4 ms·

No success yet, but I recently found BUSL - used by Terraform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Sour

No success yet, but I recently found BUSL - used by Terraform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License It stops companies from building high-revenue products for free, while not being as scary as AGPL/LGPL from the business perspective, and completely unrestricted for everyone else (despite not being technically an open-source license).

mihaelm 1mo ago
You might also be interested in the O'Saasy license (https://osaasy.dev/ https://osaasy.dev/) which is in the similar vein, but simpler. HashiCorp switched to BUSL license for their products/tools when they already had substantial market share, and they still faced MPL-licensed forks (Terraform -> OpenTofu, Vault -> OpenBao). It will be interesting to see in a few years if those tools notably cut into their share. I'm not sure a new tool with a BUSL license will get adoption as easily.
- ricardobeat 1mo ago
  Looks nice. Two main differences: - BUSL is OSI-approved and listed in SPDX, so corporate lawyers won't be scared away by it: https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html - With BUSL the restriction is revenue-based. You can still create competing products, but would have to pay a licensing fee.
  - mihaelm 1mo ago
    Good points, the second is very "dual-licensing" in nature. BUSL is certainly the more "mature" option and there's a higher likelihood people came across it in the wild.
  - Tomte 1mo ago
    > BUSL is OSI-approved Of course it isn‘t.
    - ghaff 1mo ago
      I was a bit surprised to read that there was an OSI-approved license with usage restrictions and wondered if I had missed the memo. But you seem to be correct and it's not OSI-approved and therefore is not generally considered to be an open source license.
  - xorcist 1mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License: Debian FSG compatible No FSF approved No OSI approved No GPL compatible No Copyleft No
    - ricardobeat 1mo ago
      I'm sorry - what I meant to say is that it is listed in the SPDX (https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html) as a recognized license. The revenue gate means it will never be considered an open-source license by the OSI.
ghaff 1mo ago
The heat around this particular issue has cooled down a bit and I'm not sure anyone is especially happy with the state of affairs. But questions around AI have sucked a lot of the oxygen from the room for now.
xorcist 1mo ago
Once you decide on a non-free license, in the FSF sense, in the DFSG sense, and in the open source sense, does the details of the license matter much? You want as many people to pay as possible, and you do not wish for others to compete with you providing this software. It's pretty much a standard non-free commercial license, which exact wording will matter only to purchasing department of your customers. It will be inconsequential to the broader open source community. Literally thousands of those exist and the specific wording matters very little.
- ricardobeat 1mo ago
  It doesn’t have to be binary. A license like this allows for 99% of the personal and commercial use that a project will ever see, while giving the author leverage over large corporations - which is the main gripe people have. It is not ideal for libraries or things that would be redistributed, but then you have other options.
  - xorcist 1mo ago
    Some things in life are binary. You either allow people to build new products and businesses on your work or you don't. Would you allow me to extend the product with new features? "It depends" is a form of "no". It is not a position to sustainably work from. If you frame the licensing space as for either personal or commercial use, perhaps your point of view makes sense, but this is not a useful framing for most people, and it is specifically not something the open source community cares about. If you wish to keep leverage over others then you do not wish to have them compete with you on the same product. That is a valid position to have, but it is squarely on the non-free part of the licensing spectrum. You don't want to play within the open source community and they don't want to play with you. All anyone owe others is to make that clear.
    - Pannoniae 1mo ago
      This is why open source is rapidly becoming obsolete ;) There have been source-available/fair source/whatever-you-name-it approaches before. They were attacked by OSI zealots every time because it's not real open source. Which is true, but the unsaid - or well, only sometimes mentioned - other half is that these open source enthusiasts would you rather have a bog standard all-rights-reserved commercial licence than a relatively open licence without the four freedoms! I can't claim to read other people's thoughts, but my hunch is that this happens because it's too "close" to an open source licence so they view it as competition, while they view commercial software as either a straightforward enemy or they don't care about it whatsoever. The history aside, this approach just makes the open source community more and more irrelevant each day, especially with the advent of "vibecode your own dependencies up". The 4 freedoms come from a place where they were about users, but gigantic corporations have shoehorned themselves into being users, and instead of the community defending against it, they think the freedom to exploit the maintainers' work while contributing nothing back is more important than keeping the commons free and shared. :P Only siths think in absolutes.
rpdillon 1mo ago
This framing ignores the fact that many people pick up technologies because they want to be able to switch the vendor that is hosting it for them. If I'm hosting a LAMP stack from some shared hosting provider, it's easy for me to just move to a different hosting provider because all the software is open source and anybody can host it. This falls apart when companies choose the BUSL, which is why it's not considered OSI open source.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]

mihaelm 1mo ago

You might also be interested in the O'Saasy license (https://osaasy.dev/ https://osaasy.dev/) which is in the similar vein, but simpler. HashiCorp switched to BUSL license for their products/tools when they already had substantial market share, and they still faced MPL-licensed forks (Terraform -> OpenTofu, Vault -> OpenBao). It will be interesting to see in a few years if those tools notably cut into their share. I'm not sure a new tool with a BUSL license will get adoption as easily.

