7 ms·

GitButler is now fair source

94 points by odo1242 2y ago

willgtaylor 2y ago
Having grappled with this dillemma myself as a founder, interested to see this FS model gain traction towards a middle ground. Knowledge is shared not closed off. And the company that is keeping the tech progressing can stay competitive.
thmsths 2y ago
That's the first time I've heard about the fair source license. From what I understand it's slightly more restrictive than FOSS, but it aims to prevent hyperscalers from basically running your software in their cloud while you can't make a dime from it.
- eslaught 2y ago
  The term appears to be a new one. There's a definition here: https://blog.sentry.io/sentry-is-now-fair-source/ https://blog.sentry.io/sentry-is-now-fair-source/
andrewstuart2 2y ago
I'm really glad that they've made a conscious effort to be transparent in the fact that this is not open source. That said, I'm less sure how I feel about the movement as a whole. I admire the desire to make source code transparently available, and let people use it for free, but I think strict open source is the best net good for the world we live in. I can run apps on Linux in any cloud I want to because every cloud is free to run it. And so I benefit from getting to choose among competitors (including self hosting) where that doesn't exist in a world where competition is forbidden. It's also ironic to me that this software is being built on top of git, and thus is a business model entirely dependent upon FOSS, while wanting to differentiate and build a business on top of it with a moat but still sharing the code in a way that protects them. It just seems like an uncomfortable position straddling the fence between two paradigms. Maybe I'm privileged in the fact that I've always lived comfortably enough in my career to feel like I can write and release OSS under the most permissive terms (whether it's used or not). But that feels like the best way to give back to the movement that effectively led me into this career for free, and lets me pick from offerings that are forced to differentiate on price or other features rather than whether they can license the software.
- paxys 2y ago
  The contributor side of it is important as well. If I'm using an open source product, I'm generally very happy to spend long hours debugging edge cases, writing detailed bug reports, pushing fixes, suggesting and adding enhancements and generally being involved in the community, knowing that I'm doing my share and improving the experience for everyone. Nowadays it is increasingly likely that my effort is eventually going to be relicensed and repackaged into non-free software without my consent, and no one (not even me myself) will be allowed to continue to benefit from my work. IMO the issue really lies with the VC funding model. Every single one of these projects that has done a license bait and switch has taken outside funding, and these investors want to see an exponential return, which simply cannot be attained by keeping the software free. Stewardship by a reputed open source foundation is the only possible future for such projects if they want to actually stay open and do right by their community.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    > Nowadays it is increasingly likely that my effort is eventually going to be relicensed and repackaged into non-free software without my consent, and no one (not even me myself) will be allowed to continue to benefit from my work. The curious thing (and developers have the right) is that permissive licenses, like MIT, are growing every year while copyleft licenses like the GPL are decreasing in popularity. According to a loose Statista graph, ~41% of OSS projects used permissive licenses in 2012. By 2021, it was ~78%. The Register has also noted this phenomenon. Copyleft is completely out of fashion. https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/17/mit_apache_versus_gpl/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/17/mit_apache_versus_gpl... Personally, if I was making a solo OSS project, I completely get it. If Google wants to use it, even if they never gave back, I would be honored and quite possibly get a job from that. Using GPL just means my software will only be useful to GPL-loving compatriots, which is to say, almost nowhere outside the Linux communities. It's also not fair when my company (like most companies) benefitted immensely from various bits of MIT/Apache licensed software, so to give back to the community as a whole with the GPL feels unfair.
    - WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
confident_inept 2y ago
Is there anyone who can break down the advantage of something like this over a typical open source model? I read through the page and FAQ for fair source and still don't quite grasp the angle here other than making software less free for a temporary amount of time.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  Simple - the standard open source business model sucks. Nobody donates, you’re in competition with the lowest common denominator when offering hosting services, and you might get ElasticSearched. The entire purpose of Fair Source is to allow companies to open up the code when they would have never considered it an option otherwise. It’s a more open license for companies that would’ve otherwise been proprietary without apology.
