> 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, yo

> 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. No, we don't need a single Fair Source License. I originally was on this bandwagon, too, but I was convinced along the way that we need a lot of focused licenses covering the myriad of ways businesses monetize their core products. From SaaS, to on-prem, to open core, etc. All of these monetization strategies require different restrictions e.g. monetizing SaaS is only concerned with other SaaS competition, but monetizing open core is concerned with protecting premium features. Attempting to draft a single license that everybody can use ends up creating a license nobody can understand. (Trust me -- we tried it!) This is the entire reason I essentially forked the Functional Source License [0] into the Fair Core License [1] -- because the FSL didn't offer a way for me to safely monetize an "open core"-style product [2]. > 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". Right away, Head Start has strong negative connotations and would never see the level of adoption we're looking for. We want companies to be excited about it, and conveying they need a handicap does not do that. It's also not communicative, you can't say "X is now Head Start" or "X was Head Started". Not to mention, like I touched on above, Fair Source isn't a single license. It's an umbrella covering many licenses, hopefully with more to come as adoption grows. And you even said it -- a "head start" is fair, so "fair" source makes perfect sense. > 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. Delayed Open Source publication (DOSP), or "eventually-open-source", is a weak term by itself, since it just means proprietary/closed-source software that is eventually Open Sourced. It has the same problem that "source-available" has -- it doesn't convey any immediate user freedoms. Fair Source however requires that the software be publicly available to read now, with the freedom to be used, modified, and redistributed with minimal restrictions, in addition to undergoing DOSP typically within 2 years. My $0.02: I think people would complain no matter what it was called. It'll grow on everyone the more it's adopted. [0]: https://fsl.software https://fsl.software [1]: https://fcl.dev https://fcl.dev [2]: https://keygen.sh/blog/keygen-is-now-fair-source/ https://keygen.sh/blog/keygen-is-now-fair-source/