The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/22/Commons-clause-will-destroy-open-source.html

by ddevault • 8 years ago

349 238 8 years ago

drewdevault.com

wyldfire2• 8 years ago

including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software

Wow! That seems like a mistake. This casts too wide a net and catches more than it should.

... product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software...

Ugh. Instead of unambiguous freedom-granting terms, this leaves it up to a court to help determine this vague notion of the product or service's "value".

Steer clear of these license terms!

EDIT: deleted request for OSI to clarify

CocaKoala• 8 years ago

Why do you want OSI to weigh in? The license describes itself as not Open Source, according to https://commonsclause.com/

It this “Open Source”? [sic]
No, at least not by the official definition set forth by the OSD. Applying the Clause to an open source project will transition the project to “source-available”.

wyldfire2• 8 years ago

Good point. I will delete this request.

dwheeler3• 8 years ago

It's already not open source software (OSS). That said, if some people might think it's OSS, then it'd be useful for the OSI and others to make that even clearer.

cntlzw2• 8 years ago

Wow! That seems like a mistake. This casts too wide a net and catches more than it should.

It catches everything. Commons Clause makes the software proprietary.

btown• 8 years ago

If I am running a CRUD app for some business domain, does its value derive "substantially" from the functionality of the underlying database? Could a lawyer argue that because one of Slack's major selling points is the speed with which messages are delivered, its value derives "substantially" from whatever technology they use to enable pub-sub?

Even if Redis Labs wouldn't be so aggressive against Slack, could we count on that if they were acquired by Oracle, or if their acquirer were acquired by Oracle? In such a case, Slack would be in a pickle - they might be liable for having used the software without a license historically, which is in many ways a worse situation vs. having had to negotiate a commercial license in the first place. It's an insidious gotcha term wearing the cloak of open source, and thus it tarnishes the brand of the entire open source community.

gpvos• 8 years ago

For hosting, I can see how that may be a useful clause.

But for consulting or support? That's even worse than the usual terms for proprietary software. As far as I know, I can offer consulting services for Microsoft or Apple software without breaking any license.

Similarly for software that builds upon proprietary software. As far as I know, this is commonly allowed without any additional license.

Or am I missing something?

marcinzm2• 8 years ago

Another problematic aspect of this is that to me the Redis situation seems like a corporate grab of open source software after the fact.

By that I mean, Redis Labs are not the creators of Redis. They are a consulting agency that then hired the creator of Redis. In other words, they only exist because the original Redis was not Commons Clause. Now they want to build a moat so others can't do what they did.

Not a good precedent.

fh973• 8 years ago

Fake news, according to the man himself: http://antirez.com/news/120

The whole thing is evidently not about Redis, but modules that were developed by Redis Labs.

Someone1234• 8 years ago

People need to stop using the term "fake news" it is more a meme at this point than constructive English.

Even reading that statement and assuming the best intentions I can see why people would be upset/concerned. Redis has gone from Open Source to "Open Core" with some of the best modules now essentially paid for.

falcolas• 8 years ago

That presumes that functionality of Redis is not subsequently moved into modules, and that new functionality is not only done in modules.

The current development path does seem to favor modules - a slim core with the functionality added as modules.

vertere• 8 years ago

Seems like a good case study in poor communication then. It doesn't excuse people spreading misinformation without a decent attempt to ascertain the facts, but it seems Redis Labs mainly have themselves to blame. Their page [0] starts out: "Initiated by a coalition of top infrastructure software companies to protect their rights...". So they're trying to make it sound like a Big Deal, and beyond just for Redis. Then later we hear 'oh it's just relicensing a couple of non-core modules, what are you all carrying on about?' Even now it's not clear to me (not being particularly familiar with Redis) what direction things are changing in.

shakes head

Edit: Oh, and the confusing name. Why is it called "Commons Clause"?

[0] https://redislabs.com/community/commons-clause/

sonnyblarney3• 8 years ago

"Now they want to build a moat so others can't do what they did."

Do you mean to say "can't use their stuff for free, but can do what they did if they want", i.e. a moat to absolutely prevent others from stuff is usually in IP etc. whereas restrictive licensing means you need to 'write it yourself' if you want it.

