7 ms·

The entire justification of the existence of the license talks about the problem of the "harmful freeloaders".

by growse 3y ago

the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
> "harmful freeloaders". The phrase you quoted "harmful freeloaders" does not appear in any of our texts. The word we used are "free-riders" and that does not refer to our users. Our users are free to use the software without contributions in any matter they want. What is not acceptable is to use it to run a competing SaaS business.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- growse 3y ago
  > The phrase you quoted "harmful freeloaders" does not appear in any of our texts. This is nit-picking pedantry. The term "free-riders" appears six times on this site https://fsl.software/ https://fsl.software/, but my bad for using a slightly different term that has the same meaning. From your very public announcement and linking to the text, it's pretty clear what you think of some of your users. > Our users are free to use the software without contributions in any matter they want. What is not acceptable is to use it to run a competing SaaS business. You're redefining the concept of "user" to suit your own ends.
  - zogrodea 3y ago
    Would you mind explaining why you have a problem with a clause stating "use our product however you wish, as long as it is not to compete with us"? It sounds reasonable to me and the opposite which you are defending sounds unsustainable and harmful to the open source ecosystem. (There was a talk given at Strange Loop titled The Economic of Programming Languages by the creator of Elm about this and it sounds like he's hesitant to release something interesting he's been working on because of it. So it's a real issue in my opinion that can lead to a worse outcome for most of us.)
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      The free software movement generally believes that software exists only to solve problems for its users. The creator of a piece of software has no moral rights to profit it from it more than any other user. Richard Stallman doesn't complain that Linus Torvalds used the GNU userspace tools to outocompete HURD out of existence. It's perfectly reasonable not to subscribe to this ideology. I don't particularly think it is a very good or well motivated ideology. However, you can't pretend that you are a free software adherent while also wishing to prevent certain uses of your software. Note that Stallman has explicitly come out against IBM RedHat's similar complaints about people distributing copies of RHEL for free for this very reason.
    - growse 3y ago
      In brief: "use our product however you wish, as long as it is not to compete with us" doesn't define "us" (you now, or for all perpetuity? What if you get bought by a large litigious-happy database vendor?) or "compete" (same market segment? Geographical area? Product type? Specific use-case?). The clause is not written in good faith. It's designed to essentially make it enormously risky to use in any serious environment, because the actual ambition by the clause author is that no-one else uses their software.
      - zogrodea 3y ago
        I don't think you're right to assert bad faith. Look at Sentry's track record allowing users to self-host, and this as a step that makes their work more permissive than what they previously had (for example, the shorter duration). I don't challenge that the license may have shortcomings, but I think better evidence is needed before bad faith can be asserted.
        growse 3y ago
        You may be right, I may be wrong. I just find it difficult to look at a phrase in a license which has been deliberately crafted to be intentionally vague as being anything else.
- WJW 3y ago
  > in any matter they want. Then the next sentence immediately goes into ways in which it is not intended to be used. Make up your mind guys.
bentlegen 3y ago
The people we're concerned about are not the hundreds of thousands of Sentry users, including those that self-host. We're concerned about people who have taken the software for the purposes of competing directly against us, that hinders our ability to monetize the work. Monetizing the work helps us continue improving the software and distribute it for free use, benefitting those aforementioned real users (e.g. https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted).
- k__ 3y ago
  There seems some kind of dissonance for me. You create a new license to keep competitors artificially in check. Doesn't this hint to a flawed business model?
  - ferringb 3y ago
    I think folks need to take a step back from 'business model' and think about how one does large scale FOSS w/out existing on ramen for a decade or two. In the old days you could do FOSS via university gigs (IE, an institution effectively donating resources) or work for a corp that uses said FOSS as part of their products. When the FOSS you're trying to build and share isn't covered by those- when you need to self fund so you can have an actual life- that's where it's always broken down. Patreon/gofundme type stuff can fly in single dev setups, but doesn't scale when it's a large team. There are exceptions to what I'm stating, but as a general rule, this is my experience across a couple decades of FOSS. So if you want to build this thing full time and share it with others, and not subsist just on cardboard ramen and other folks coaches, what's your options here? Provide a paid service in parallel (we host it for you). What do you do when others take your development work- which has an inbuilt RD cost (development)- and try to compete with you via offering lower prices since they're just paying hosting rather than hosting + development?
  - bentlegen 3y ago
    Sentry was already using BUSL (Business Source License) for 4+ years with a non-competitive Additional Use Grant. So we had already been doing this for a long time. The new license actually allows for more competition, because it has a shorter change date to permissive OSS than the aforementioned prior license (2 years vs 3 years). So another read of this is: the business model is going great, so much so that we're comforable switching to a more progressive license vs. what we had.

