4 ms·

Personally I really like the normalization of these "Permissively" licensed models that only restrict companies with massive revenues from using them for free.

by Arcuru 10mo ago

Personally I really like the normalization of these "Permissively" licensed models that only restrict companies with massive revenues from using them for free. If you want to use something, and your company makes $240,000,000 in annual revenue, you should probably pay for it.

whimsicalism 10mo ago
That's fine, but I don't think you should call it open source or call it MIT or even 'modified MIT.' Call it Mistral license or something along those lines
- jrm4 10mo ago
  You're presently illustrating exactly why Stallman et al were such sticklers about "Free Software." "Open Source" is nebulous. It reasonably works here, for better or worse.
  - whimsicalism 10mo ago
    Free software to me means GPL and associates, so if that is what Stallman was trying to be a stickler for - it worked. Open source has a well understood meaning, including licenses like MIT and Apache - but not including MIT but only if you make less than $500million dollars, MIT unless you were born on a wednesday, etc.
    - whimblepop 10mo ago
      MIT and Apache are free software licenses in Stallman's sense, and the FSF has always been clear about it.
  - stonemetal12 10mo ago
    >"Open Source" is nebulous No it isn't it is well defined. The only people who find it "nebulous" are people who want the benefits without upholding the obligations. https://opensource.org/definition-annotated https://opensource.org/definition-annotated
- fastball 10mo ago
  imo this is a hill people need to stop dying on. Open source means "I can see the source" to most of the world. Wishing it meant "very permissively licensed" to everyone is a lost cause. And honestly it wasn't a good hill to begin with: if what you are talking about is the license, call it "open license". The source code is out in the open, so it is "open source". This is why the purists have lost ground to practical usage.
  - whimsicalism 10mo ago
    > Open source means "I can see the source" to most of the world well we don't really want to open that can of worms though, do we? I don't agree with ceding technical terms to the rest of the world. I'm increasingly told we need to stop calling cancer detection AI "AI" or "ML" because it is not the 'bad AI' and confuses people. I guess I'm okay with being intransigent.
    - fastball 10mo ago
      If you are happy that time is being spent quibbling over definitions instead of actually focusing on the ideal, I'm not sure you care about the ideals as much as you say you do. Who gives a shit what we call "cancer AI", what matters is the result.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    > imo this is a hill people need to stop dying on. As someone who was born and raised on FOSS, and still mostly employed to work on FOSS, I disagree. Open source is what it is today because it's built by people with a spine who stand tall for their ideals even if it means less money, less industry recognition, lots of unglorious work and lots of other negatives. It's not purist to believe that what built open source so far should remain open source, and not wanting to dilute that ecosystem with things that aren't open source, yet call themselves open source.
    - fastball 10mo ago
      You should stand up for your ideals, but dying on the hill of what you call your ideals is actually getting in the way of that. Because instead of making the point "this license isn't as permissive as it could/should be" (easy to understand), instead the point being made is "this isn't real open source", which comes across to most people as just some weird gate-keeping / No True Scotsman kinda thing.
- joseda-hg 10mo ago
  That's probably better, but Modified MIT is pretty descriptive, I read it as "mostly MIT, but with caveats for extreme cases" which is about right, if you already know what the MIT license entails Whatever name they come up with for a new license will be less useful, because I'll have to figure out that this is what that is
  - tensor 10mo ago
    To me this is highly misleading. The core idea behind MIT is that you can use it for anything, including commercial. A "you can use it for commercial only if you're revenue is small" is not remotely MIT-like. It's commercial with a freemium tier.
badsectoracula 10mo ago
These are not permissively licensed though, the terms "permissive license" has connotations that pretty much everyone who is into FLOSS understands (same with "open source"). I do not mind having a license like that, my gripe is with using the terms "permissive" and "open source" like that because such use dilutes them. I cannot think of any reason to do that aside from trying to dilute the term (especially when some laws, like the EU AI Act, are less restrictive when it comes to open source AIs specifically).
- kouteiheika 10mo ago
  > I do not mind having a license like that, my gripe is with using the terms "permissive" and "open source" like that because such use dilutes them. I cannot think of any reason to do that aside from trying to dilute the term (especially when some laws, like the EU AI Act, are less restrictive when it comes to open source AIs specifically). Good. In this case, let it be diluted! These extra "restrictions" don't affect normal people at all, and won't even affect any small/medium businesses. I couldn't care less that the term is "diluted" and that makes it harder for those poor, poor megacorporations. They swim in money already, they can deal with it. We can discuss the exact threshold, but as long as these "restrictions" are so extreme that they only affect huge megacorporations, this is still "permissive" in my book. I will gladly die on this hill.
  - JoshTriplett 10mo ago
    > I couldn't care less that the term is "diluted" and that makes it harder It also makes life harder for individuals and small companies, because this is not Open Source. It's incompatible with Open Source, it can't be reused in other Open Source projects. Terms have meanings. This is not Open Source, and it will never be Open Source.
    - kouteiheika 10mo ago
      > It also makes life harder for individuals and small companies, because this is not Open Source. It's incompatible with Open Source, it can't be reused in other Open Source projects. I'm amazed at the social engineering that the megacorps have done with the whole Open Source (TM) thing. They engineered a whole generation of engineers to advocate not in their own self-interest, nor for the interest of the little people, but instead for the interest of the megacorps. As soon as there is even the tiniest of restrictions, one which doesn't affect anyone besides a bunch of richiest corporations in the world, a bunch of people immediately come out of the woodwork, shout "but it's not open source!" and start bullying everyone else to change their language. Because if you even so much as inconvenience a megacorporation even a little bit it's not Open Source (TM) anymore. If we're talking about ideals then this is something I find unsettling and dystopian. I hard disagree with your "It also makes life harder for individuals and small companies" statement. It's the opposite. It gives them a competitive advantage vs megacorps, however small it may be.