Despite the conflation of early Redis and the corporate Redis - almost all commercial projects that use Open Source are the same thing really. ABC Corp. uses Open Source XYZ to make software and protects their addtions. It just so happens that in this case, it's Redis going into a commercial version of Redis, not Redis going into CAD software or something.

beat• 8 years ago

It's not like this is exactly new, either. See MySQL, for example.

mr_toad• 8 years ago

corporate grab of open source software

Well then fork them. I mean it.

‘Licenses applied to previous versions cannot be revoked’ - https://commonsclause.com

My understanding (IANAL), is that only new code can be subjected to new conditions/licenses. Old code can still be used under the old license.

simonh2• 8 years ago

Developer and volunteer time and attention is a finite resource though. Effort that was spent on open software that's now spent on proprietary software is less effort being spent on open source. Furthermore if you're now expending effort to fork something - in this case possibly many things - thats effort you're not spending on what used to be your higher priorities.

Yes forking might in some cases be the only option, but it's not easy and it's not cost-free especially when the code is still available 'for free' (warning: many actual freedoms not included).

igol• 8 years ago

That is part of the right you grant people when you use a permissive license. That is the whole point of the license being permissive.

driverdan• 8 years ago

You seem to be misunderstanding which Redis projects are changing licenses. Redis is not changing. Some of Redis Labs' extensions are. While I agree this is highly problematic it's not changing the core software's license.

cryptonector6• 8 years ago

Precedent? This precedent has been set long ago. E.g., Microsoft (for one example) used BSD code in Windows in a proprietary way. There aren't very many prominent cases like this because software is hard to monetize, whether it be open source or proprietary.

I don't see the problem with proprietary forks of open source whose license allows it, and when it's the original creator who pulls it off then I say good for them. When I choose to use BSD or MIT licensing, I do it because a) I don't expect to monetize that code, b) I don't mind if someone else figures out a way to monetize that code -- this is a willful, eyes-wide-open choice on my part. I wouldn't recommend always using any one license; instead I recommend picking a license for each codebase according to whether you want to allow third parties to monetize or whether you want to prevent proprietary forks. There is no one-size-fits all license.

hinkley• 8 years ago

Sounds like corporatism to me. Change the rules so nobody else can follow you.

vinceguidry5• 8 years ago

This argument is theological in that it's arguing against an idea, labeling it heresy. His ideal 'solution' is to just fold it all up and try to forget it ever happened. But you can't fight ideas, ideas provide solutions to problems that people have and if you want people to stop rolling their own solutions, then the orthodoxy needs to make their solutions actually work for actual people, not just the faithful.

Not every business can be Red Hat.

nathan_long2• 8 years ago

This argument is theological in that it's arguing against an idea, labeling it heresy.

I find this use of "theological" insulting and not fitting to the situation. "Ideological" or "partisan" would be better IMO.

vinceguidry5• 8 years ago

Au contraire, I find religion to be extremely fitting to the free software - open source debate. Richard Stallman himself is very sympathetic to theological analogies for technology debates, calling himself Saint IGNUcius.

https://stallman.org/saint.html

beobab• 8 years ago

Whilst I completely understand why you would find it inappropriate, I'm struggling to see why you would find it insulting.

Can you elaborate?

dancek• 8 years ago

Do you consider "religious" appropriate? I see the point that theology originally means something like the study of God.

sonnyblarney3• 8 years ago

I don't agree that it's an ideological argument at all, I see it as a pragmatic perspective on what will 'actually happen' given the arguably 'ideological' stance of this new kind of license.

The license are short and powerful ant try to 'make a statement' themselves ... in reality, the resulting behaviour of the community is another thing altogether.

vinceguidry5• 8 years ago

The pragmatic perspective is the one given by the supporters of the Commons Clause. The ideological one is the one given by the Free Software advocates who have longer memories and thus know where this leads.

I personally support the ideological position, I just don't think this is the right way to make that argument.

foundry27• 8 years ago

I don’t usually post here (more interested in the articles than the discourse over them), but this is something that really resonated with me. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, the suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of engineering. We don’t know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our disciplines. The history of the study of engineering shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often insufficient for the changing future, and that fundamental insights into new possibilities can arise from the most unexpected sources.

