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Sure, I wouldn't describe that as fair. But that's my point: OSS licenses don't use phrases like "fair": they talk concretely in terms of rights and guarantees,
by woodruffw 2y ago
Sure, I wouldn't describe that as fair. But that's my point: OSS licenses don't use phrases like "fair": they talk concretely in terms of rights and guarantees, and they leave it up to both parties to determine whether those rights and guarantees are what they want.
I think this can be fair. But I would love to have seen that communicated as "we wrote the license to address the problem of fairness in corporate usage of OSS," not "this is a/the fair license." The latter is a value judgment that isn't universalizable.
- LoganDark 2y agoI read it at first like the usage of fair was as in quantity, as in a middle ground between fully closed and fully open. But calling it a "medium source license" would probably sound weirder than "fair source".
- woodruffw 2y agoKing Solomon has a thing or two to say about middle grounds :-)[1] (I agree that "medium source" sounds very weird. Maybe they could have called it the "Availability License" or something similar to emphasize that this is about finding a sweet spot between monetization rights and exposing the source code to the public eye. I don't think that would carry the same baggage as "fair," but it also certainly doesn't have the same marketing flair to it.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_of_Solomon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_of_Solomon
- LoganDark 2y agoAvailability License would probably sound too similar to "source-available" which is often implied to be a lot more restrictive than this model seems to be.