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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 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.
  - James_K 3y ago
    So why don't you switch to a fully progressive license? What you're saying here is "we're putting our competitors at slightly less of a disadvantage, and that's good", so why not release under a free license and not put your competitors at any disadvantage? Either you want competition or you don't. What's offensive about this to some people is that you're trying to have the best of both worlds. Pretend that you welcome competition while still suppressing it. I don't think there's anything wrong with you not giving competitors your source code, but I'd rather you were honest about it instead of using this silly half-measure.
    - bentlegen 3y ago
      All of this is covered in the article.
      - James_K 3y ago
        I don't think it is.
        bentlegen 3y ago
        I don’t feel “given you already have a proprietary license, why wouldn’t you just make it freely permissive” needs much explaining. We develop the software; the exclusivity period helps us monetize the work (vs giving it away to someone else who would). I think it’s worth reading the announcement from 2019 when Sentry first switched to BUSL. The original article links to many such pieces. https://blog.sentry.io/relicensing-sentry/ https://blog.sentry.io/relicensing-sentry/
        James_K 3y ago
        So, you don't want to competition from large cloud providers, but you also want your source to be available to users, and you want to give them a guarantee that the software will not simply die once you stop maintaining it. Then release your software under a source available non-compete license with the caveat that it will become open source when you stop working on it. (Basically what you have already done.) Don't pretend it's FOSS or that it has anything to do with open source because it isn't and it doesn't. You have not made the software open until you have relinquished it to the community at large to do whatever they wish with it. Open source developers dislike this kind of marketing because it muddies the waters of what isn't and isn't free. If someone contributes to your software thinking it's free, you have mislead them to profit off their work. I don't care what you do with your code, but don't mischaracterise it. Don't give big talk about how you "believe in open source" or whatever. Say that you are source-available, and that isn't FOSS, but say no more than that. Especially do not say that you are "The Future of Open Source". That is nothing but a lie an it's obvious why real open source developers giving their time for the public good would take offence to it. Open source is like charity. Don't call yourself a charity or associate yourself with charity unless you actually are one.
- zzzeek 3y ago
  what's "artificial" about a license? does proprietary source code keep competitors "naturally" in check? what does that term mean here?
- arp242 3y ago
  A few days ago there was a story about some lady creating a new kind of coat-hanger that you can fold so it takes up less space.[1] Pretty simple idea once you see the finished product, but getting all the details right so it actually works well isn't always easy, and it took her about three years(!) Presumably she wasn't working on it full-time for 3 years, but clearly a lot of effort went in to this "simple" idea. But now that the idea is "out there" everyone can produce it, perhaps even cheaper. Actually, all other things being equal they will always be cheaper because they don't have three years of development costs. Does this mean that selling these coat hangers is a "flawed business model" because cheap Chinese knock-offs can undercut her (small) business? I know lots of people here don't have a lot of love for patents, and neither do I, but these kind of protections do exist for a reason. That doesn't mean I think that our current systems of patents is the best solution, but it also doesn't mean we shouldn't have any protections. And "be better at marketing" strikes me as a very poor answer. My point here is that "produce something, but take a bit of protection against being exploited" is fairly reasonable in many cases. I also don't think it's "artificially" because under more traditional EULA-type software you're not allowed to do anything except "run it, but only in the way we want". [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292915
  - em-bee 3y ago
    I know lots of people here don't have a lot of love for patents the coathanger is the kind of case that patents were intened for. software patents are different. as far as i am aware most people dislike software patents specifically and are fine with other patents. and even with software patents the problem is not the idea of patenting software, but the broad scope and timeframe. for software 20 years are just to long, and many patents are to broad. if software patents could be reduced in scope and more importantly reduced to a lifetime of eg no more than 5 years, they would be much less of a problem.

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.
- James_K 3y ago
  So why don't you switch to a fully progressive license? What you're saying here is "we're putting our competitors at slightly less of a disadvantage, and that's good", so why not release under a free license and not put your competitors at any disadvantage? Either you want competition or you don't. What's offensive about this to some people is that you're trying to have the best of both worlds. Pretend that you welcome competition while still suppressing it. I don't think there's anything wrong with you not giving competitors your source code, but I'd rather you were honest about it instead of using this silly half-measure.
  - bentlegen 3y ago
    All of this is covered in the article.
    - James_K 3y ago
      I don't think it is.
      - bentlegen 3y ago
        I don’t feel “given you already have a proprietary license, why wouldn’t you just make it freely permissive” needs much explaining. We develop the software; the exclusivity period helps us monetize the work (vs giving it away to someone else who would). I think it’s worth reading the announcement from 2019 when Sentry first switched to BUSL. The original article links to many such pieces. https://blog.sentry.io/relicensing-sentry/ https://blog.sentry.io/relicensing-sentry/
        James_K 3y ago
        So, you don't want to competition from large cloud providers, but you also want your source to be available to users, and you want to give them a guarantee that the software will not simply die once you stop maintaining it. Then release your software under a source available non-compete license with the caveat that it will become open source when you stop working on it. (Basically what you have already done.) Don't pretend it's FOSS or that it has anything to do with open source because it isn't and it doesn't. You have not made the software open until you have relinquished it to the community at large to do whatever they wish with it. Open source developers dislike this kind of marketing because it muddies the waters of what isn't and isn't free. If someone contributes to your software thinking it's free, you have mislead them to profit off their work. I don't care what you do with your code, but don't mischaracterise it. Don't give big talk about how you "believe in open source" or whatever. Say that you are source-available, and that isn't FOSS, but say no more than that. Especially do not say that you are "The Future of Open Source". That is nothing but a lie an it's obvious why real open source developers giving their time for the public good would take offence to it. Open source is like charity. Don't call yourself a charity or associate yourself with charity unless you actually are one.
zzzeek 3y ago
what's "artificial" about a license? does proprietary source code keep competitors "naturally" in check? what does that term mean here?
arp242 3y ago
A few days ago there was a story about some lady creating a new kind of coat-hanger that you can fold so it takes up less space.[1] Pretty simple idea once you see the finished product, but getting all the details right so it actually works well isn't always easy, and it took her about three years(!) Presumably she wasn't working on it full-time for 3 years, but clearly a lot of effort went in to this "simple" idea. But now that the idea is "out there" everyone can produce it, perhaps even cheaper. Actually, all other things being equal they will always be cheaper because they don't have three years of development costs. Does this mean that selling these coat hangers is a "flawed business model" because cheap Chinese knock-offs can undercut her (small) business? I know lots of people here don't have a lot of love for patents, and neither do I, but these kind of protections do exist for a reason. That doesn't mean I think that our current systems of patents is the best solution, but it also doesn't mean we shouldn't have any protections. And "be better at marketing" strikes me as a very poor answer. My point here is that "produce something, but take a bit of protection against being exploited" is fairly reasonable in many cases. I also don't think it's "artificially" because under more traditional EULA-type software you're not allowed to do anything except "run it, but only in the way we want". [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292915
- em-bee 3y ago
  I know lots of people here don't have a lot of love for patents the coathanger is the kind of case that patents were intened for. software patents are different. as far as i am aware most people dislike software patents specifically and are fine with other patents. and even with software patents the problem is not the idea of patenting software, but the broad scope and timeframe. for software 20 years are just to long, and many patents are to broad. if software patents could be reduced in scope and more importantly reduced to a lifetime of eg no more than 5 years, they would be much less of a problem.