by Arcuru 10mo ago

whimsicalism 10mo ago

That's fine, but I don't think you should call it open source or call it MIT or even 'modified MIT.' Call it Mistral license or something along those lines

jrm4 10mo ago
You're presently illustrating exactly why Stallman et al were such sticklers about "Free Software." "Open Source" is nebulous. It reasonably works here, for better or worse.
- whimsicalism 10mo ago
  Free software to me means GPL and associates, so if that is what Stallman was trying to be a stickler for - it worked. Open source has a well understood meaning, including licenses like MIT and Apache - but not including MIT but only if you make less than $500million dollars, MIT unless you were born on a wednesday, etc.
  - whimblepop 10mo ago
    MIT and Apache are free software licenses in Stallman's sense, and the FSF has always been clear about it.
- stonemetal12 10mo ago
  >"Open Source" is nebulous No it isn't it is well defined. The only people who find it "nebulous" are people who want the benefits without upholding the obligations. https://opensource.org/definition-annotated https://opensource.org/definition-annotated
fastball 10mo ago
imo this is a hill people need to stop dying on. Open source means "I can see the source" to most of the world. Wishing it meant "very permissively licensed" to everyone is a lost cause. And honestly it wasn't a good hill to begin with: if what you are talking about is the license, call it "open license". The source code is out in the open, so it is "open source". This is why the purists have lost ground to practical usage.
- whimsicalism 10mo ago
  > Open source means "I can see the source" to most of the world well we don't really want to open that can of worms though, do we? I don't agree with ceding technical terms to the rest of the world. I'm increasingly told we need to stop calling cancer detection AI "AI" or "ML" because it is not the 'bad AI' and confuses people. I guess I'm okay with being intransigent.
  - fastball 10mo ago
    If you are happy that time is being spent quibbling over definitions instead of actually focusing on the ideal, I'm not sure you care about the ideals as much as you say you do. Who gives a shit what we call "cancer AI", what matters is the result.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  > imo this is a hill people need to stop dying on. As someone who was born and raised on FOSS, and still mostly employed to work on FOSS, I disagree. Open source is what it is today because it's built by people with a spine who stand tall for their ideals even if it means less money, less industry recognition, lots of unglorious work and lots of other negatives. It's not purist to believe that what built open source so far should remain open source, and not wanting to dilute that ecosystem with things that aren't open source, yet call themselves open source.
  - fastball 10mo ago
    You should stand up for your ideals, but dying on the hill of what you call your ideals is actually getting in the way of that. Because instead of making the point "this license isn't as permissive as it could/should be" (easy to understand), instead the point being made is "this isn't real open source", which comes across to most people as just some weird gate-keeping / No True Scotsman kinda thing.
joseda-hg 10mo ago
That's probably better, but Modified MIT is pretty descriptive, I read it as "mostly MIT, but with caveats for extreme cases" which is about right, if you already know what the MIT license entails Whatever name they come up with for a new license will be less useful, because I'll have to figure out that this is what that is
- tensor 10mo ago
  To me this is highly misleading. The core idea behind MIT is that you can use it for anything, including commercial. A "you can use it for commercial only if you're revenue is small" is not remotely MIT-like. It's commercial with a freemium tier.

badsectoracula 10mo ago

These are not permissively licensed though, the terms "permissive license" has connotations that pretty much everyone who is into FLOSS understands (same with "open source"). I do not mind having a license like that, my gripe is with using the terms "permissive" and "open source" like that because such use dilutes them. I cannot think of any reason to do that aside from trying to dilute the term (especially when some laws, like the EU AI Act, are less restrictive when it comes to open source AIs specifically).

kouteiheika 10mo ago
> I do not mind having a license like that, my gripe is with using the terms "permissive" and "open source" like that because such use dilutes them. I cannot think of any reason to do that aside from trying to dilute the term (especially when some laws, like the EU AI Act, are less restrictive when it comes to open source AIs specifically). Good. In this case, let it be diluted! These extra "restrictions" don't affect normal people at all, and won't even affect any small/medium businesses. I couldn't care less that the term is "diluted" and that makes it harder for those poor, poor megacorporations. They swim in money already, they can deal with it. We can discuss the exact threshold, but as long as these "restrictions" are so extreme that they only affect huge megacorporations, this is still "permissive" in my book. I will gladly die on this hill.
- JoshTriplett 10mo ago
  > I couldn't care less that the term is "diluted" and that makes it harder It also makes life harder for individuals and small companies, because this is not Open Source. It's incompatible with Open Source, it can't be reused in other Open Source projects. Terms have meanings. This is not Open Source, and it will never be Open Source.
  - kouteiheika 10mo ago
    > It also makes life harder for individuals and small companies, because this is not Open Source. It's incompatible with Open Source, it can't be reused in other Open Source projects. I'm amazed at the social engineering that the megacorps have done with the whole Open Source (TM) thing. They engineered a whole generation of engineers to advocate not in their own self-interest, nor for the interest of the little people, but instead for the interest of the megacorps. As soon as there is even the tiniest of restrictions, one which doesn't affect anyone besides a bunch of richiest corporations in the world, a bunch of people immediately come out of the woodwork, shout "but it's not open source!" and start bullying everyone else to change their language. Because if you even so much as inconvenience a megacorporation even a little bit it's not Open Source (TM) anymore. If we're talking about ideals then this is something I find unsettling and dystopian. I hard disagree with your "It also makes life harder for individuals and small companies" statement. It's the opposite. It gives them a competitive advantage vs megacorps, however small it may be.