9 ms·

Changing the Ungit license from MIT to Faircode

waisbrot 9y ago
Reinventing GPL with less care. I can copy the code, re-license as plain-MIT, and now commercial companies can use it for free. A dual GPL-commercial license is the correct way to handle this. A more useful contribution to the license landscape would be to define a commercial sibling-license to the GPL that described how license payments would be disbursed.
- 0xfaded 9y ago
  I would like a companion contributors agreement to the GPL that provides the correct legalese to assign copyright back to the project owner. I decided to go the GPL route, but am not currently accepting contributions. I've managed to successfully license the code under a companion license, which is doable since I'm the only copyright holder. My thoughts are that there should be a contrib fork for major contributions that authors wish to maintain copyright over, but for minor contributions/bug fixes the author probably doesn't care and it would be better for everyone if the contribution was integrated into the core repository.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    I personally feel that assigning copyright on commit is a stopgap. What if you die? What if you abandon the project? How can a fork of your project work with that if they want to change the license down the road? Copyright basically lasts forever now, so any choice about "assignment" will last forever. Personally I really feel we need a solution that allows the current "maintainers" to have control over it. I don't really know what that would legally look like, but I've been hit by issues from open source copyright too many times to consider it a "solved problem". Perhaps a new license "framework" that allows each contributor to say how they want to allow their contributions to be used in the future? I honestly don't know, but the current solutions are holding us back in some ways.
    - riffraff 9y ago
      Assign copyright to Apache or an equivalent organisation, that takes care of governance past the single maintainer. In any case this is worse if there are multiple contributors each owning their copyright, not simpler.
    - jrochkind1 9y ago
      it's pretty straightforward, there just needs to be a legal entity (ie, a corporation) representing and controlled by 'the maintainers', to assign copyright to. The easiest way to do this is under the umbrella of a foundation like ASF. But you could create an LLC or any other form of corporation with no income or assets other than the copyrights it holds, if you want. There would be at least some minimal annual registration costs etc. Any framework that allows contributors to _individually_ set terms for their contributions is going to be pretty unworkable, as the actual terms for the whole product become the union of any term any contributor has ever set or something, a mess.
    - 0xfaded 9y ago
      I feel it really depends on the type of project. In my case the code is rather niche and would only really be licensed by a small number of companies doing embedded robotics or AR. However, this type of stuff is also fun for hobbyists, so I wanted to make it available. I don't foresee a huge developer community springing up around this, and since I'm the only person who will realistically be making major contributions and I'm working on it more or less full time, I need a way to fund it. The real problem for me isn't major contributions, if these started coming in I may reevaluate my position. The problem is minor bug fixes where the complexities of acquiring another copyright holder outweigh the benefits of accepting the contribution. As above, I don't have a good solution.
- rgbrenner 9y ago
  I can copy the code, re-license as plain-MIT You can't relicense someone elses code. You dont have the right to do that. If you fork this code, only your changes would be under MIT. So you would have a mixed-license project, and users would need to comply with both licenses. If you don't want to use this license, you have to fork it from before the license change... giving up the changes that were made after the new license takes effect.
  - bhuga 9y ago
    You're right, but both the MIT and the non-commercial portion of this new license explicitly grant the right to sublicense. It's not obvious to me that a free use case can't sublicense its use to a huge organization.
    - rgbrenner 9y ago
      sublicense != relicense. You can't remove restrictions. All of the terms of the license would remain. That organization would still need to pay the fee.
    - wool_gather 9y ago
      If it was possible to re-license something in a way that removed restrictions from the original license, then no license would be worth anything. You could do a relicense end-run around any terms you wished. (As another commenter said,) sublicensing does not permit you to grant any rights under the new license that you yourself have not been granted under the original.
  - X86BSD 9y ago
    I think actually you can. If you rewrite 75%? 80%? You can relicense it. Legally I think the law views that as new code not a modification. A lawyer may need to correct me but I seem to recall something like this.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- ajross 9y ago
  Seems to me like the authors are trying to restrict the use of the software by commercial pursuits, not the distribution. The GPL does the latter, but says nothing about the former.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mathgeek 9y ago
Will be interesting to see the resulting fork that keeps the MIT license. Looks like a few have already sprung up.
sandstrom 9y ago
For open-source projects driven mainly by one contributor, I think the model employed by Sidekiq[1] is better than this one. There is a base version with the MIT (or similar) license. Then there is a PRO version which adds some enterprise functionality + premium support. But still a good thing that Ungit is trying this. There is value in experimentation! [1] https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq
- deepakkarki 9y ago
  I've always wondered, in such cases where you have an open core and plan to monetize on extra features and plugins; what do you do if the community just goes ahead and adds those extra features? Or someone forks the project and adds the features?
  - AznHisoka 9y ago
    There are several Sidekiq features others have added but I never trust them. If I am an enterprise I value reliability over price. I would pay a premium for something the Sidekiq owner worked on rather than a random contributor
  - manigandham 9y ago
    That's called business competition. Stay in business by delivering greater value. It's likely the maintainer is in the best position to start a company about the product to deliver more features faster and at higher quality along with more inherent trust.
    - naturalgradient 9y ago
      As someone being in a similar situation, it's a really difficult business model. Unlike many other business models with a natural moat (i.e. by virtue of having all the data, being deeply integrated into organisational processes, etc), commercialising open source is a struggle because simply justifying making money already requires constant improvement.
diggan 9y ago
Bad timing, seems licenseyourcode.com is down and does not currently work.
- conradk 9y ago
  It was renamed to faircode.io
wildrhythms 9y ago
I don't have anything to add, but just want to say it's refreshing to see such a civil discussion surrounding a license change like this.
tkt 9y ago
It is interesting and important to think about ways to support open source project contributors, especially when the projects are being used in commercial organizations. It would have been better to see this license change idea through an RFC before a change though, and with an attorney’s advice. If he does really want this to be an experiment it would have been good for him to have a better background on the types of license models available and an attorney’s help with license language changes and implications.
zitterbewegung 9y ago
Has the LYC license been tested in court ? I know GPL has. I agree with the maintainer that they should be compensated for their time. An open core model works but depending on a project who has the time to set that up? Patreon or Kickstarter has the same issue.
- hackbinary 9y ago
  I don't think the opencore model works very well. The model that does work well is the Redhat/Fedora model of fast moving, and changing cutting edge of full features, with a premium being charged for the fully tested and integrated product.
