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> I disagree. It depends if you're forking it to use it, or if you're forking it to compete commercially against the authors. The problem is that whilst the li
by growse 3y ago
> I disagree. It depends if you're forking it to use it, or if you're forking it to compete commercially against the authors.
The problem is that whilst the license attempts to define what "competes" means, it's not a good definition. Specifically:
Competing Uses specifically include using the Software:
1. as a substitute for any of our products or services;
2. in a way that exposes the APIs of the Software; and
3. in a product or service that offers the same or substantially similar functionality to the Software.
(1) & (3) are highly subjective, and (2) attempts to assert a copyright claim over APIs (definitely doesn't work across most jurisdictions). No-one is going to seriously use this software with such a badly written and vague license.
(I suspect this is on purpose, and the actual motivation of the license author is to try and discourage anyone else from using / forking the software, whilst at the same time getting marketing cred for pretending to be "open". It's a source-available license. Others may come to different conclusions).
- bentlegen 3y agoI'm not a lawyer, but here's my non-official interpretation: 1) If you host the software, and say "hey get your Sentry over here", that's basically a substitute. 2) Means use the work in such a way where you expose its APIs (i.e. the software is returning API responses). Note this is written as "using the software ... in a way that exposes the APIs of the software". Perhaps this could be made more clear, but I believe this was written with the understanding that there is prior art on the copyrightability of APIs, not some feigned attempt to assert a copyright. 3) If you're building some kind of software observability platform that leverages Sentry. If you're concerned about doing any 3 of those, then yes, perhaps you should not use the software. Overwhelmingly 99.99% of software people aren't doing anything remotely close to any of these clauses. I'll also note that Sentry itself was licensed for 4+ years under BUSL using similar terminology (that was arguably far more vague). The inclusion of non-competitive language in the license did not stop users from using the software – because again, most people aren't competing. You're welcome to make your own decision, of course. No one is forcing you to use anything.