All of us are entitled to our opinions on the healthiness of the Commons Clause, but if history has taught us anything, censoring the mere _idea_ of it for being in conflict with one’s personal ideology is the greater injustice, and will accomplish nothing in the long run. Might its adoption hurt some people? Maybe. Might it help some people? Also maybe. But shooting it down before it has the chance to do either feels wrong.

_jal• 8 years ago

censoring the mere _idea_

Nobody is censoring anything, in either a precise or a fuzzy sense[1]. Conflating criticism and censorship is (a) a category error, (b) a really pernicious notion, and (c) confuses people and derails discourse.

A core principle of free speech is that the answer to bad speech is more speech. Mislabeling criticism censorship attempts to delegitimize that answer, and thus paradoxically attacking the very notion purportedly being defended.

Please don't do that.

[1] Insert private-citizens-cannot-censor distinction here beside an acknowledgment that the word is used informally with wider applicability.

mindcrime6• 8 years ago

It's not being "censored". A lot of us are just saying it's a fucking stupid idea, that's all.

opportune• 8 years ago

Get off your free speech soapbox, nobody is saying that this person has no right to discuss this idea, we are just saying it is a terrible idea. This is a ridiculous non-argument

throwaway1827062• 8 years ago

Not every business can be Red Hat.

No, but they can try, https://tidelift.com is a good starting point.

servilio2• 8 years ago

This argument is theological in that it's arguing against an idea

With an actual license text publicly available, this is way beyond just an idea, wouldn't you agree?

His ideal 'solution' is to just fold it all up and try to forget it ever happened

This was not proposed as a solution to the problem(s) that Commons Clause wants to solve, problem(s) BTW that I can't see clearly articulated anywhere.

cryptonector6• 8 years ago

Of course you can fight ideas. Happens all the time. Convincing the dogmatic is difficult or impossible, but not every idea is dogma to many or any people.

acjohnson55• 8 years ago

For the Redis example, how does this apply to past versions of Redis? Are we going to see a MariaDB-like fork?

cntlzw2• 8 years ago

From my understanding the commons Clause can only attach itself to new patches. The old code keeps the original license without attachment.

aequitas• 8 years ago

As explained by antirez[1] Redis itself wil remain BSD and his own modules will remain open source licensed. Only the modules developed by Redis Labs will have this clause. So no change for future or past versions of Redis.

[1] http://antirez.com/news/120

jwilk• 8 years ago

On HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818647

relaunched2• 8 years ago

Let them do what they want; the open source community does not suffer fools.

It's a dirty practice to build something open source and after a certain point, try to close it off. But, it's not unheard of. Any project can change their license, I believe Google did this with Android. Older versions will get forked and others will do with those forks what they choose.

I'm hoping doing this would cause so much backlash that it'll force projects to revert back to OSS. But, it could just push people out of contributing to OSS -- then again, there might be some people more likely to contribute if they knew no one was going to make money off their work.

Let the market sort it out.

djsumdog2• 8 years ago

Google and Android is weirder. The base OS is still totally open source and based on a Linux kernel. But in order to distribute Android with Play/Gapps, you have to join the Open Handset Alliance. You're heavily restricted on what apps you can bundle and you CANNOT manufacture any Amazon Fire devices (or any Android devices that do not contain the Google base services).

The base is open, but what makes it useful is licensed, essentially making the free still crippled. I did a post about Android a while back:

https://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/

relaunched2• 8 years ago

Thanks for the clarification. The more I think about it, the less my comparison applies.

stephenr• 8 years ago

Relevant: https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032180321834467330

@Antirez has confirmed the core project is remaining BSD. The "Common Clause" stuff applies to the modules that RedisLabs create.

Additional modules @Antirez creates himself, are also not under Common Clause, they're AGPL.

paulsutter• 8 years ago

Preposterous logic. Therefore WHAT?

If the Commons clause were to be adopted by all open source projects, they would cease to be open source, and therefore the Commons clause is trying to destroy open source

njharman2• 8 years ago

Exactly. If everyone used a gun to kill one person, people would cease to exist, and therefore guns are trying to genocide the human race!

Make an absurd assumption, link it back to your pet point, conclude something dramatic, link-baity, and utterly preposterous. For bonus points, attribute a motive to inanimate objects.

pc86• 8 years ago

Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software.
For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means...fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software...