- Tempest1981 9y ago
  He proposes no enforcement. Although I could imagine public shaming of those who are out of compliance. And who knows if others using LYC would want enforcement.
rectang 9y ago
This is not an "open source business model", as claimed by the Ungit maintainer, because the new license is not open source under the long standard definition maintained by OSI. Good commentary from Grant Bakker in the discussion: https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit/issues/974#issuecomment-341250490 https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit/issues/974#issuecommen...
- bobby_the_whale 9y ago
  Just because something is old, it doesn't make it true.
  - xj9 9y ago
    get back to me when the faircode license is listed on the OSI website or considered a free software license by the FSF
  - ehllo 9y ago
    It is true, because there is a overall consent about open source.
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    Do you have a proposed counterexample? The OSI definition is pretty much the same in spirit and in practice as, say, the DSFG or FSF definitions. Non-discriminatory terms is pretty much a fundamental precondition for any open-source license. As any lawyer would tell you--and don't forget, licenses are explicit legal contracts--licenses that include discrimination clauses of various kinds (including "fun" clauses like "don't use this for evil") are basically non-starters. It's especially problematic when the discrimination is based on something as malleable as yearly profit, so that someone's inclusion or exclusion on this basis changes every year. Licenses are legal contracts, and therefore they have the force of law behind them. Rolling your own license is a stupid idea, particularly if you are not a lawyer and you are not retaining a lawyer to give you advice on the matter. Even aspects of major licenses like 3-clause BSD, MIT, GPL, LGPL, Apache, and others have indeterminate legal repercussions, particularly when patents and copyright of contributions come into play.
nine_k 9y ago
I'd add that 1M in revenue is barely enough to support 4-5 reasonably paid develops + some opex like aws and a small office in a big city. The license change would probably touch most of its commercial users.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Maybe in the US. Many, if not most of the world can support way more developers with that revenue, and open source projects are used worldwide.
hackbinary 9y ago
While I can understand where he is coming from, his stuff is itself largely built on the free licensed software of others. In the end, this seems to me like pulling up the ladder after himself, and ultimately quite selfish.
- arekkas 9y ago
  How is making a living from your work selfish?
  - shadowmint 9y ago
    It depends, is that work based on the free work of others? Taking advantage of the community and not contributing back for others to benefit (as you have, for free) seems selfish to me. Maybe if he proportionately (based on LOC or something) donated any income to his upstream dependencies? ...but I suspect that wouldn’t leave much.
    - Tempest1981 9y ago
      I saw it as him encouraging the community to join him, on behalf of all starving developers who are giving big businesses a free ride.
  - erikb 9y ago
    Please read a comment before you respond. The whole comment only exists to say that it seems like the author of ungit is not making a living on his own work alone, but also on the work of all the OTHER contributors, who contributed assuming this would be a free and open community project.
    - bonzini 9y ago
      Other contributors were using a very permissive license, that allows sublicensing. They were okay with a proprietary software company embedding their code into a proprietary product and selling it, they should be okay with this as well.
vortico 9y ago
This is a perfectly moral choice, assuming he has not taken significant contributions from others (or they have allowed this relicense, or granted copyright ownership of their contribution to him). Later in the Issue discussion, they attempt to put a name to the type of license. I propose "Freeware with source". Thoughts?
- bonzini 9y ago
  They have already allowed the relicense by releasing their contributions under a permissive license such as MIT.
  - vortico 9y ago
    Oh yes, of course. Ignore my parenthetical statement then.
pjungwir 9y ago
If this becomes a trend I'm afraid it will hurt business use of all open source software, since companies will never know if their dependencies are going to suddenly start charging money. Even though you can use the old versions, getting stuck on outdated libraries is a big problem for a lot of projects, where you try to stay up-to-date. It feels like we are only recently at a point where managers and lawyers will permit building on open source software and not force you to use Microsoft and Oracle. But if every repo could be free today and $90/mo tomorrow, will that change?
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > But if every repo could be free today and $90/mo tomorrow, will that change? Well, it's not "free today and $90/mo tomorrow", it's just that they're not going to maintain the one that's under the free license. You don't suddenly have to pay $90/mo for what was already distributed. It's a fair attempt to make some money, but this license is odious and bizarre. I don't think there's a trend for this.
- skissane 9y ago
  > since companies will never know if their dependencies are going to suddenly start charging money It is more of a risk for some open source projects than others. Look for example at React – I very much doubt Facebook will try to relicense it into a commercial product, simply because they are not in the business of selling software and probably don't want to get into that business. But, compare that to many small companies who have a product (such as a development tool or database or whatever) and they offer an open source version and a commercial version with extra features–there is a much bigger risk they might decide their open source offering is harming their commercial one, and therefore should be discontinued. Similarly, an open source project run by a single individual or small community is more likely to be closed up than one run by a large community. On the other hand, a project run by a single individual is likely to be a smaller code base, and hence more feasible to fork or maintain in-house. So, I think businesses should be aware of this risk, but should evaluate that risk for each open source dependency independently.
fragsworth 9y ago
I truncated some of the text to highlight a possible issue with the change written by the Ungit maintainer: > Permission is hereby granted (...) to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies ("Use") of the Software (...) And then: > If you are a commercial entity with a revenue in excess of $1,000,000 (...) you must acquire a commercial license grant (...) to Use this Software (...) The problem is that according to the license, you can now pay $90 to "copy", "sell", and most importantly "sublicense" the software. Legally, does this work the way the Ungit maintainer intended?
- luma 9y ago
  Or, can I as an individual who is an employee of the company, but not the company, "use" it myself and then "sublicense" it to my employer?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
Xorlev 9y ago
Speaking on his pricing, $90/month is more expensive by far than IntelliJ Ultimate/PHPStorm/RubyMine by far with a lot less value. Having worked at an org with $xxMM in revenue, we still wouldn’t have paid for it. We would have chosen to find a different tool. It’s a Git UI. Come on.
- dangoor 9y ago
  Since the license allows sublicensing, it seems like a business only needs to buy one license at $90/month, which is a lot cheaper than IntelliJ
antirez 9y ago
I do not want to judge the license change: everybody should be able to do whatever they want with the code for which there is ownership. Just two general observations: 1) I think this is going to be a trend in the future, for two main reasons, one is that the cloud poses very challenging limits to individuals or small companies to monetize they OSS projects selling services, the second is that many OSS developers are starting to think that it's a bit unfair that incredibly successful companies sold for billions, mostly based on OSS frameworks, libraries, operating systems, don't support the projects they used to reach to such success. And no... releasing your own OSS project to the public, developed for internal interests, is not going to pay back the authors of the projects used to reach the success. 2) If you like this route, better to start ASAP with such a license, or at least start with some restrictive *GPL license and not BSD. Otherwise you are obviously susceptible to forking once you insert such a clause.
