  > Suppose a hypothetical version of the Xapian devs existed that were willing to use the FSL, but didn't because it didn't exist at the time. I could email those people, and ask "can you give me an Apache licensed version of your code from two years ago". They would then give me a copy of that code. Just to be clear what happened at Xapian: a bunch of people built some software. It was open sourced under the GPL which prevented further adoption. Through some series of acquisitions the copyright holder ended up not caring about it and did not enable anyone to relicense it under another license. If that was FSL licensed to begin with, the moment the copyright holder no longer cared, it would have become available under a license again that enabled commercialization. The folks behind Xapian are unaware of the exact licensing status, but definitely cannot relicense: https://trac.xapian.org/wiki/FAQ/CommercialLicence https://trac.xapian.org/wiki/FAQ/CommercialLicence They for a while I believe tried to prevent further GPLification of the source.
  - James_K 3y ago
    This is such a niche case it's not really worth talking about, but the original devs still released it under GPL. The FSL is literally just the Apache license in this case. So you aren't arguing for the FSL, just that the original devs should have used Apache instead of GPL. That's just your opinion. If there was a version of the FSL that converted to GPL after two years, you'd have the exact same issue. The FSL portion of the licence is not relevant as no one was ever interested in releasing Xapian under a closed licence for a limited amount of time. This isn't really a rebuttal to my wider point that FSL doesn't do anything you couldn't without it. There's nothing stopping you from just releasing old versions under a different license anyway, and no real reason to commit to doing so specifically for the next two years.

mcny 3y ago

What are your thoughts on AGPL? Is it not good enough? Do you think (lets say it out loud because we all know what we are talking about) Amazon Web Services will have advantage over you if you picked AGPL as your license? At the end of the day, I think your sales team has to earn its salary. It can't just phone it in like (I assume) Microsoft sales does with Microsoft SQL Server. Why isn't AGPL good enough? Genuinely asking, what change does it need to make it better? Edit: previously on hn https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34768668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34768668

the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
> What are your thoughts on AGPL? Is it not good enough? I'm generally not a fan of GPL based licensed because it means that you create a massive dis-balance between the original copyright holder (who can dual license for commercialization) and everybody else. It might be fine for Sentry or another SaaS business, but then you cannot even take pieces of code and use it in another project that cannot be GPL licensed because for instance it needs to go the app store etc. GPL (and AGPL in particular) is considered such a tainted environment that many steer away from it entirely. AGPL also is from the v3 family of GPL licenses which have outright bans in many commercial environments. But GPL in general is a too complex topic to address in a HN comment for me.
- pabs3 3y ago
  What about GPL projects without a CLA that have multiple copyright holders, so that none of them can dual license?
- mcny 3y ago
  > I'm generally not a fan of GPL based licensed because it means that you create a massive dis-balance between the original copyright holder (who can dual license for commercialization) and everybody else. It might be fine for Sentry or another SaaS business, but then you cannot even take pieces of code and use it in another project that cannot be GPL licensed because for instance it needs to go the app store etc. > GPL (and AGPL in particular) is considered such a tainted environment that many steer away from it entirely. AGPL also is from the v3 family of GPL licenses which have outright bans in many commercial environments. But GPL in general is a too complex topic to address in a HN comment for me. This is very helpful, thank you. I have no insider information about elastic or sentry. Everything I know about the whole thing is from comments such as from HN. What I am hearing from you is that you don't see big cloud providers such as AWS as a threat but rather as an insurance policy so as users you can feel relatively safe in picking a SaaS product knowing that in the future (two years from now?) if the vendor were to go tits up, you can still have someone else who will step in and fill the void. I thought your intention was to make it as difficult as possible for another SaaS provider to compete against you but... clearly not? I appreciate the thoughtfulness of all of this and the pain of SaaS customers because just having the source code isn't enough. Often times, I am simply not qualified to run something like sentry myself and it is a matter of either spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on a SaaS or spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on another dedicated employee. That being said, what I am reading from your comment is that the problem with GPL at least from the perspective of the user is all about perception and not about substance. From what I understand as a hobbyist, I can essentially disregard licenses altogether. I am not distributing anything. You could license flask as Oracle Evil License (not actual name of the license, just making it up) and it wouldn't matter as a hobbyist because all I am doing is learning about flask. What I mean is AGPLv3 should be fine for companies who are not SaaS providers and those who are SaaS providers, should contribute back. What makes you not a fan of GPL?

James_K 3y ago

> Xapian under a hypothetical FSL would long have been able to commercialize it. I feel like you still aren't understanding what I'm saying here. Suppose a hypothetical version of the Xapian devs existed that were willing to use the FSL, but didn't because it didn't exist at the time. I could email those people, and ask "can you give me an Apache licensed version of your code from two years ago". They would then give me a copy of that code. The license is just a written expression of what a developer is willing to do. The existence of this licence doesn't actually change what devs are willing to do. It doesn't solve any problems. Anyone not using this license can still release old versions of their software under a different licence. Likewise anyone using the licence can always stop using it for future revisions of their software. It doesn't enable you to do anything, and it doesn't provide much of a guarantee to users.

the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
> Suppose a hypothetical version of the Xapian devs existed that were willing to use the FSL, but didn't because it didn't exist at the time. I could email those people, and ask "can you give me an Apache licensed version of your code from two years ago". They would then give me a copy of that code. Just to be clear what happened at Xapian: a bunch of people built some software. It was open sourced under the GPL which prevented further adoption. Through some series of acquisitions the copyright holder ended up not caring about it and did not enable anyone to relicense it under another license. If that was FSL licensed to begin with, the moment the copyright holder no longer cared, it would have become available under a license again that enabled commercialization. The folks behind Xapian are unaware of the exact licensing status, but definitely cannot relicense: https://trac.xapian.org/wiki/FAQ/CommercialLicence https://trac.xapian.org/wiki/FAQ/CommercialLicence They for a while I believe tried to prevent further GPLification of the source.
- James_K 3y ago
  This is such a niche case it's not really worth talking about, but the original devs still released it under GPL. The FSL is literally just the Apache license in this case. So you aren't arguing for the FSL, just that the original devs should have used Apache instead of GPL. That's just your opinion. If there was a version of the FSL that converted to GPL after two years, you'd have the exact same issue. The FSL portion of the licence is not relevant as no one was ever interested in releasing Xapian under a closed licence for a limited amount of time. This isn't really a rebuttal to my wider point that FSL doesn't do anything you couldn't without it. There's nothing stopping you from just releasing old versions under a different license anyway, and no real reason to commit to doing so specifically for the next two years.