- apantel 2y ago
  The main benefit is you get a rolling two years where no one else can use your code to compete with you. It’s a lot like a patent which gives you a window of time where you have an exclusive right to benefit from your creation.
- fishtoaster 2y ago
  An increasingly common situation for open source projects is: 1. The FooLabs company creates the Foo open source software, which gets popular 2. FooLabs offers FooCloud, a paid, hosted, managed version of Foo for those who don't want to run Foo themselves. 3. AWS sees that Foo is popular and creates a competing paid, hosted, managed version of Foo (say, "AwsFoo"). 4. FooLabs' hosted version doesn't really have much advantage over AWS and AWS has a huge base of existing customers, so it outcompetes FooLabs. 5. FooLabs perceives this as unfair. They did all the work creating + maintaining this software, but are unable to reap any rewards. Different people have different opinions on #5, ranging from "Hell yeah, screw AWS!" to "What did you expect when you made this open source?" As a result, there have been a wave of not-quite-open-source licenses aimed at preventing #3, often with a clause like "This license doesn't let you run a paid, hosted, managed version". GitButler's license is aimed at doing exactly that. People have been calling that "source available." Some people are trying to rebrand that as the cooler-sounding "Fair Source." Some of these have caused huge community upsets because Foo is often popular because it's open source, and it feels like a bait-and-switch to suddenly yank that away once Foo reaches a certain point of growth. ElasticSearch is the biggest example that comes to mind: https://www.elastic.co/blog/licensing-change https://www.elastic.co/blog/licensing-change. GitButler, thankfully, is being much more up-front about it!
MadsRC 2y ago
Does anyone know why companies don’t release under AGPL for everyone and then under a proprietary commercial license to themselves? Essentially dual-license it. AGPL would dissuade Google and AWS from using it, and the commercial license would allow the licensee (themselves) to commercialize it?
- weinzierl 2y ago
  I thought so too and argued it in another thread a while ago. Others commented that apparently AGPL wasn't working to dissuade cloud providers enough for MongoDB and that is why they switched away from the model you described to a source available model.
- whit537 2y ago
  One big reason we don't use AGPL at Sentry is that we want companies to be able to self-host individually (just not start a competing SaaS), and many have a blanket ban on AGPL.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    > and many have a blanket ban on AGPL Sounds like their own self-created problem.
    - bentlegen 2y ago
      Google has an organization-wide ban on using AGPL software, and they explain why here: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl-policy https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...
    - nullfield 2y ago
      I don’t get the blanket ban on AGPL-am I misunderstanding how attach-y it is? For example, people seem to have the impression that if you host something like an AGPL email validation service that just has an API to request a check for an email and then connects via SMTP, which another service calls, that you “infect” your product that even uses that API. I get that if you change the service and/or expose it publicly you have to make the changes available, but it seems misunderstood.
jumploops 2y ago
Wow, I most certainly confused https://fair.io/ https://fair.io/ with https://faircode.io/ https://faircode.io/ This new "functional" license is interesting, in that it converts to MIT or Apache 2.0 automatically after 2 years. I'm all for open source (and free!) software, however I hope these new licenses move more service-level businesses to follow suit and at least open up their source code in some way or another.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
breck 2y ago
[flagged]
Destiner 2y ago
Related: Keygen is also Fair Source now (https://keygen.sh/blog/keygen-is-now-fair-source/ https://keygen.sh/blog/keygen-is-now-fair-source/)
WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
I fear that clearly defining what does it mean to compete in the context of this license is going to be a bitch. Was it Unity recently that they had to do this ridiculous back-and-forth, issuing multiple statements to clarify whether this or that edge case is a violation or not? Or was it Redis? I don’t remember which product it was, but the turmoil I remember quite well.
brianzelip 2y ago
Here's an informing podcast episode about their thinking behind "fair source" and more, https://changelog.com/podcast/586 https://changelog.com/podcast/586.
samatman 2y ago