- jondubois 9y ago
  Yes I think it depends heavily on the type of open source project and it shouldn't be frowned upon for certain kinds of projects. I run an open source project which is technical and is designed to integrate into other systems; it's ideal for fast growing companies and large organizations that have money; because of this, inbound leads for consulting, technical support, sponsorship, partnership and contract work trickle in on their own. So in my case, a very permissive MIT license makes sense even financially. If you have a relatively simple product which is more like an external stand-alone tool (not designed to be integrated into proprietary systems at the API level), then it will be impossible to monetise it through consulting or sponsorship. Also, other kinds of open source projects which are difficult to monetize are those which implement established and well understood industry standards. Adhering to standards helps with adoption and greatly increases your project's chance of success but it's not creating any new markets; you're tapping into an existing user base and competing with other implementers in a race-to-the-bottom in terms of performance, efficiency and usability and it's hard to capture any value out of that.
  - antirez 9y ago
    Interesting observations, thank you.
bobby_the_whale 9y ago
Those GitHub responses are for the most part so incredibly retarded. People without legal expertise offering their opinion. Yeah, like any sane person should care about that. The "You can't say it is open-source" bullshit is just the first in a long line of idiots lining up to comment on it. Who are these people who so desperately want to share with the Internet that they cannot say anything which is remotely correct?
- andybak 9y ago
  Gosh. I'm not sure. What kind of idiot would boldly post their poorly thought through comments on a public forum?
  - bobby_the_whale 9y ago
    What kind of idiot are you?
    - dang 9y ago
      We've banned this account for violating the site guidelines.
- mindcrime 9y ago
  The "You can't say it is open-source" bullshit is just the first in a long line of idiots lining up to comment on it. Just because OSI don't have a USPTO registered trademark on "open source" doesn't mean that the OSD isn't the de-facto definition of what "open source" means. One may (may) legally be able to call their project with a crappy homegrown license "open source" but they shouldn't do so. It isn't always just about what's legal, it's about what's right, and about community consensus. And the truth is, Ungit is not open source after this change.
  - bobby_the_whale 9y ago
    Fine, so you have an opinion about which the author of Ungit doesn't need to care. I am sure a monkey in the zoo also has an opinion. Remind me, why did you write down anything again? The moment you start talking about what's "right", you are just showing a lack of maturity.
jlg23 9y ago
Licenses like these are a logistical nightmare. If someone deploys software under that license, paying that person for the job is the smallest item on the bill: Now I have to connect my legal department with my techies and with the finance folks. Let's schedule meetings every 3 months to review for which software we have to pay now! Just the logistical overhead alone justifies a fork for any of the targeted users^wcustomers.
- rcthompson 9y ago
  Yeah, the thing to remember is that "cost" is not a smooth or continuous function of price. There's a very large jump discontinuity between $0 and $0.01. It's not an issue that comes up for most products, because for most products a price of $0 doesn't make sense. But software runs up against this regularly.
- aseipp 9y ago
  "Paying people for their work sucks, what a drag. Undercutting their work so we can continue to profit more is a much better strategy."
  - betenoire 9y ago
    http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
hannob 9y ago
Of course people can license their stuff in whatever weird way they want and I don't have to like it. But I don't like it when people lie to me. The title is "Trying a new open source model" - the content is "Trying not to be open source any more". If you don't want to do open source then you can of course do that. But if you don't want to do open source any more and still say you're doing open source then you're lying. (And before anyone answers: No, there's no "other open source" or "a different kind of open source". Open Source is a clearly defined term and such restricted licenses aren't.)
- INTPenis 9y ago
  You're confusing open source software with free software. I'm on your side in principle but the distinction is important in this case.
  - gpderetta 9y ago
    This doesn't meet neither the free software nor Open Source license requirements. It might be open source in some colloquial sense, but that's not how the term is usually understood in the trade.
  - hannob 9y ago
    > You're confusing open source software with free software. No, I'm not. Please read the open source definition: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated In practical terms there's very little difference between free software and open source. It's mostly a "philosophical" difference - free software advocates put an emphasis on "freedom", while open source advocates see it more as a business model. But the requirements for the licensing are identical.
    - INTPenis 9y ago
      I see what you mean but that doesn't make sense to me. Open source is by definition of the phrase, as well as in practical cases, a program whos source is available. Nothing more. There are many prominent open source programs that also exist as a licensed product. That's why I have always believed free software (FOSS) to be the other definition where the software cannot be licensed or sold for a profit.
roblabla 9y ago
I just learned about faircode[0] and I've got to say, I like the idea. I like that right on the frontpage, it shows that I have the choice to keep using the current license, and have it work like a Patreon, or use their own Faircode License (which seems what this story is about). It makes them look honest. I like that they are honest about the cost of using the faircode service, right on the frontpage (5% on top of a 2.9% + 30c transaction fee). I like that they thought about having tools integrated in the ecosystem to allow businesses to easily now what license the deps they're using are on, and how to easily pay for them. I haven't looked too deep into it, but if it could handle a dual license model as well, then it'd be beyond awesome. I don't want to force companies (even >$1M companies) to pay if they contribute back any improvements they make. [0]: https://faircode.io/ https://faircode.io/
- FredrikNoren 9y ago
  Your wish has been heard; I just added a dual licensing option to the platform :) Enjoy!
  - roblabla 9y ago
    Wow, that's awesome ! You have no idea how happy this makes me ! Thanks for your hard work, I'll definitely be using this and suggesting it to the people around me :D EDIT: Just tried to sign up, and I triggered an internal error :<
    - FredrikNoren 9y ago
      Whoopsie, the error messages are still a bit rough but it looks like the recaptcha wasn't clicked? I've improved the errors on the frontend so should give you a nicer error message if it isn't now! Lmk if that doesn't fix the problem.
deleted 9y ago
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tedunangst 9y ago
Would this prevent github from using ungit (unless they pay)? Presumably this would also prevent ubuntu from packaging ungit?
ralmidani 9y ago