Why anyone would ever use this license is beyond me. No paid hosted version. No paid consulting. No paid support.

I mean this is great for folks who have already made their money but for those of us with bills to pay, it's not exactly realistic.

[0] https://commonsclause.com/

njharman2• 8 years ago

for those of us with bills to pay

Do you think the authors of the software you want to resell don't have bills to pay?

snarfy• 8 years ago

I can see their side. GPL was called copyleft for a reason, a nod to copyright. It's a copyright restriction which limits redistribution to certain terms.

Cloud providers do redistribute. It runs on their servers. They do not have to honor copyright restrictions. They can make proprietary modifications and keep them, and they do. They might be honoring the letter of the license, but certainly not the spirit of it.

TimothyBJacobs2• 8 years ago

Don't we have the AGPL for this purpose to require them to contribute back their proprietary changes. As others have pointed out, if this was only about the modifications they would have used AGPL. Instead, and giving the clauses about consulting, it seems more like they are concerned about money than the health of the ecosystem.

gregmac• 8 years ago

The Redis Labs modules were AGPL, they moved from that to Apache + Common Clause[1].

[1] https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032192721308594176

dragonwriter5• 8 years ago

Don't we have the AGPL for this purpose to require them to contribute back their proprietary changes.

That doesn't help upstream monetize; this is entirely about money, not reciprocal contributions of code.

tree_of_item• 8 years ago

Money is a part of the health of the ecosystem.

dustingetz• 8 years ago

Cloud infrastructure (like DynamoDB) is already closed source and nobody seems to care, so this might not even matter

erik_seaberg2• 8 years ago

AWS doesn't want a monopoly on DynamoDB consulting. At most they encourage certification, probably to motivate people to notice their endless roster of new services.

eahman06• 8 years ago

No it won't. You know what will destroy open source? Lack of money to develop it.

jessaustin3• 8 years ago

I've seen this prediction on a regular basis since the mid-1990s. Usually the prediction hasn't included the qualifier "sometime after 2018". Would you like to add a qualifier to your statement?

lmm• 8 years ago

How healthy is open source these days? There may be any number of lines of library code publicly available, but I've felt that the four freedoms are less and less available in software that I'm the end user of.

kmmbvnr_• 8 years ago

This is already happens with rethinkdb.

Even after community "acquisition" the development process mostly dead https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/graphs/commit-activit...

mistrial9• 8 years ago

I am currently integrating some of the cleanest FOSS code I have seen, into a Linux setup, and I found their original funding proposal.. It was a German engineering lead and a dozen others in various roles. The first milestone was $9500 USD -- total. 100x that money would not have created this result. I believe they finished their second milestone (a year?) and that was probably more money.. but really, money alone is not enough, and too much is a detriment.

peterwwillis2• 8 years ago

Yeah, I remember back when the Linux kernel was written by some Finnish nerd in university and given away for free. Thank goodness Google hired him back in 1995 to develop it or it would have died in infancy.

sqrt172• 8 years ago

The Linux OS, even in 1993, was a combination of Linux kernel plus GNU userland tools and compiler plus X11 plus assorted goodies from the BSD world.

Developed, at least the first bit of time, on Minix, a Unix-like operating system that a university professor wrote as a teaching tool and gave away under a shared source license.

Linux' use of GPL was better than the shared-source license of Minix because you could distribute patched Linux kernels but had to distribute Minix improvements as patches to the original distribution. Linux' use of GPL was also what led everyone to contribute back to Linux while BSD derivatives were silently used to bootstrap software (including MacOSX) that never contributed back.

Linux also shows two properties that make up successful open source: there's an "inside" (kernel-land) and an "outside", and everyone profits if the inside-OSS part is made better and better while having minor kernel improvements is not a huge differentiator for most companies.

