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Can't have your cake and eat it too. Either the license is viral (conditions imposed on user A still apply when A passes the software to B) or it's not. If you

Can't have your cake and eat it too. Either the license is viral (conditions imposed on user A still apply when A passes the software to B) or it's not. If you license your code to anyone under the Apache License, that person is then free to redistribute the code under the terms granted by the Apache License, which is obviously missing this $1,000,000 revenue restriction.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
> Can it be exploited. Yes, but as I've said elsewhere. "Evil Corp is gonna evil". They’re not trying to both have and eat their cake. They chose a license with a known exploit because they think it’ll be best for their users, and they accept the consequences of that. This is (IMO) a good balance to strike, and better than I imagined before reading through the license itself and its rationale. It’s explicitly: - we want to impose the least burden possible on those least able to bear it - we think we’ll be more sustainable because in balance those able to bear it are more likely to choose to with this model than the previous one… excepting those who wouldn’t regardless of the terms. Quite a lot of mutual good and goodwill is the product of norms which are effectively social agreements rather than enforcement protocols and regimes. Will some jerk take advantage of this and eat their cake? Yeah, duh. But it’s better for probably the vast majority of their users than a more onerous license which is viral, and (AFAICT) no worse for anyone but themselves. A one-sided compromise in favor of everyone else.
- plorkyeran 4y ago
  I fundamentally disagree with the idea that abiding by your license terms makes me a jerk just because you chose a stupid license that doesn't actually require what you want it to require.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    It's definitely possible to have loopholes where exploiting them makes you a jerk. This situation, not so much. They're making a fully open source version available on purpose.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    It’s weird to me that’s the thing you chose to focus on in my comment, but okay. In the summertime I lock my exterior door(s) when I go to bed, even if I have left the windows open. It’s obviously trivial to enter my home if you’re motivated. I’m aware of the contradiction. Closing and locking the door isn’t impenetrable fortification, but it is a clear expression of my will. Opening the window isn’t an invitation to enter my home, it’s a flaw I’m willing to accept to enjoy cool air after hot summer days. If you come into my home through my window under those circumstances, you’re clearly availing yourself of an obvious loophole in my home security arrangement… but you’re being a jerk nonetheless. People set expectations all the time in all sorts of flawed ways where their expectations might not be met. This is one of them. I agree with the quote in my previous comment: not even a perfect license with no conceivable loophole will prevent someone from exploiting the obvious loophole that a license is a social agreement with its own limited capacity to enforce. Even if you theoretically have bulletproof legal recourse, you have to have legal resources to get it. There’s no license I can imagine which doesn’t have that loophole. But yeah so, “jerk” was hardly the point of my comment. But if that’s the nit you want to pick, violating someone’s express permission to their belongings because you understand their intent but you’ve found an exception in how it was expressed… that does mean you’re being a jerk. You’re welcome to disagree however fundamentally, but you know what their intention is in limiting how they share their resources and you know you’re only entitled to it by disregarding that to take what you want.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    License terms set the legal expectations. Explanations of those terms from the author set the ethical expectations, which are different.

eyelidlessness 4y ago

> Can it be exploited. Yes, but as I've said elsewhere. "Evil Corp is gonna evil". They’re not trying to both have and eat their cake. They chose a license with a known exploit because they think it’ll be best for their users, and they accept the consequences of that. This is (IMO) a good balance to strike, and better than I imagined before reading through the license itself and its rationale. It’s explicitly: - we want to impose the least burden possible on those least able to bear it - we think we’ll be more sustainable because in balance those able to bear it are more likely to choose to with this model than the previous one… excepting those who wouldn’t regardless of the terms. Quite a lot of mutual good and goodwill is the product of norms which are effectively social agreements rather than enforcement protocols and regimes. Will some jerk take advantage of this and eat their cake? Yeah, duh. But it’s better for probably the vast majority of their users than a more onerous license which is viral, and (AFAICT) no worse for anyone but themselves. A one-sided compromise in favor of everyone else.

plorkyeran 4y ago
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that abiding by your license terms makes me a jerk just because you chose a stupid license that doesn't actually require what you want it to require.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  It's definitely possible to have loopholes where exploiting them makes you a jerk. This situation, not so much. They're making a fully open source version available on purpose.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  It’s weird to me that’s the thing you chose to focus on in my comment, but okay. In the summertime I lock my exterior door(s) when I go to bed, even if I have left the windows open. It’s obviously trivial to enter my home if you’re motivated. I’m aware of the contradiction. Closing and locking the door isn’t impenetrable fortification, but it is a clear expression of my will. Opening the window isn’t an invitation to enter my home, it’s a flaw I’m willing to accept to enjoy cool air after hot summer days. If you come into my home through my window under those circumstances, you’re clearly availing yourself of an obvious loophole in my home security arrangement… but you’re being a jerk nonetheless. People set expectations all the time in all sorts of flawed ways where their expectations might not be met. This is one of them. I agree with the quote in my previous comment: not even a perfect license with no conceivable loophole will prevent someone from exploiting the obvious loophole that a license is a social agreement with its own limited capacity to enforce. Even if you theoretically have bulletproof legal recourse, you have to have legal resources to get it. There’s no license I can imagine which doesn’t have that loophole. But yeah so, “jerk” was hardly the point of my comment. But if that’s the nit you want to pick, violating someone’s express permission to their belongings because you understand their intent but you’ve found an exception in how it was expressed… that does mean you’re being a jerk. You’re welcome to disagree however fundamentally, but you know what their intention is in limiting how they share their resources and you know you’re only entitled to it by disregarding that to take what you want.
- int_19h 4y ago
  License terms set the legal expectations. Explanations of those terms from the author set the ethical expectations, which are different.