Maybe I am missing something. If you release something under a non-copyleft license, as long as I make proper attribution, what I do with it should not be your concern. If you do not want people making money from your software without paying you, use dual copyleft/proprietary licenses instead. "Faircode" seems like an attempt to have it both ways: squeezing money out of people without being labeled copyleft (because that's not cool in some circles). There is nothing "fair" about making a company's revenue a criterion for deciding which license terms the company enjoys. What if I make more than $1M but am willing to release all of my modifications? Does that make me less of a friend to the community than people who sell non-free versions, but have had less success with their business model? I am trying to avoid the word "shakedown", but this strikes me as exactly that. From the Medium post announcing the license: "Some people have asked my about the difference between this and donations. I think that for a project like Ungit small individual donations would never work; we’d have to convince thousands of people to part with small sums of money. We’re simply not big enough for that. With LYC the idea is to ask a few big players who benefit commercially from the project to part with bigger sums instead." Source: https://medium.com/@fredriknoren/trying-a-new-open-source-model-93a1a5a16a40 https://medium.com/@fredriknoren/trying-a-new-open-source-mo...
- jrochkind1 9y ago
  I don't see the relation. Copyleft licenses and what the faircode license are attempting to do are pretty different things. I don't see any relation between them, other than that they are both licensing terms. They are different licensing terms. I do think the terms of this new license are going to be confusing and make it difficult to figure out how to use it legally. As with most if not all "non-commercial use only" licenses (including CC-NC), of which I'd consider this a subset (non-commercial use or commercial use by companies with income under X). But non-commercial-use-only terms and copyleft 'share alike' terms are different things.
  - ralmidani 9y ago
    I understand that "Faircode" is not trying to protect downstream users from non-free software. That's my point; It's not about principle, it's about extorting money while appearing to be principled. Copyleft licenses force people to release their modifications as source code, or pay the copyright owner for an exception (if the owner is open to providing the exception) Non-Copyleft licenses say "do whatever you want, just give us credit." "Faircode" says "Even if you release your source code, if you make enough money, you still have to pay us."
deleted 9y ago
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jordigh 9y ago
This isn't open source: it discriminates against field of endeavours (point 6): https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated Restricting commercial use isn't anything new or a bold new experiment or anything. It's the same lesson we apparently need to relearn from the 1980s.
- quotemstr 9y ago
  I've been telling people for ages now that the slow erosion of copyleft mindshare in favor of permissive licensing is going to bring about a return of the bad old days of proprietary software licensing. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but this move doesn't bode well.
deleted 9y ago
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siscia 9y ago
It is a while that I think about monetizing open source. Honestly, I do not believe that companies will pay to use open source software when they can just download it. Developers will prefer to just download instead of waiting for the legal department and the budget approval. On the other hand, if it was simpler to just download the code/executable and then pay later, without any hassles from the legal department it could be the standard way to use Open Source. However, there is still the problem of what to sell. A great idea could be to distribute the executable when it applies, thinking about golang, C/C++, any compiled language. For languages that are interpreter you could distribute the ruby gem, or the python egg or the JS packet. Now if we combine this mechanism with some rate-limiting and price structure. Stuff like: * 10€ for one time download of the current version. * 50€ for one time download of any version forever, when a new version comes out you can download it too. * 10€/month for 30 downloads/months of the current version * 50€/month for 30 downloads/months of any version * 100€/month for unlimited downloads. ... and so on. This could already provide several benefits, and be enough for several projects. However we could also go a little forward. We could provide an incentive to the buyers to buy the software and that incentives could be to do not distribute the building instruction or the dependencies list as open source. Of course it will be possible to reverse-engineer the build instructions or the dependencies, however, it will be so time-consuming that any sane actor will prefer to just pay a little fee. Finally, we could provide, under a restrictive license, the above-mentioned build instruction to whoever wants to contribute to the code base in a non-automatic way. Just send an email, ask for them, explain what you are going to do, promise to do not use them to by-pass the above restriction and you are ready to go. In this way: 1. We maintain most of the code open. 2. There will be incentives to just pay for open source. 3. There will be a trade-off between new contributors and time/resource the current maintainer will be able to support the project. (I don't believe that somebody willing to dive into the complexity of an open source project to add features will be scared off by contacting the maintainer, explain to him what he wants to add, maybe wait his feedback, and finally get the build instructions. Honestly, I see mostly benefits in this project) I would love to hear feedback about this idea. So please share your thoughts and if you are interested in trying something like that feel free to contact me via email :)
X86BSD 9y ago
This thread and the culture of those replying to it fascinate me. Do you really enjoy spending this much time debating licenses, clauses, and legal matters? I personally, just have to many more important things to do than worry about and waste time on compliance, laws, enforcement. It just seems like such a rediculous waste of time. I just 2 clause BSD license my code and move on. Compensate me, don't compensate me, I'm busy writing other code, or designing systems, etc Do people people posting replies here really spend this much time on licensing issues instead of producing? It just seems so needless to me.
- rabidrat 9y ago
  I would love to continue producing the rest of my life, without concern for licenses and business. Unfortunately I am running out of savings and will not be able to spend even 20% of my time producing. So I am in support of finding some way of getting a living wage for the software I lovingly produce for free.
- erik_seaberg 9y ago
  Licensing is the difference between building on bedrock or quicksand. The profession has wasted millions of hours on rewrites of stuff that already existed but was entombed in failed projects.
hasenj 9y ago
I don't think this is a new idea, but anyway it's not a proper "open source" license.
quotemstr 9y ago
Why is GitHub happy to provide free hosting for proprietary software? Ungit is no longer free software in either the libre or gratis sense.
- djur 9y ago
  I was curious about that myself for a similar situation a while back. Their terms of service do not require a free or open source license: > If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking). You may grant further rights if you adopt a license. If you are uploading Content you did not create or own, you are responsible for ensuring that the Content you upload is licensed under terms that grant these permissions to other GitHub Users.
dwheeler 9y ago
The fundamental problem here isn't the relicense, the problem it's that it's being incorrectly called an "open source model". This is not an open source software license, so it's not an "open source model". It's not a Free software license either, as defined by the Free Software Definition. Instead, it's a proprietary license. It's not a new software license model, either; historically this has been called a "gated community license" or "open box license". Here's article from 2000 about gated community license models: http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/articles/gated.html http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/articles/gated.... They've never caught on, in over 20 years of trying, but perhaps this project's experience will be different. We've had, for decades, a widely-accepted definition for what the term "open source software" means. If someone actually means "open source software" per that widely-accepted definition, then by all means, that person should use the term. Since this project don't actually mean "open source software", then they should not use the term - please call it something else. The world is confusing enough.
unlmtd1 9y ago
Bikeshedding