The entire justification of the existence of the license talks about the problem of the "harmful freeloaders".

by growse 3y ago

The entire justification of the existence of the license talks about the problem of the "harmful freeloaders".

> "harmful freeloaders". The phrase you quoted "harmful freeloaders" does not appear in any of our texts. The word we used are "free-riders" and that does not refer to our users. Our users are free to use the software without contributions in any matter they want. What is not acceptable is to use it to run a competing SaaS business.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
growse 3y ago
> The phrase you quoted "harmful freeloaders" does not appear in any of our texts. This is nit-picking pedantry. The term "free-riders" appears six times on this site https://fsl.software/ https://fsl.software/, but my bad for using a slightly different term that has the same meaning. From your very public announcement and linking to the text, it's pretty clear what you think of some of your users. > Our users are free to use the software without contributions in any matter they want. What is not acceptable is to use it to run a competing SaaS business. You're redefining the concept of "user" to suit your own ends.
- zogrodea 3y ago
  Would you mind explaining why you have a problem with a clause stating "use our product however you wish, as long as it is not to compete with us"? It sounds reasonable to me and the opposite which you are defending sounds unsustainable and harmful to the open source ecosystem. (There was a talk given at Strange Loop titled The Economic of Programming Languages by the creator of Elm about this and it sounds like he's hesitant to release something interesting he's been working on because of it. So it's a real issue in my opinion that can lead to a worse outcome for most of us.)
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    The free software movement generally believes that software exists only to solve problems for its users. The creator of a piece of software has no moral rights to profit it from it more than any other user. Richard Stallman doesn't complain that Linus Torvalds used the GNU userspace tools to outocompete HURD out of existence. It's perfectly reasonable not to subscribe to this ideology. I don't particularly think it is a very good or well motivated ideology. However, you can't pretend that you are a free software adherent while also wishing to prevent certain uses of your software. Note that Stallman has explicitly come out against IBM RedHat's similar complaints about people distributing copies of RHEL for free for this very reason.
  - growse 3y ago
    In brief: "use our product however you wish, as long as it is not to compete with us" doesn't define "us" (you now, or for all perpetuity? What if you get bought by a large litigious-happy database vendor?) or "compete" (same market segment? Geographical area? Product type? Specific use-case?). The clause is not written in good faith. It's designed to essentially make it enormously risky to use in any serious environment, because the actual ambition by the clause author is that no-one else uses their software.
    - zogrodea 3y ago
      I don't think you're right to assert bad faith. Look at Sentry's track record allowing users to self-host, and this as a step that makes their work more permissive than what they previously had (for example, the shorter duration). I don't challenge that the license may have shortcomings, but I think better evidence is needed before bad faith can be asserted.
      - growse 3y ago
        You may be right, I may be wrong. I just find it difficult to look at a phrase in a license which has been deliberately crafted to be intentionally vague as being anything else.
WJW 3y ago
> in any matter they want. Then the next sentence immediately goes into ways in which it is not intended to be used. Make up your mind guys.

bentlegen 3y ago

The people we're concerned about are not the hundreds of thousands of Sentry users, including those that self-host. We're concerned about people who have taken the software for the purposes of competing directly against us, that hinders our ability to monetize the work. Monetizing the work helps us continue improving the software and distribute it for free use, benefitting those aforementioned real users (e.g. https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted https://github.com/getsentry/self-hosted).

k__ 3y ago
There seems some kind of dissonance for me. You create a new license to keep competitors artificially in check. Doesn't this hint to a flawed business model?
- ferringb 3y ago
  I think folks need to take a step back from 'business model' and think about how one does large scale FOSS w/out existing on ramen for a decade or two. In the old days you could do FOSS via university gigs (IE, an institution effectively donating resources) or work for a corp that uses said FOSS as part of their products. When the FOSS you're trying to build and share isn't covered by those- when you need to self fund so you can have an actual life- that's where it's always broken down. Patreon/gofundme type stuff can fly in single dev setups, but doesn't scale when it's a large team. There are exceptions to what I'm stating, but as a general rule, this is my experience across a couple decades of FOSS. So if you want to build this thing full time and share it with others, and not subsist just on cardboard ramen and other folks coaches, what's your options here? Provide a paid service in parallel (we host it for you). What do you do when others take your development work- which has an inbuilt RD cost (development)- and try to compete with you via offering lower prices since they're just paying hosting rather than hosting + development?
- bentlegen 3y ago
  Sentry was already using BUSL (Business Source License) for 4+ years with a non-competitive Additional Use Grant. So we had already been doing this for a long time. The new license actually allows for more competition, because it has a shorter change date to permissive OSS than the aforementioned prior license (2 years vs 3 years). So another read of this is: the business model is going great, so much so that we're comforable switching to a more progressive license vs. what we had.