I don't love the name. It was hard to put my finger on why that is. It doesn't smell of marketing (a whiff, maybe), I don't think it's dishonest, it strikes me as a sincere way of trying to explain why the users/authors feel like they need to do anything other than just give the software away. It's that there's an inevitable comparison baked in to the choice of name: we have open source, and fair source. Fair source is meaningfully less open, but open source is at least equally fair, one can argue that it's more so, but not less. It doesn't really hit at the reason for having these licenses in the first place, and it does have a sort of aura of "see! We're trying, we're doing our best over here", which is accurate, but also, off-putting. I have a suggestion, not that I expect it to matter: first, drop the [adjective] source pattern completely. You don't need a category of software licenses, you need a software license — and you really, truly, do not need the headache of trying to decide which non-free licenses get to live under the 'fair' umbrella. Call it the Head Start License. That's what it does: it gives the authors a head start. I consider that fair! As I was saying at the beginning of the post, my objection isn't nearly so simple as "you say it's fair and that's wrong". If pushed on what "kind of" license that is, you can call it eventually-open source. There's no 'spin' there, because it's literally true: it is, eventually, open source software. Plus you can put your foot down, because the essence of what the license is now lives in the name: "eventually, in this context, means two years. We consider less than two years also eventually open, more than that is, at best, eventually eventually-open source software." That probably sounds funny but it would work, with the right memetic buy in: no, we've established this, your six-year license is not eventually open source, eventually means two years, here, check out this website I'm linking to. I hope I've made it clear that while I dislike the choice, I don't find it distasteful. Others are going to find it distasteful. I'm not going to speak on behalf of those people, but mind share is critical with an idea like this, and you're going to be doing battle with "if it isn't free it isn't fair". Good slogan actually, you don't have to agree with it (I don't) to recognize that. Anyway, good luck with the project. I commend you for not succumbing to the temptation to try and slice a bit of salami off the open source definition, although as I write that out, I'm realizing some of my dislike here is in fact that 'fair source' tries to borrow some of the emotional valence of free software, and that's the thing, you don't need to do that: eventually-open source becomes open source, eventually, it's a binding commitment, you just need people to show some patience, because you have a living to earn in the meantime. You wrote it, so you get a head start. Seems fair. If it was my bikeshed, well, that's the colour I'd paint it.
zb3 2y ago
> On the other hand, we are investing heavily in the software, have investors and employees, and want to be able to build a build a profitable business on top of our product. To clarify, are you trying to protect against those who don't pay (me), or those that compete with you by monetizing your product?
snotrockets 2y ago
IANAL, but on a cursory read, this seems like a minefiled for use in a commercial settings: the definition of "Competing Use" in the license (https://github.com/getsentry/fsl.software/blob/main/FSL-1.1-MIT.template.md#permitted-purpose https://github.com/getsentry/fsl.software/blob/main/FSL-1.1-...) can be read very broadly.
- skeledrew 2y ago
  That's the point IMO. The actual devs need to eat without worrying about losing their meal ticket.
  - snotrockets 2y ago
    If the intent is to ban any commercial use (without acquiring a separate license), it’s dishonest not to say so outright instead of hiding behind legalese.
3np 2y ago
Can we please just refer to the license by name ("Functional Source License", or just "FSL"), rather than acknowledging and adopting this new strange (BS) "Fair Source" terminology when talking about licenses? "Source-available" is already recognized and applicable if you feel a need to taxonomize the license. There is the "Fair Source" industry lobby group closely associated to the license and I suspect the confusable naming may be intentional here, both coming from the same parties.
- ezekg 2y ago
  Fair Source is more than just the FSL. There's also the FCL, and the BUSL, with room for more licenses exploring other ways to monetize.
skeledrew 2y ago
Got me thinking about FUTO's Source First License. I'm liking these movements in general, but they could use some consolidation and standardization similar to the *GPL family.
conradludgate 2y ago
Fine by me. It never seemed that great to begin with. I hated how it injected its own branded commits into my repos. And it never worked with the submodules I unfortunately have to work with
jenadine 2y ago
Is Fair Source a super set of Open Source? On other words, is any open source license automatically a fair source. For every open source project, the source is available, under an open source license after 0 days, and usable and modifiable for anyone who doesn't compete or does.
- whit537 2y ago
  Technically, sure. That and 10¢ will buy you a bottle of Coke like 80 years ago. B^)