Reinventing GPL with less care. I can copy the code, re-license as plain-MIT, and now commercial companies can use it for free. A dual GPL-commercial license is the correct way to handle this. A more useful contribution to the license landscape would be to define a commercial sibling-license to the GPL that described how license payments would be disbursed.

0xfaded 9y ago
I would like a companion contributors agreement to the GPL that provides the correct legalese to assign copyright back to the project owner. I decided to go the GPL route, but am not currently accepting contributions. I've managed to successfully license the code under a companion license, which is doable since I'm the only copyright holder. My thoughts are that there should be a contrib fork for major contributions that authors wish to maintain copyright over, but for minor contributions/bug fixes the author probably doesn't care and it would be better for everyone if the contribution was integrated into the core repository.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  I personally feel that assigning copyright on commit is a stopgap. What if you die? What if you abandon the project? How can a fork of your project work with that if they want to change the license down the road? Copyright basically lasts forever now, so any choice about "assignment" will last forever. Personally I really feel we need a solution that allows the current "maintainers" to have control over it. I don't really know what that would legally look like, but I've been hit by issues from open source copyright too many times to consider it a "solved problem". Perhaps a new license "framework" that allows each contributor to say how they want to allow their contributions to be used in the future? I honestly don't know, but the current solutions are holding us back in some ways.
  - riffraff 9y ago
    Assign copyright to Apache or an equivalent organisation, that takes care of governance past the single maintainer. In any case this is worse if there are multiple contributors each owning their copyright, not simpler.
  - jrochkind1 9y ago
    it's pretty straightforward, there just needs to be a legal entity (ie, a corporation) representing and controlled by 'the maintainers', to assign copyright to. The easiest way to do this is under the umbrella of a foundation like ASF. But you could create an LLC or any other form of corporation with no income or assets other than the copyrights it holds, if you want. There would be at least some minimal annual registration costs etc. Any framework that allows contributors to _individually_ set terms for their contributions is going to be pretty unworkable, as the actual terms for the whole product become the union of any term any contributor has ever set or something, a mess.
  - 0xfaded 9y ago
    I feel it really depends on the type of project. In my case the code is rather niche and would only really be licensed by a small number of companies doing embedded robotics or AR. However, this type of stuff is also fun for hobbyists, so I wanted to make it available. I don't foresee a huge developer community springing up around this, and since I'm the only person who will realistically be making major contributions and I'm working on it more or less full time, I need a way to fund it. The real problem for me isn't major contributions, if these started coming in I may reevaluate my position. The problem is minor bug fixes where the complexities of acquiring another copyright holder outweigh the benefits of accepting the contribution. As above, I don't have a good solution.
rgbrenner 9y ago
I can copy the code, re-license as plain-MIT You can't relicense someone elses code. You dont have the right to do that. If you fork this code, only your changes would be under MIT. So you would have a mixed-license project, and users would need to comply with both licenses. If you don't want to use this license, you have to fork it from before the license change... giving up the changes that were made after the new license takes effect.
- bhuga 9y ago
  You're right, but both the MIT and the non-commercial portion of this new license explicitly grant the right to sublicense. It's not obvious to me that a free use case can't sublicense its use to a huge organization.
  - rgbrenner 9y ago
    sublicense != relicense. You can't remove restrictions. All of the terms of the license would remain. That organization would still need to pay the fee.
  - wool_gather 9y ago
    If it was possible to re-license something in a way that removed restrictions from the original license, then no license would be worth anything. You could do a relicense end-run around any terms you wished. (As another commenter said,) sublicensing does not permit you to grant any rights under the new license that you yourself have not been granted under the original.
- X86BSD 9y ago
  I think actually you can. If you rewrite 75%? 80%? You can relicense it. Legally I think the law views that as new code not a modification. A lawyer may need to correct me but I seem to recall something like this.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
ajross 9y ago
Seems to me like the authors are trying to restrict the use of the software by commercial pursuits, not the distribution. The GPL does the latter, but says nothing about the former.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

mathgeek 9y ago

Will be interesting to see the resulting fork that keeps the MIT license. Looks like a few have already sprung up.

sandstrom 9y ago

For open-source projects driven mainly by one contributor, I think the model employed by Sidekiq[1] is better than this one. There is a base version with the MIT (or similar) license. Then there is a PRO version which adds some enterprise functionality + premium support. But still a good thing that Ungit is trying this. There is value in experimentation! [1] https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq

deepakkarki 9y ago
I've always wondered, in such cases where you have an open core and plan to monetize on extra features and plugins; what do you do if the community just goes ahead and adds those extra features? Or someone forks the project and adds the features?
- AznHisoka 9y ago
  There are several Sidekiq features others have added but I never trust them. If I am an enterprise I value reliability over price. I would pay a premium for something the Sidekiq owner worked on rather than a random contributor
- manigandham 9y ago
  That's called business competition. Stay in business by delivering greater value. It's likely the maintainer is in the best position to start a company about the product to deliver more features faster and at higher quality along with more inherent trust.
  - naturalgradient 9y ago
    As someone being in a similar situation, it's a really difficult business model. Unlike many other business models with a natural moat (i.e. by virtue of having all the data, being deeply integrated into organisational processes, etc), commercialising open source is a struggle because simply justifying making money already requires constant improvement.

diggan 9y ago

Bad timing, seems licenseyourcode.com is down and does not currently work.

conradk 9y ago
It was renamed to faircode.io

wildrhythms 9y ago

I don't have anything to add, but just want to say it's refreshing to see such a civil discussion surrounding a license change like this.

tkt 9y ago

It is interesting and important to think about ways to support open source project contributors, especially when the projects are being used in commercial organizations. It would have been better to see this license change idea through an RFC before a change though, and with an attorney’s advice. If he does really want this to be an experiment it would have been good for him to have a better background on the types of license models available and an attorney’s help with license language changes and implications.

zitterbewegung 9y ago

Has the LYC license been tested in court ? I know GPL has. I agree with the maintainer that they should be compensated for their time. An open core model works but depending on a project who has the time to set that up? Patreon or Kickstarter has the same issue.

hackbinary 9y ago
I don't think the opencore model works very well. The model that does work well is the Redhat/Fedora model of fast moving, and changing cutting edge of full features, with a premium being charged for the fully tested and integrated product.
Tempest1981 9y ago
He proposes no enforcement. Although I could imagine public shaming of those who are out of compliance. And who knows if others using LYC would want enforcement.