Contrast with the Redis addons by Redislabs: they want the ecosystem aspect of open source - people contributing back patches. But they also want to be the only ones to gain a livelihood from their code (which is their right as creators of the software but not conducive to the growth of an ecosystem). And they want their license to be treated as Apache-License-related, which is the part that smells of make-believe and dishonesty. But observe the part of having an ecosystem of different software parts (here: Redis and RedisLabs' extensions) that have an inside and an outside, as well as an ecosystem of developers/users who can make and share improvements to the software.

djsumdog2• 8 years ago

I wish there were more publications on how open source is really funded. Earlier Linux and BSD kernels were made by a combination of researchers, people with spare time, volunteers as well as big companies who paid people full time. We see much more of the latter. Intel has an entire OSS division in Portland, OR that writes most of the drives, works on Linux kernel patches, etc. Nintendo and Sony both use big parts of the BSD TCP stack in their operating systems and have an interest in contributing and keeping it up to date.

But open source didn't depend on these funding models in the 90s/2000s did it? I did a whole post on the philosophy of open source a while back:

https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source...

..but one of the things I didn't find enough sources on where a lot of funding came from (And percentage of volunteer contributors).

This recent Redis things reminds me of the Caddy controversy, and maybe even more recently, how Win/Mac Docker binaries are behind a login wall.

What changed? Do developers no longer have the time to volunteer to work on this stuff? The desire? Is the demand for tech in The Valley/West Cost changing the dynamics of how much time people have to contribute. Were the earlier efforts way less commercial and new efforts moving much faster and requirement more maintenance/resources?

DannyBee5• 8 years ago

"What changed? Do developers no longer have the time to volunteer to work on this stuff? The desire? Is the demand for tech in The Valley/West Cost changing the dynamics of how much time people have to contribute. Were the earlier efforts way less commercial and new efforts moving much faster and requirement more maintenance/resources?

What's changed is that once open source started getting serious VC's, people believe they've created tons of value, and should be able to extract some of it (in reality, the model created most of the value, not them).

In the past, people were just relatively happy to be doing okay for themselves while created cool software.

Once you try to move to "value extraction", things become a lot thornier because you discover you aren't as important as you thought you were - your attempts to extract value fail. Usually, because it was not you who created the value, but the model.

ehnto4• 8 years ago

Some are seeing that corporations are the ones making all the money on the back of open source software. It's hard to want to contribute to something like open source infrastructure tooling, when it's use case is purely commercial, for example. I imagine some also feel that it's setting an unrealistic value on digital products, at least I do. Why would I want to build a tool for corporate infrastructure if they take it and make millions while I run support for free? They aren't about to Open Source my rent.

I would much rather an honest transactional relationship for commercial software. That also includes consumer commercial software, like phone apps and websites. If we had honest expectations about the cost of software we wouldn't see so much aggressive advertising and tracking.

There are fantastic use cases for the generosity of open source. Education software is something I whole heartedly agree should be driven by open source. But I feel open source has been taken advantage of in commercial settings.

halbritt2• 8 years ago

AWS started offering SaaS products based on open source software without contributing anything back to the original projects. Combined with that, and wholesale cloud adoption over the last decade, revenue streams for "enterprise" editions, services have dried up.

In the 90s and 2000s, OSS project were more grass roots efforts. In the past decade, there have been a series of primarily commercial OSS projects like Redis and ElasticSearch that have gained a fair bit of traction. They really aren't grass roots efforts, don't have a lot of volunteers, and have seen their business model gutted by AWS.

zapita4• 8 years ago

there have been a series of primarily commercial OSS projects like Redis and ElasticSearch that have gained a fair bit of traction. They really aren't grass roots efforts

I think that's very unfair. Both Redis and ElasticSearch are definitely grassroots projects - both Salvatore (Antirez) and Shai worked on their projects for years, with minimal support from the outside world, grew their community organically, and managed to build something useful for thousands of grateful developers. Later, they looked for ways to make a good living while continuing to invest in the success of their projects. In the process they built (or joined, in the case of Salvatore) businesses dedicated to supporting the development of their project. There is no perfect solution, but in both cases I would say that they succeeded - they are making a good living, and their projects have continued to grow and make many users happy, in great part thanks to them and the business they work with.

To use that success as an argument against them - to present their business efforts as opposite to their community efforts is just not true, and I think it’s harmful. It punishes them, the creators and maintainers of a great and useful project, for wanting fair compensation for their efforts, and making the effort to give back in the process - when so many others profit from their work, and give back nothing, or the bare minimum to make themselves look good.

nemo44x2• 8 years ago

The public cloud changed everything. Having Amazon just extract all the value of and strip mine the commercial value of these projects without contributing anything back has left a sour taste in peoples mouths.