94 points by odo1242 2y ago

Having grappled with this dillemma myself as a founder, interested to see this FS model gain traction towards a middle ground. Knowledge is shared not closed off. And the company that is keeping the tech progressing can stay competitive.

thmsths 2y ago

That's the first time I've heard about the fair source license. From what I understand it's slightly more restrictive than FOSS, but it aims to prevent hyperscalers from basically running your software in their cloud while you can't make a dime from it.

eslaught 2y ago
The term appears to be a new one. There's a definition here: https://blog.sentry.io/sentry-is-now-fair-source/ https://blog.sentry.io/sentry-is-now-fair-source/

andrewstuart2 2y ago

I'm really glad that they've made a conscious effort to be transparent in the fact that this is not open source. That said, I'm less sure how I feel about the movement as a whole. I admire the desire to make source code transparently available, and let people use it for free, but I think strict open source is the best net good for the world we live in. I can run apps on Linux in any cloud I want to because every cloud is free to run it. And so I benefit from getting to choose among competitors (including self hosting) where that doesn't exist in a world where competition is forbidden. It's also ironic to me that this software is being built on top of git, and thus is a business model entirely dependent upon FOSS, while wanting to differentiate and build a business on top of it with a moat but still sharing the code in a way that protects them. It just seems like an uncomfortable position straddling the fence between two paradigms. Maybe I'm privileged in the fact that I've always lived comfortably enough in my career to feel like I can write and release OSS under the most permissive terms (whether it's used or not). But that feels like the best way to give back to the movement that effectively led me into this career for free, and lets me pick from offerings that are forced to differentiate on price or other features rather than whether they can license the software.

paxys 2y ago
The contributor side of it is important as well. If I'm using an open source product, I'm generally very happy to spend long hours debugging edge cases, writing detailed bug reports, pushing fixes, suggesting and adding enhancements and generally being involved in the community, knowing that I'm doing my share and improving the experience for everyone. Nowadays it is increasingly likely that my effort is eventually going to be relicensed and repackaged into non-free software without my consent, and no one (not even me myself) will be allowed to continue to benefit from my work. IMO the issue really lies with the VC funding model. Every single one of these projects that has done a license bait and switch has taken outside funding, and these investors want to see an exponential return, which simply cannot be attained by keeping the software free. Stewardship by a reputed open source foundation is the only possible future for such projects if they want to actually stay open and do right by their community.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  > Nowadays it is increasingly likely that my effort is eventually going to be relicensed and repackaged into non-free software without my consent, and no one (not even me myself) will be allowed to continue to benefit from my work. The curious thing (and developers have the right) is that permissive licenses, like MIT, are growing every year while copyleft licenses like the GPL are decreasing in popularity. According to a loose Statista graph, ~41% of OSS projects used permissive licenses in 2012. By 2021, it was ~78%. The Register has also noted this phenomenon. Copyleft is completely out of fashion. https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/17/mit_apache_versus_gpl/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/17/mit_apache_versus_gpl... Personally, if I was making a solo OSS project, I completely get it. If Google wants to use it, even if they never gave back, I would be honored and quite possibly get a job from that. Using GPL just means my software will only be useful to GPL-loving compatriots, which is to say, almost nowhere outside the Linux communities. It's also not fair when my company (like most companies) benefitted immensely from various bits of MIT/Apache licensed software, so to give back to the community as a whole with the GPL feels unfair.
  - WesolyKubeczek 2y ago