rectang 9y ago

This is not an "open source business model", as claimed by the Ungit maintainer, because the new license is not open source under the long standard definition maintained by OSI. Good commentary from Grant Bakker in the discussion: https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit/issues/974#issuecomment-341250490 https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit/issues/974#issuecommen...

bobby_the_whale 9y ago
Just because something is old, it doesn't make it true.
- xj9 9y ago
  get back to me when the faircode license is listed on the OSI website or considered a free software license by the FSF
- ehllo 9y ago
  It is true, because there is a overall consent about open source.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  Do you have a proposed counterexample? The OSI definition is pretty much the same in spirit and in practice as, say, the DSFG or FSF definitions. Non-discriminatory terms is pretty much a fundamental precondition for any open-source license. As any lawyer would tell you--and don't forget, licenses are explicit legal contracts--licenses that include discrimination clauses of various kinds (including "fun" clauses like "don't use this for evil") are basically non-starters. It's especially problematic when the discrimination is based on something as malleable as yearly profit, so that someone's inclusion or exclusion on this basis changes every year. Licenses are legal contracts, and therefore they have the force of law behind them. Rolling your own license is a stupid idea, particularly if you are not a lawyer and you are not retaining a lawyer to give you advice on the matter. Even aspects of major licenses like 3-clause BSD, MIT, GPL, LGPL, Apache, and others have indeterminate legal repercussions, particularly when patents and copyright of contributions come into play.

nine_k 9y ago

I'd add that 1M in revenue is barely enough to support 4-5 reasonably paid develops + some opex like aws and a small office in a big city. The license change would probably touch most of its commercial users.

icebraining 9y ago
Maybe in the US. Many, if not most of the world can support way more developers with that revenue, and open source projects are used worldwide.

hackbinary 9y ago

While I can understand where he is coming from, his stuff is itself largely built on the free licensed software of others. In the end, this seems to me like pulling up the ladder after himself, and ultimately quite selfish.

arekkas 9y ago
How is making a living from your work selfish?
- shadowmint 9y ago
  It depends, is that work based on the free work of others? Taking advantage of the community and not contributing back for others to benefit (as you have, for free) seems selfish to me. Maybe if he proportionately (based on LOC or something) donated any income to his upstream dependencies? ...but I suspect that wouldn’t leave much.
  - Tempest1981 9y ago
    I saw it as him encouraging the community to join him, on behalf of all starving developers who are giving big businesses a free ride.
- erikb 9y ago
  Please read a comment before you respond. The whole comment only exists to say that it seems like the author of ungit is not making a living on his own work alone, but also on the work of all the OTHER contributors, who contributed assuming this would be a free and open community project.
  - bonzini 9y ago
    Other contributors were using a very permissive license, that allows sublicensing. They were okay with a proprietary software company embedding their code into a proprietary product and selling it, they should be okay with this as well.

vortico 9y ago

This is a perfectly moral choice, assuming he has not taken significant contributions from others (or they have allowed this relicense, or granted copyright ownership of their contribution to him). Later in the Issue discussion, they attempt to put a name to the type of license. I propose "Freeware with source". Thoughts?

bonzini 9y ago
They have already allowed the relicense by releasing their contributions under a permissive license such as MIT.
- vortico 9y ago
  Oh yes, of course. Ignore my parenthetical statement then.

pjungwir 9y ago

If this becomes a trend I'm afraid it will hurt business use of all open source software, since companies will never know if their dependencies are going to suddenly start charging money. Even though you can use the old versions, getting stuck on outdated libraries is a big problem for a lot of projects, where you try to stay up-to-date. It feels like we are only recently at a point where managers and lawyers will permit building on open source software and not force you to use Microsoft and Oracle. But if every repo could be free today and $90/mo tomorrow, will that change?

microcolonel 9y ago
> But if every repo could be free today and $90/mo tomorrow, will that change? Well, it's not "free today and $90/mo tomorrow", it's just that they're not going to maintain the one that's under the free license. You don't suddenly have to pay $90/mo for what was already distributed. It's a fair attempt to make some money, but this license is odious and bizarre. I don't think there's a trend for this.
skissane 9y ago
> since companies will never know if their dependencies are going to suddenly start charging money It is more of a risk for some open source projects than others. Look for example at React – I very much doubt Facebook will try to relicense it into a commercial product, simply because they are not in the business of selling software and probably don't want to get into that business. But, compare that to many small companies who have a product (such as a development tool or database or whatever) and they offer an open source version and a commercial version with extra features–there is a much bigger risk they might decide their open source offering is harming their commercial one, and therefore should be discontinued. Similarly, an open source project run by a single individual or small community is more likely to be closed up than one run by a large community. On the other hand, a project run by a single individual is likely to be a smaller code base, and hence more feasible to fork or maintain in-house. So, I think businesses should be aware of this risk, but should evaluate that risk for each open source dependency independently.

fragsworth 9y ago

I truncated some of the text to highlight a possible issue with the change written by the Ungit maintainer: > Permission is hereby granted (...) to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies ("Use") of the Software (...) And then: > If you are a commercial entity with a revenue in excess of $1,000,000 (...) you must acquire a commercial license grant (...) to Use this Software (...) The problem is that according to the license, you can now pay $90 to "copy", "sell", and most importantly "sublicense" the software. Legally, does this work the way the Ungit maintainer intended?

luma 9y ago
Or, can I as an individual who is an employee of the company, but not the company, "use" it myself and then "sublicense" it to my employer?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

Xorlev 9y ago

Speaking on his pricing, $90/month is more expensive by far than IntelliJ Ultimate/PHPStorm/RubyMine by far with a lot less value. Having worked at an org with $xxMM in revenue, we still wouldn’t have paid for it. We would have chosen to find a different tool. It’s a Git UI. Come on.

dangoor 9y ago
Since the license allows sublicensing, it seems like a business only needs to buy one license at $90/month, which is a lot cheaper than IntelliJ

antirez 9y ago

I do not want to judge the license change: everybody should be able to do whatever they want with the code for which there is ownership. Just two general observations: 1) I think this is going to be a trend in the future, for two main reasons, one is that the cloud poses very challenging limits to individuals or small companies to monetize they OSS projects selling services, the second is that many OSS developers are starting to think that it's a bit unfair that incredibly successful companies sold for billions, mostly based on OSS frameworks, libraries, operating systems, don't support the projects they used to reach to such success. And no... releasing your own OSS project to the public, developed for internal interests, is not going to pay back the authors of the projects used to reach the success. 2) If you like this route, better to start ASAP with such a license, or at least start with some restrictive *GPL license and not BSD. Otherwise you are obviously susceptible to forking once you insert such a clause.

