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As a private person and startup founder the things I value about open source from a practical perspective are - being able to just read the source to figure ou

As a private person and startup founder the things I value about open source from a practical perspective are - being able to just read the source to figure out what's going on - being able to fix bugs - being able to add features I need - being able to upstream those changes so others can profit and help maintain them - being able to self-host the software Open Source ticks all those boxes, whether it's on the "laissez-faire" end of the spectrum (BSD) or the "Stallman" side of the spectrum (AGPL). (though the more "Stallman" a license is the fewer situations where I can use it). But the BSL also ticks all those boxes. I get it's not as ideologically pure, but it still meets most of the ideals of the original open source/libre software movements.

candiddevmike 3y ago
BSL doesn't necessarily allow you to self host. Without additional grants, it doesn't allow production usage until the license converts.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  If I make a paid twitter clone using a BSL-licensed database under the hood, I'm allowed to self-host the database for this purpose, in both production and dev environments. What the BSL prevents me from doing is offering paid hosting for others, or offering a product that competes with it (e.g. if postgres would be BSL, supabase couldn't use postgres under the hood since the products kind of compete with each other).
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    You can't use BSL software in production without an additional usage grant: https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/ https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/
    - sofixa 3y ago
      In practice are there any BSL adopters that don't give a usage grant for production use? All those I've encountered only forbid stuff like hosting to compete with the original software creator, not actually using it in production.
      - sea-gold 3y ago
        It may not be common, but I did find these (fairly popular projects) which don't appear to allow production usage: https://github.com/fingerprintjs/fingerprintjs/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/fingerprintjs/fingerprintjs/blob/master/L... https://github.com/exaloop/codon/blob/develop/LICENSE https://github.com/exaloop/codon/blob/develop/LICENSE Here are some others: https://github.com/search?q=%22Business+Source+License%22+%22Additional+Use+Grant%3A+None%22&type=code&p=1 https://github.com/search?q=%22Business+Source+License%22+%2...
    - wongarsu 3y ago
      You are right for the pure BSL. I was misremembering because e.g. Hashicorp just give a blanket Additional Use Grant for production use that doesn't compete with the licensed product [1]. MariaDB is a lot less generous, e.g. restricting you to less than three production servers for MaxScale. So the ability to self-host BSL code depends a lot on the chosen Additional Use Grant. I don't mind Hashicorp's, but the one publicly offered by MariaDB is pretty restricting. 1: https://www.hashicorp.com/bsl https://www.hashicorp.com/bsl
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

candiddevmike 3y ago

BSL doesn't necessarily allow you to self host. Without additional grants, it doesn't allow production usage until the license converts.

wongarsu 3y ago
If I make a paid twitter clone using a BSL-licensed database under the hood, I'm allowed to self-host the database for this purpose, in both production and dev environments. What the BSL prevents me from doing is offering paid hosting for others, or offering a product that competes with it (e.g. if postgres would be BSL, supabase couldn't use postgres under the hood since the products kind of compete with each other).
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  You can't use BSL software in production without an additional usage grant: https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/ https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/
  - sofixa 3y ago
    In practice are there any BSL adopters that don't give a usage grant for production use? All those I've encountered only forbid stuff like hosting to compete with the original software creator, not actually using it in production.
    - sea-gold 3y ago
      It may not be common, but I did find these (fairly popular projects) which don't appear to allow production usage: https://github.com/fingerprintjs/fingerprintjs/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/fingerprintjs/fingerprintjs/blob/master/L... https://github.com/exaloop/codon/blob/develop/LICENSE https://github.com/exaloop/codon/blob/develop/LICENSE Here are some others: https://github.com/search?q=%22Business+Source+License%22+%22Additional+Use+Grant%3A+None%22&type=code&p=1 https://github.com/search?q=%22Business+Source+License%22+%2...
  - wongarsu 3y ago
    You are right for the pure BSL. I was misremembering because e.g. Hashicorp just give a blanket Additional Use Grant for production use that doesn't compete with the licensed product [1]. MariaDB is a lot less generous, e.g. restricting you to less than three production servers for MaxScale. So the ability to self-host BSL code depends a lot on the chosen Additional Use Grant. I don't mind Hashicorp's, but the one publicly offered by MariaDB is pretty restricting. 1: https://www.hashicorp.com/bsl https://www.hashicorp.com/bsl
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]