confident_inept 2y ago

Is there anyone who can break down the advantage of something like this over a typical open source model? I read through the page and FAQ for fair source and still don't quite grasp the angle here other than making software less free for a temporary amount of time.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
Simple - the standard open source business model sucks. Nobody donates, you’re in competition with the lowest common denominator when offering hosting services, and you might get ElasticSearched. The entire purpose of Fair Source is to allow companies to open up the code when they would have never considered it an option otherwise. It’s a more open license for companies that would’ve otherwise been proprietary without apology.
apantel 2y ago
The main benefit is you get a rolling two years where no one else can use your code to compete with you. It’s a lot like a patent which gives you a window of time where you have an exclusive right to benefit from your creation.
fishtoaster 2y ago
An increasingly common situation for open source projects is: 1. The FooLabs company creates the Foo open source software, which gets popular 2. FooLabs offers FooCloud, a paid, hosted, managed version of Foo for those who don't want to run Foo themselves. 3. AWS sees that Foo is popular and creates a competing paid, hosted, managed version of Foo (say, "AwsFoo"). 4. FooLabs' hosted version doesn't really have much advantage over AWS and AWS has a huge base of existing customers, so it outcompetes FooLabs. 5. FooLabs perceives this as unfair. They did all the work creating + maintaining this software, but are unable to reap any rewards. Different people have different opinions on #5, ranging from "Hell yeah, screw AWS!" to "What did you expect when you made this open source?" As a result, there have been a wave of not-quite-open-source licenses aimed at preventing #3, often with a clause like "This license doesn't let you run a paid, hosted, managed version". GitButler's license is aimed at doing exactly that. People have been calling that "source available." Some people are trying to rebrand that as the cooler-sounding "Fair Source." Some of these have caused huge community upsets because Foo is often popular because it's open source, and it feels like a bait-and-switch to suddenly yank that away once Foo reaches a certain point of growth. ElasticSearch is the biggest example that comes to mind: https://www.elastic.co/blog/licensing-change https://www.elastic.co/blog/licensing-change. GitButler, thankfully, is being much more up-front about it!

MadsRC 2y ago

Does anyone know why companies don’t release under AGPL for everyone and then under a proprietary commercial license to themselves? Essentially dual-license it. AGPL would dissuade Google and AWS from using it, and the commercial license would allow the licensee (themselves) to commercialize it?

weinzierl 2y ago
I thought so too and argued it in another thread a while ago. Others commented that apparently AGPL wasn't working to dissuade cloud providers enough for MongoDB and that is why they switched away from the model you described to a source available model.
whit537 2y ago
One big reason we don't use AGPL at Sentry is that we want companies to be able to self-host individually (just not start a competing SaaS), and many have a blanket ban on AGPL.
- fsflover 2y ago
  > and many have a blanket ban on AGPL Sounds like their own self-created problem.
  - bentlegen 2y ago
    Google has an organization-wide ban on using AGPL software, and they explain why here: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl-policy https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...
  - nullfield 2y ago
    I don’t get the blanket ban on AGPL-am I misunderstanding how attach-y it is? For example, people seem to have the impression that if you host something like an AGPL email validation service that just has an API to request a check for an email and then connects via SMTP, which another service calls, that you “infect” your product that even uses that API. I get that if you change the service and/or expose it publicly you have to make the changes available, but it seems misunderstood.

jumploops 2y ago

Wow, I most certainly confused https://fair.io/ https://fair.io/ with https://faircode.io/ https://faircode.io/ This new "functional" license is interesting, in that it converts to MIT or Apache 2.0 automatically after 2 years. I'm all for open source (and free!) software, however I hope these new licenses move more service-level businesses to follow suit and at least open up their source code in some way or another.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

breck 2y ago

[flagged]

Destiner 2y ago

Related: Keygen is also Fair Source now (https://keygen.sh/blog/keygen-is-now-fair-source/ https://keygen.sh/blog/keygen-is-now-fair-source/)

WesolyKubeczek 2y ago

I fear that clearly defining what does it mean to compete in the context of this license is going to be a bitch. Was it Unity recently that they had to do this ridiculous back-and-forth, issuing multiple statements to clarify whether this or that edge case is a violation or not? Or was it Redis? I don’t remember which product it was, but the turmoil I remember quite well.

brianzelip 2y ago

Here's an informing podcast episode about their thinking behind "fair source" and more, https://changelog.com/podcast/586 https://changelog.com/podcast/586.