jondubois 9y ago
Yes I think it depends heavily on the type of open source project and it shouldn't be frowned upon for certain kinds of projects. I run an open source project which is technical and is designed to integrate into other systems; it's ideal for fast growing companies and large organizations that have money; because of this, inbound leads for consulting, technical support, sponsorship, partnership and contract work trickle in on their own. So in my case, a very permissive MIT license makes sense even financially. If you have a relatively simple product which is more like an external stand-alone tool (not designed to be integrated into proprietary systems at the API level), then it will be impossible to monetise it through consulting or sponsorship. Also, other kinds of open source projects which are difficult to monetize are those which implement established and well understood industry standards. Adhering to standards helps with adoption and greatly increases your project's chance of success but it's not creating any new markets; you're tapping into an existing user base and competing with other implementers in a race-to-the-bottom in terms of performance, efficiency and usability and it's hard to capture any value out of that.
- antirez 9y ago
  Interesting observations, thank you.

bobby_the_whale 9y ago

Those GitHub responses are for the most part so incredibly retarded. People without legal expertise offering their opinion. Yeah, like any sane person should care about that. The "You can't say it is open-source" bullshit is just the first in a long line of idiots lining up to comment on it. Who are these people who so desperately want to share with the Internet that they cannot say anything which is remotely correct?

andybak 9y ago
Gosh. I'm not sure. What kind of idiot would boldly post their poorly thought through comments on a public forum?
- bobby_the_whale 9y ago
  What kind of idiot are you?
  - dang 9y ago
    We've banned this account for violating the site guidelines.
mindcrime 9y ago
The "You can't say it is open-source" bullshit is just the first in a long line of idiots lining up to comment on it. Just because OSI don't have a USPTO registered trademark on "open source" doesn't mean that the OSD isn't the de-facto definition of what "open source" means. One may (may) legally be able to call their project with a crappy homegrown license "open source" but they shouldn't do so. It isn't always just about what's legal, it's about what's right, and about community consensus. And the truth is, Ungit is not open source after this change.
- bobby_the_whale 9y ago
  Fine, so you have an opinion about which the author of Ungit doesn't need to care. I am sure a monkey in the zoo also has an opinion. Remind me, why did you write down anything again? The moment you start talking about what's "right", you are just showing a lack of maturity.

jlg23 9y ago

Licenses like these are a logistical nightmare. If someone deploys software under that license, paying that person for the job is the smallest item on the bill: Now I have to connect my legal department with my techies and with the finance folks. Let's schedule meetings every 3 months to review for which software we have to pay now! Just the logistical overhead alone justifies a fork for any of the targeted users^wcustomers.

rcthompson 9y ago
Yeah, the thing to remember is that "cost" is not a smooth or continuous function of price. There's a very large jump discontinuity between $0 and $0.01. It's not an issue that comes up for most products, because for most products a price of $0 doesn't make sense. But software runs up against this regularly.
aseipp 9y ago
"Paying people for their work sucks, what a drag. Undercutting their work so we can continue to profit more is a much better strategy."
- betenoire 9y ago
  http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

hannob 9y ago

Of course people can license their stuff in whatever weird way they want and I don't have to like it. But I don't like it when people lie to me. The title is "Trying a new open source model" - the content is "Trying not to be open source any more". If you don't want to do open source then you can of course do that. But if you don't want to do open source any more and still say you're doing open source then you're lying. (And before anyone answers: No, there's no "other open source" or "a different kind of open source". Open Source is a clearly defined term and such restricted licenses aren't.)

INTPenis 9y ago
You're confusing open source software with free software. I'm on your side in principle but the distinction is important in this case.
- gpderetta 9y ago
  This doesn't meet neither the free software nor Open Source license requirements. It might be open source in some colloquial sense, but that's not how the term is usually understood in the trade.
- hannob 9y ago
  > You're confusing open source software with free software. No, I'm not. Please read the open source definition: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated In practical terms there's very little difference between free software and open source. It's mostly a "philosophical" difference - free software advocates put an emphasis on "freedom", while open source advocates see it more as a business model. But the requirements for the licensing are identical.
  - INTPenis 9y ago
    I see what you mean but that doesn't make sense to me. Open source is by definition of the phrase, as well as in practical cases, a program whos source is available. Nothing more. There are many prominent open source programs that also exist as a licensed product. That's why I have always believed free software (FOSS) to be the other definition where the software cannot be licensed or sold for a profit.

roblabla 9y ago

I just learned about faircode[0] and I've got to say, I like the idea. I like that right on the frontpage, it shows that I have the choice to keep using the current license, and have it work like a Patreon, or use their own Faircode License (which seems what this story is about). It makes them look honest. I like that they are honest about the cost of using the faircode service, right on the frontpage (5% on top of a 2.9% + 30c transaction fee). I like that they thought about having tools integrated in the ecosystem to allow businesses to easily now what license the deps they're using are on, and how to easily pay for them. I haven't looked too deep into it, but if it could handle a dual license model as well, then it'd be beyond awesome. I don't want to force companies (even >$1M companies) to pay if they contribute back any improvements they make. [0]: https://faircode.io/ https://faircode.io/

FredrikNoren 9y ago
Your wish has been heard; I just added a dual licensing option to the platform :) Enjoy!
- roblabla 9y ago
  Wow, that's awesome ! You have no idea how happy this makes me ! Thanks for your hard work, I'll definitely be using this and suggesting it to the people around me :D EDIT: Just tried to sign up, and I triggered an internal error :<
  - FredrikNoren 9y ago
    Whoopsie, the error messages are still a bit rough but it looks like the recaptcha wasn't clicked? I've improved the errors on the frontend so should give you a nicer error message if it isn't now! Lmk if that doesn't fix the problem.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tedunangst 9y ago

Would this prevent github from using ungit (unless they pay)? Presumably this would also prevent ubuntu from packaging ungit?

