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Do Alternative Software Licenses Represent Open Source's 'Midlife Crisis'? (dtrace.org)
"it is clear to me that open source -- now several decades old and fully adult -- is going through its own midlife crisis," writes Joyent CTO Bryan Cantrill.
[O]pen source business models are really tough, selling software-as-a-service is one of the most natural of them, the cloud service providers are really good at it -- and their commercial appetites seem boundless. And, like a new cherry red two-seater sports car next to a minivan in a suburban driveway, some open source companies are dealing with this crisis exceptionally poorly: they are trying to restrict the way that their open source software can be used. These companies want it both ways: they want the advantages of open source -- the community, the positivity, the energy, the adoption, the downloads -- but they also want to enjoy the fruits of proprietary software companies in software lock-in and its concomitant monopolistic rents.
If this were entirely transparent (that is, if some bits were merely being made explicitly proprietary), it would be fine: we could accept these companies as essentially proprietary software companies, albeit with an open source loss-leader. But instead, these companies are trying to license their way into this self-contradictory world: continuing to claim to be entirely open source, but perverting the license under which portions of that source are available. Most gallingly, they are doing this by hijacking open source nomenclature. Of these, the laughably named commons clause is the worst offender (it is plainly designed to be confused with the purely virtuous creative commons), but others...are little better...
"[T]heir business model isn't their community's problem, and they should please stop trying to make it one," Cantrill writes, adding letter that "As we collectively internalize that open source is not a business model on its own, we will likely see fewer VC-funded open source companies (though I'm honestly not sure that that's a bad thing)..." He also points out that "Even though the VC that led the last round wants to puke into a trashcan whenever they hear it, business models like 'support', 'services' and 'training' are entirely viable!"
Jay Kreps, Co-founder of @confluentinc, has posted a rebuttal on Medium. "How do you describe a license that lets you run, modify, fork, and redistribute the code and do virtually anything other than offer a competing SaaS offering of the product? I think Bryan's sentiment may be that it should be called the Evil Proprietary Corruption of Open Source License or something like that, but, well, we disagree."
If this were entirely transparent (that is, if some bits were merely being made explicitly proprietary), it would be fine: we could accept these companies as essentially proprietary software companies, albeit with an open source loss-leader. But instead, these companies are trying to license their way into this self-contradictory world: continuing to claim to be entirely open source, but perverting the license under which portions of that source are available. Most gallingly, they are doing this by hijacking open source nomenclature. Of these, the laughably named commons clause is the worst offender (it is plainly designed to be confused with the purely virtuous creative commons), but others...are little better...
"[T]heir business model isn't their community's problem, and they should please stop trying to make it one," Cantrill writes, adding letter that "As we collectively internalize that open source is not a business model on its own, we will likely see fewer VC-funded open source companies (though I'm honestly not sure that that's a bad thing)..." He also points out that "Even though the VC that led the last round wants to puke into a trashcan whenever they hear it, business models like 'support', 'services' and 'training' are entirely viable!"
Jay Kreps, Co-founder of @confluentinc, has posted a rebuttal on Medium. "How do you describe a license that lets you run, modify, fork, and redistribute the code and do virtually anything other than offer a competing SaaS offering of the product? I think Bryan's sentiment may be that it should be called the Evil Proprietary Corruption of Open Source License or something like that, but, well, we disagree."
Not compatible with the Open Source Definition. "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor."
Seems like what this guy really wants is a split release: a proprietary enterprise version, and an AGPL/GPLv3-licensed "Community Edition." Not unlike what Qt has done for years.
At this point in time, devising your own custom open-source license is like devising your own custom crypto algorithm: it's a bad idea, and shows that you really don't understand what you're getting into.
The Open Source Initiative, contrary to some folks here on Slashdot, has expressed its purpose as the preservation of software freedom. They did that in an official statement of the board regarding the license acceptance process.
The Open Source definition, the definition of what is really Open Source and what is not, started out life as the Debian Free Software Guidelines. So, a Free Software definition. Once upon a time, there were some people who posed Open Source as an opposition to Free Software. Fortunately, those folks are no longer associated with OSI.
I don't speak for the OSI board. I am, however, co-founder and current standards chair and member of the license committee. So I might know what I'm talking about :-)
As far as I can tell, these various licenses in discussion are not Open Source licenses and won't be accepted as Open Source licenses. The folks who promote them can use any license they wish, as long as they don't call it Open Source. I suggest they do that. I even help them, for free, as long as they are clear that conflicts witbh Open Source should be avoided.
Bruce Perens.
It's not new, but the only difference here is that people want to take software with licenses too restrictive to be Open Source and call it "Open Source". They should call it something else.
Bruce Perens.
You seem to be confused about what Free Software is. Please read What is Free Software? Right there as Freedom Zero is that you can run the program for any purpose.
Richard Stallman would tell you that he is not a pacifist (he's told me that). He objects to particular wars, for good reasons, but not all war. Free Software licenses don't prohibit military use, or any other sort of use. Theo's rejection was a personal thing.
Bruce Perens.
I'm all about _people_ having the freedom to use software however they see fit. But I couldn't give a flying fuck if corporations have "freedom" to do anything at all.
Because Freedom is for human beings. Corporations are "legal entities", more or less malevolent machines, little petty gods we've built and raised up over ourselves.
I want to release software under a license that grants the Four Freedoms to human beings. And grants jack shit to corporations. No license I'm aware of does this. But maybe it could be hacked into existing licenses with just a few edits. Any thoughts on the wording?
PS: There's probably some numbnuts out there thinking, "Hey doood, a corporation is just a group of people. Corporations have rights too!!1!" Sorry bro, it's Current Year, and no one believes that obvious lie anymore.