Startups Are Going 'Fair Source' To Avoid Pitfalls of Open Source Licensing (techcrunch.com) 14
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: With the perennial tensions between proprietary and open source software (OSS) unlikely to end anytime soon, a $3 billion startup is throwing its weight behind a new licensing paradigm -- one that's designed to bridge the open and proprietary worlds, replete with new definition, terminology, and governance model. Developer software company Sentry recently introduced a new license category dubbed "fair source." Sentry is an initial adopter, as are some half dozen others, including GitButler, a developer tooling company from one of GitHub's founders. The fair source concept is designed to help companies align themselves with the "open" software development sphere, without encroaching into existing licensing landscapes, be that open source, open core, or source-available, and while avoiding any negative associations that exist with "proprietary." However, fair source is also a response to the growing sense that open source isn't working out commercially.
"Open source isn't a business model -- open source is a distribution model, it's a software development model, primarily," Chad Whitacre, Sentry's head of open source, told TechCrunch. "And in fact, it places severe limits on what business models are available, because of the licensing terms." Sure, there are hugely successful open source projects, but they are generally components of larger proprietary products. Businesses that have flown the open source flag have mostly retreated to protect their hard work, moving either from fully permissive to a more restrictive "copyleft" license, as the likes of Element did last year and Grafana before it, or ditched open source altogether as HashiCorp did with Terraform. "Most of the world's software is still closed source," Whitacre added. "Kubernetes is open source, but Google Search is closed. React is open source, but Facebook Newsfeed is closed. With fair source, we're carving a space for companies to safely share not just these lower-level infrastructure components, but share access to their core product." Further reading: As Companies Try 'Open Source Rug Pull', Open Source Foundations Considered Helpful
"Open source isn't a business model -- open source is a distribution model, it's a software development model, primarily," Chad Whitacre, Sentry's head of open source, told TechCrunch. "And in fact, it places severe limits on what business models are available, because of the licensing terms." Sure, there are hugely successful open source projects, but they are generally components of larger proprietary products. Businesses that have flown the open source flag have mostly retreated to protect their hard work, moving either from fully permissive to a more restrictive "copyleft" license, as the likes of Element did last year and Grafana before it, or ditched open source altogether as HashiCorp did with Terraform. "Most of the world's software is still closed source," Whitacre added. "Kubernetes is open source, but Google Search is closed. React is open source, but Facebook Newsfeed is closed. With fair source, we're carving a space for companies to safely share not just these lower-level infrastructure components, but share access to their core product." Further reading: As Companies Try 'Open Source Rug Pull', Open Source Foundations Considered Helpful
Actual copy of license: (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a lawyer, but I wouldnt touch software with this license with a ten foot barge pole. Its horribly restrictive.
Don't fall for the marketing talk people.
Re: Actual copy of license: (Score:4, Interesting)
The Please Do Free Work For Us license
Re:Actual copy of license: (Score:4, Interesting)
You can totally publicly display, publicly perform, and redistribute the software. As long as you don't compete with the software, or compete with the services that upstream builds on top of the software, or do the same things as the software.
WTAF?
Seems very fuzzy... (Score:5, Interesting)
The "You are super forbidden from doing anything with this that competes with us, might compete with us, resembles one of our products to some degree" portion of the license seems broad and vague enough to both put practically any use(except for your own customers doing fixes in-house) at risk of litigation; and to not necessarily protect you from someone who isn't afraid to try to get away with an edge case and out-lawyer you if you object. In theory it's more business-model focused than something like the AGPL; and less restrictive than a 'noncommercial' or 'exclusively to facilitate internal modifications by licensed customers' license; but so much of that extra area contains enough legal uncertainty that you'd need to have steady nerves to actually use it.
Then you have the time-locked permissive release, which probably seems fine when you are doing something on the cutting edge; but seems likely to lead to regret or pointless churning of your product to break compatibility if you live long enough to reach the point where getting the you of 24 months ago for free seems like a better deal than paying for you today.(which certainly isn't the case across the board; but happens to a lot of software once the low hanging fruit is picked and improvements become increasingly marginal) It certainly provides more cover than releasing under a permissive license on day one; but quite possibly less than a stricter copyleft license on day one; since, instead of 'your code derivatives of which must be shared back' you have an explicit division between 'your basically-proprietary code that why would anyone give you fixes for' and 'your free stuff that's a couple of years old'.
Re: (Score:1)
Pay attention to their terminology in TFS. They describe copyleft as 'more restrictive' and that pretty much always indicates someone with an abusive relationship to source and projects.*
*Yes yes, it also could indicate a pedantic autist. To shut him up I have to note. Technically, the license has an additional restriction even if that restriction is that you can't add restrictions.
Re: (Score:2)
"...and that pretty much always indicates someone with an abusive relationship to source and projects.*
Or at least an idiot might think that.
A person who asserts, rightly, that a BSD license is less restrictive than a GPL has an "abusive relationship to source and projects"? GTFO
Re: (Score:2)
The BSD license is less restrictive than the GPL to a developer who downloads the code.
The BSD license may very well be more restrictive to the end users who use the software that developer redistributes.
The writers of the GPL were concerned about end users, not the intermediate developers.
Re: (Score:1)
I already addressed you.
"it also could indicate a pedantic autist. To shut him up I have to note. Technically, the license has an additional restriction even if that restriction is that you can't add restrictions."
A BSD project and it's half dozen forks is 1 open license and 6 entirely closed and proprietary monsters. A GPL project and it's half dozen forks is 7 completely open and free projects. Technically, a free use forest with no restriction against arson and logging is more free than which is open use
Re: (Score:2)
Pay attention to their terminology in TFS. They describe copyleft as 'more restrictive' and that pretty much always indicates someone with an abusive relationship to source and projects.*
*Yes yes, it also could indicate a pedantic autist. To shut him up I have to note. Technically, the license has an additional restriction even if that restriction is that you can't add restrictions.
But that additional restriction is actually pretty darn restrictive in practice. Apple eventually created clang (open source license) precisely because the copyleft licensing of GCC (copyleft license) made it too hard to reuse the compiler front end for various purposes in Xcode, such as documentation generation, connecting IBOutlets to nib files, etc.
Let me say that again. Apple created and released a whole new open source compiler toolchain in large part because it was easier than working within the lim
I thought of the same thing: Escrow/Delayed Source (Score:2)
The code is escrowed for a period of time determined by the developer. If you want the latest greatest version then you pay for a license. Those with a license can see the latest code and contribute if they wish to do so and ultimately use the newest version of the application. It can be a yearly/multi year or one time fee depending on the developer. If you contribute significantly (to be determined by the main developer) then you can get comped for a free year. Other than paying for the first year many peo
What tensions? (Score:2)
"With the perennial tensions between proprietary and open source software (OSS) unlikely to end anytime soon..."
What tensions are those? Just stirring the pot to promote an agenda.
Bibisco (Score:2)
Here's a piece of GPL software being sold. It complies with the GPL as well.
Bibisco [bibisco.com] has a limited version free for download, and sells a complete version. You get the source in both cases.
You know it is unfair when they called it "fair" (Score:2)
Just like OpenAI and OpenXML aren't open at all.
Orwell must be spinning in his grave for decades now.