ricardobeat 1mo ago
Looks nice. Two main differences: - BUSL is OSI-approved and listed in SPDX, so corporate lawyers won't be scared away by it: https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html - With BUSL the restriction is revenue-based. You can still create competing products, but would have to pay a licensing fee.
- mihaelm 1mo ago
  Good points, the second is very "dual-licensing" in nature. BUSL is certainly the more "mature" option and there's a higher likelihood people came across it in the wild.
- Tomte 1mo ago
  > BUSL is OSI-approved Of course it isn‘t.
  - ghaff 1mo ago
    I was a bit surprised to read that there was an OSI-approved license with usage restrictions and wondered if I had missed the memo. But you seem to be correct and it's not OSI-approved and therefore is not generally considered to be an open source license.
- xorcist 1mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License: Debian FSG compatible No FSF approved No OSI approved No GPL compatible No Copyleft No
  - ricardobeat 1mo ago
    I'm sorry - what I meant to say is that it is listed in the SPDX (https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html) as a recognized license. The revenue gate means it will never be considered an open-source license by the OSI.

ghaff 1mo ago

The heat around this particular issue has cooled down a bit and I'm not sure anyone is especially happy with the state of affairs. But questions around AI have sucked a lot of the oxygen from the room for now.

xorcist 1mo ago

Once you decide on a non-free license, in the FSF sense, in the DFSG sense, and in the open source sense, does the details of the license matter much? You want as many people to pay as possible, and you do not wish for others to compete with you providing this software. It's pretty much a standard non-free commercial license, which exact wording will matter only to purchasing department of your customers. It will be inconsequential to the broader open source community. Literally thousands of those exist and the specific wording matters very little.

ricardobeat 1mo ago
It doesn’t have to be binary. A license like this allows for 99% of the personal and commercial use that a project will ever see, while giving the author leverage over large corporations - which is the main gripe people have. It is not ideal for libraries or things that would be redistributed, but then you have other options.
- xorcist 1mo ago
  Some things in life are binary. You either allow people to build new products and businesses on your work or you don't. Would you allow me to extend the product with new features? "It depends" is a form of "no". It is not a position to sustainably work from. If you frame the licensing space as for either personal or commercial use, perhaps your point of view makes sense, but this is not a useful framing for most people, and it is specifically not something the open source community cares about. If you wish to keep leverage over others then you do not wish to have them compete with you on the same product. That is a valid position to have, but it is squarely on the non-free part of the licensing spectrum. You don't want to play within the open source community and they don't want to play with you. All anyone owe others is to make that clear.
  - Pannoniae 1mo ago
    This is why open source is rapidly becoming obsolete ;) There have been source-available/fair source/whatever-you-name-it approaches before. They were attacked by OSI zealots every time because it's not real open source. Which is true, but the unsaid - or well, only sometimes mentioned - other half is that these open source enthusiasts would you rather have a bog standard all-rights-reserved commercial licence than a relatively open licence without the four freedoms! I can't claim to read other people's thoughts, but my hunch is that this happens because it's too "close" to an open source licence so they view it as competition, while they view commercial software as either a straightforward enemy or they don't care about it whatsoever. The history aside, this approach just makes the open source community more and more irrelevant each day, especially with the advent of "vibecode your own dependencies up". The 4 freedoms come from a place where they were about users, but gigantic corporations have shoehorned themselves into being users, and instead of the community defending against it, they think the freedom to exploit the maintainers' work while contributing nothing back is more important than keeping the commons free and shared. :P Only siths think in absolutes.

rpdillon 1mo ago

This framing ignores the fact that many people pick up technologies because they want to be able to switch the vendor that is hosting it for them. If I'm hosting a LAMP stack from some shared hosting provider, it's easy for me to just move to a different hosting provider because all the software is open source and anybody can host it. This falls apart when companies choose the BUSL, which is why it's not considered OSI open source.

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]