It made more sense when you could release a product openly and then start a business around supporting it, consulting and training and selling "enterprise" versions for serious customers. But now that's even hard to do when everyone just wants to use AWS, etc to use this software.

It's a double edged sword and we take for granted. These projects have grown and become so feature rich because of the investment in them and the ability to hire hundreds of developers to contribute full time. But then this is harvested by someone who isn't paying for it and not just a little bit - a whole lot. What will eventually happen is we won't have feature rich products that are open source in the future without a change in how we think about licensing. The Apache License is not compatible with running a business around an open source project any longer.

zapita4• 8 years ago

I 100% agree, and it's disheartening to see so many voices here ignore this reality. It's like there's more passion for the ideal of open-source than for the reality of how open-source practitioners actually struggle to make the model work in practice.

Whether Commons Clause is the right solution or not (and I have my opinion on that), at least the Redis people are trying something to fix the problem of unstustainable one-way resource extraction by mega-corporations. Of the hundreds of people criticizing them here, often in ways that question their motivation and integrity, how many are offering alternative solutions? As far as I can tell, it's a depressingly small number.

After everything Antirez has contributed to us, he deserves better than this avalanche of unconstructive negativity. If you think Commons Clause is not the correct solution to the problem of unsustainable exploitation of open-source projects, what do you propose?

btilly• 8 years ago

There are lots of places where money comes from.

One is the following observation. Customers are usually willing to spend $X on a solution to their problem, but are relatively agnostic on how $X is divided up. So if customers are willing to pay about the same for Oracle on Sun, and for Oracle on Linux, but Linux is cheaper than Sun, then Oracle can (and did!) successfully charge more to run on Linux. The result is that it is in Oracle's interest to make the Linux solution available and preferred by any means necessary..including improving Linux.

The same logic applied to IBM contributing to Apache so that they could charge for Websphere. Or any other case where there is a required component of an overall solution.

The widespread recognition of this back in the late 1990s was why the open source movement so quickly got a lot of corporate sponsorship from big companies.

DannyBee5• 8 years ago

All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

The guidelines/definitions/blah blah blah exist precisely because of attempts to do this in the past.

If people want to try again, great, let them. Experimentation is good. (I personally wish they'd stop experimenting with repeatedly proven-to-fail models, but c'est la vie)

In the end, it's the developers who are going to decide whether it's the right way for the world to be.

That is, it's not going to destroy open source or anything else unless the people using/developing open source want it to.

Past that, Kevin's refrain is kind of tired, at least to me. Open source has always been a community that basically eats its own over time (nothing is ever good enough, free enough, open enough, etc). Solving that seems more important than solving this.

Saying "The OSS project we tried to build as a business sinks tons of money into open source and gets no help" as if it was a new problem is just silly. This is not a new problem at all. The fact that they believe doing literally the same thing that hasn't worked in the past will suddenly work to solve this problem in any meaningful way is disappointing.

For a person whose twitter bio likes to tell me how impressive they are, this is not impressive at all. I would have hoped for something better.

Because if this is all they've got, then yeah, that model of open source is likely screwed.

I will paraphrase a colleague:

The underlying issue they are trying to solve is that developers believe they should be able to extract some of the wealth they feel they created. In open source, that wealth is often only created because the software was free. Otherwise, people would have used something else that was free but worked well enough. Developers like to often argue this isn't true, but history shows it to be true basically always :) So saying you should be able to extract this wealth is probably wrong. Saying you should be able to get paid a reasonable amount of money is not.

zzzcpan• 8 years ago

Maybe open source is just not keeping up with the real world, a few things could destroy it: lack of open source license choices restrictive enough and clear enough and enabling openness so much that most businesses can't profit in any significant way from software under those licenses; lack of standardized proprietary licenses for dual-licensed open source project; lack of standardized open source CLAs and CLA integration with popular software hubs.

Ultimately, though, open source has to incentivize independent creators and not big corporations. AGPL is somewhat successful here, because big corporations already ban its use internally, but it's far from addressing the problem. New restrictive licenses are needed.

chriswarbo2• 8 years ago

What do you mean by "restrictive" and "openness" here? In particular, how does business and profit affect this? Would it maybe help to distinguish between the goals of Free Software (user freedom) and Open Source (abundance of high quality, royalty free code)?