ralmidani 9y ago

Maybe I am missing something. If you release something under a non-copyleft license, as long as I make proper attribution, what I do with it should not be your concern. If you do not want people making money from your software without paying you, use dual copyleft/proprietary licenses instead. "Faircode" seems like an attempt to have it both ways: squeezing money out of people without being labeled copyleft (because that's not cool in some circles). There is nothing "fair" about making a company's revenue a criterion for deciding which license terms the company enjoys. What if I make more than $1M but am willing to release all of my modifications? Does that make me less of a friend to the community than people who sell non-free versions, but have had less success with their business model? I am trying to avoid the word "shakedown", but this strikes me as exactly that. From the Medium post announcing the license: "Some people have asked my about the difference between this and donations. I think that for a project like Ungit small individual donations would never work; we’d have to convince thousands of people to part with small sums of money. We’re simply not big enough for that. With LYC the idea is to ask a few big players who benefit commercially from the project to part with bigger sums instead." Source: https://medium.com/@fredriknoren/trying-a-new-open-source-model-93a1a5a16a40 https://medium.com/@fredriknoren/trying-a-new-open-source-mo...

jrochkind1 9y ago
I don't see the relation. Copyleft licenses and what the faircode license are attempting to do are pretty different things. I don't see any relation between them, other than that they are both licensing terms. They are different licensing terms. I do think the terms of this new license are going to be confusing and make it difficult to figure out how to use it legally. As with most if not all "non-commercial use only" licenses (including CC-NC), of which I'd consider this a subset (non-commercial use or commercial use by companies with income under X). But non-commercial-use-only terms and copyleft 'share alike' terms are different things.
- ralmidani 9y ago
  I understand that "Faircode" is not trying to protect downstream users from non-free software. That's my point; It's not about principle, it's about extorting money while appearing to be principled. Copyleft licenses force people to release their modifications as source code, or pay the copyright owner for an exception (if the owner is open to providing the exception) Non-Copyleft licenses say "do whatever you want, just give us credit." "Faircode" says "Even if you release your source code, if you make enough money, you still have to pay us."

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jordigh 9y ago

This isn't open source: it discriminates against field of endeavours (point 6): https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated Restricting commercial use isn't anything new or a bold new experiment or anything. It's the same lesson we apparently need to relearn from the 1980s.

quotemstr 9y ago
I've been telling people for ages now that the slow erosion of copyleft mindshare in favor of permissive licensing is going to bring about a return of the bad old days of proprietary software licensing. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but this move doesn't bode well.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

siscia 9y ago

It is a while that I think about monetizing open source. Honestly, I do not believe that companies will pay to use open source software when they can just download it. Developers will prefer to just download instead of waiting for the legal department and the budget approval. On the other hand, if it was simpler to just download the code/executable and then pay later, without any hassles from the legal department it could be the standard way to use Open Source. However, there is still the problem of what to sell. A great idea could be to distribute the executable when it applies, thinking about golang, C/C++, any compiled language. For languages that are interpreter you could distribute the ruby gem, or the python egg or the JS packet. Now if we combine this mechanism with some rate-limiting and price structure. Stuff like: * 10€ for one time download of the current version. * 50€ for one time download of any version forever, when a new version comes out you can download it too. * 10€/month for 30 downloads/months of the current version * 50€/month for 30 downloads/months of any version * 100€/month for unlimited downloads. ... and so on. This could already provide several benefits, and be enough for several projects. However we could also go a little forward. We could provide an incentive to the buyers to buy the software and that incentives could be to do not distribute the building instruction or the dependencies list as open source. Of course it will be possible to reverse-engineer the build instructions or the dependencies, however, it will be so time-consuming that any sane actor will prefer to just pay a little fee. Finally, we could provide, under a restrictive license, the above-mentioned build instruction to whoever wants to contribute to the code base in a non-automatic way. Just send an email, ask for them, explain what you are going to do, promise to do not use them to by-pass the above restriction and you are ready to go. In this way: 1. We maintain most of the code open. 2. There will be incentives to just pay for open source. 3. There will be a trade-off between new contributors and time/resource the current maintainer will be able to support the project. (I don't believe that somebody willing to dive into the complexity of an open source project to add features will be scared off by contacting the maintainer, explain to him what he wants to add, maybe wait his feedback, and finally get the build instructions. Honestly, I see mostly benefits in this project) I would love to hear feedback about this idea. So please share your thoughts and if you are interested in trying something like that feel free to contact me via email :)

X86BSD 9y ago

This thread and the culture of those replying to it fascinate me. Do you really enjoy spending this much time debating licenses, clauses, and legal matters? I personally, just have to many more important things to do than worry about and waste time on compliance, laws, enforcement. It just seems like such a rediculous waste of time. I just 2 clause BSD license my code and move on. Compensate me, don't compensate me, I'm busy writing other code, or designing systems, etc Do people people posting replies here really spend this much time on licensing issues instead of producing? It just seems so needless to me.

rabidrat 9y ago
I would love to continue producing the rest of my life, without concern for licenses and business. Unfortunately I am running out of savings and will not be able to spend even 20% of my time producing. So I am in support of finding some way of getting a living wage for the software I lovingly produce for free.
erik_seaberg 9y ago
Licensing is the difference between building on bedrock or quicksand. The profession has wasted millions of hours on rewrites of stuff that already existed but was entombed in failed projects.

hasenj 9y ago

I don't think this is a new idea, but anyway it's not a proper "open source" license.

quotemstr 9y ago

Why is GitHub happy to provide free hosting for proprietary software? Ungit is no longer free software in either the libre or gratis sense.

djur 9y ago
I was curious about that myself for a similar situation a while back. Their terms of service do not require a free or open source license: > If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking). You may grant further rights if you adopt a license. If you are uploading Content you did not create or own, you are responsible for ensuring that the Content you upload is licensed under terms that grant these permissions to other GitHub Users.

dwheeler 9y ago

The fundamental problem here isn't the relicense, the problem it's that it's being incorrectly called an "open source model". This is not an open source software license, so it's not an "open source model". It's not a Free software license either, as defined by the Free Software Definition. Instead, it's a proprietary license. It's not a new software license model, either; historically this has been called a "gated community license" or "open box license". Here's article from 2000 about gated community license models: http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/articles/gated.html http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/articles/gated.... They've never caught on, in over 20 years of trying, but perhaps this project's experience will be different. We've had, for decades, a widely-accepted definition for what the term "open source software" means. If someone actually means "open source software" per that widely-accepted definition, then by all means, that person should use the term. Since this project don't actually mean "open source software", then they should not use the term - please call it something else. The world is confusing enough.

unlmtd1 9y ago

Bikeshedding