samatman 2y ago

I don't love the name. It was hard to put my finger on why that is. It doesn't smell of marketing (a whiff, maybe), I don't think it's dishonest, it strikes me as a sincere way of trying to explain why the users/authors feel like they need to do anything other than just give the software away. It's that there's an inevitable comparison baked in to the choice of name: we have open source, and fair source. Fair source is meaningfully less open, but open source is at least equally fair, one can argue that it's more so, but not less. It doesn't really hit at the reason for having these licenses in the first place, and it does have a sort of aura of "see! We're trying, we're doing our best over here", which is accurate, but also, off-putting. I have a suggestion, not that I expect it to matter: first, drop the [adjective] source pattern completely. You don't need a category of software licenses, you need a software license — and you really, truly, do not need the headache of trying to decide which non-free licenses get to live under the 'fair' umbrella. Call it the Head Start License. That's what it does: it gives the authors a head start. I consider that fair! As I was saying at the beginning of the post, my objection isn't nearly so simple as "you say it's fair and that's wrong". If pushed on what "kind of" license that is, you can call it eventually-open source. There's no 'spin' there, because it's literally true: it is, eventually, open source software. Plus you can put your foot down, because the essence of what the license is now lives in the name: "eventually, in this context, means two years. We consider less than two years also eventually open, more than that is, at best, eventually eventually-open source software." That probably sounds funny but it would work, with the right memetic buy in: no, we've established this, your six-year license is not eventually open source, eventually means two years, here, check out this website I'm linking to. I hope I've made it clear that while I dislike the choice, I don't find it distasteful. Others are going to find it distasteful. I'm not going to speak on behalf of those people, but mind share is critical with an idea like this, and you're going to be doing battle with "if it isn't free it isn't fair". Good slogan actually, you don't have to agree with it (I don't) to recognize that. Anyway, good luck with the project. I commend you for not succumbing to the temptation to try and slice a bit of salami off the open source definition, although as I write that out, I'm realizing some of my dislike here is in fact that 'fair source' tries to borrow some of the emotional valence of free software, and that's the thing, you don't need to do that: eventually-open source becomes open source, eventually, it's a binding commitment, you just need people to show some patience, because you have a living to earn in the meantime. You wrote it, so you get a head start. Seems fair. If it was my bikeshed, well, that's the colour I'd paint it.

zb3 2y ago

> On the other hand, we are investing heavily in the software, have investors and employees, and want to be able to build a build a profitable business on top of our product. To clarify, are you trying to protect against those who don't pay (me), or those that compete with you by monetizing your product?

snotrockets 2y ago

IANAL, but on a cursory read, this seems like a minefiled for use in a commercial settings: the definition of "Competing Use" in the license (https://github.com/getsentry/fsl.software/blob/main/FSL-1.1-MIT.template.md#permitted-purpose https://github.com/getsentry/fsl.software/blob/main/FSL-1.1-...) can be read very broadly.

skeledrew 2y ago
That's the point IMO. The actual devs need to eat without worrying about losing their meal ticket.
- snotrockets 2y ago
  If the intent is to ban any commercial use (without acquiring a separate license), it’s dishonest not to say so outright instead of hiding behind legalese.

3np 2y ago

Can we please just refer to the license by name ("Functional Source License", or just "FSL"), rather than acknowledging and adopting this new strange (BS) "Fair Source" terminology when talking about licenses? "Source-available" is already recognized and applicable if you feel a need to taxonomize the license. There is the "Fair Source" industry lobby group closely associated to the license and I suspect the confusable naming may be intentional here, both coming from the same parties.

ezekg 2y ago
Fair Source is more than just the FSL. There's also the FCL, and the BUSL, with room for more licenses exploring other ways to monetize.

skeledrew 2y ago

Got me thinking about FUTO's Source First License. I'm liking these movements in general, but they could use some consolidation and standardization similar to the *GPL family.

conradludgate 2y ago

Fine by me. It never seemed that great to begin with. I hated how it injected its own branded commits into my repos. And it never worked with the submodules I unfortunately have to work with

jenadine 2y ago

Is Fair Source a super set of Open Source? On other words, is any open source license automatically a fair source. For every open source project, the source is available, under an open source license after 0 days, and usable and modifiable for anyone who doesn't compete or does.

whit537 2y ago
Technically, sure. That and 10¢ will buy you a bottle of Coke like 80 years ago. B^)