AGPL is somewhat successful here, because big corporations already ban its use internally

The word "because" is confusing me here. As far as I'm aware, the goal of AGPL is the same as that of the GPL: protect the freedoms of users (specifically the FSF's "four freedoms"); the difference is that GPL considers "users" to be those who run the software and AGPL also considers those who interact with the software.

There's nothing about preventing business use; although I believe that in dual-licensed projects, the extra stipulations of the AGPL may boost the appeal of the alternative license. Is that what you were getting at?

quadrangle3• 8 years ago

I think the AGPL point is to say that there is not a need for an anti-commercial license if the AGPL effectively stops the things you're aiming to restrict.

AGPL isn't perfect, but obviously neither is a non-open, non-free anti-commerce clause.

StaticRedux• 8 years ago

Companies like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are huge open source contributors specifically bc they can get a return on their investment. While your intentions may be noble, I think you'll find that more restrictive licenses will have the exact opposite effect and open source projects and contributions will be quickly whither and die.

Open source was never about preventing people from making money on the works they create, it is about preventing companies from telling people what they can and can't do with that code. It is about insuring forward progress and the ability to build on what other people do, making it better, and ensuring that that future is not meddled with. Or restricted.

And there are plenty of licenses that accomplish that, the GPL and it's offshoots chief among them.

mindcrime6• 8 years ago

lack of open source license choices restrictive enough and clear enough and enabling openness so much that most businesses can't profit in any significant way from software under those licenses;

A license like that would, by definition, not be an Open Source license. Asking projects to switch to such a license is basically asking them to stop being Open Source.

Bartweiss4• 8 years ago

I'm very confused by the number of people arguing that the problem with Open Source is the difficulty of controlling IP and restricting future use. It looks to me like a case of burning the house down today to be sure it won't crumble in the future.

kazinator2• 8 years ago

It's just a "free-with-source for non-commercial use" distribution of certain modules that would otherwise be proprietary.

There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code.

It's a good thing for customers and would-be customers. Customers can track down bugs and security flaws if they have access to the code. Would-be customers can evaluate the product based not only performance of the executables but code quality.

It is a "better proprietary", in other words.

mindcrime6• 8 years ago

There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code.

Right. And if they would just call it that and not try to make it sound like it's "sorta / kinda Apache licensed" then I wouldn't really care. But it's like people using this clause want to benefit from the general perception of open-ness and the wide acceptance of the ALv2, while not actually being Open Source. It's just dishonest.

kazinator2• 8 years ago

You are right; if you're going to radically change a license by adding a free-for-noncommercial-use type clause, you should change the name, and don't maintain even the slightest insinuations that it's related to the original license. Textually it may be, but legally it's a completely different beast.

int_19h2• 8 years ago

There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code.

The problem is the definition of "commercial use" here, which is broader than most proprietary licenses, since it includes e.g. consulting.

hw_penfold• 8 years ago

Near as I can tell, there’s nothing in this agreement that prevents me from choosing another license model.

If I can choose to apply whichever license I want, then it would seem that The Commons Clause could only possibly harm those that choose it.

Anyway, there are plenty of unprofitable licenses out there, and the reality is, for all of them, if you’ve already given something away for free, once the cat’s out of the bag, you probably won’t make any money, even if your license doesn’t say you’re a bad person for even thinking about trying.

That said, The Commons Clause is probably fine for foundations, where lots of people are sharing an array of technologies, and not really asking for money. Meanwhile, it’s been several decades of HTTP over TCP/IP, and last time I checked, there isn’t a whole lot to lock down, and the real money is in adding reach to flip switches from the other side of a network connection. JSON isn’t going away, so, there really isn’t much to apply licenses to, in this area, without being silly.

But hey, databases, operating systems, desktop applications, peripheral drivers, all these things still happen, so I guess there’s stuff to license. But really all the fringe licenses mostly get applied to JavaScript frameworks, and by the time you actually read a JS library’s license, three other projects have replaced it, so why bother.

throwaway1827062• 8 years ago

The answer to this dilemma is something like https://tidelift.com/.

This Commons Clause is pure blarney and Drew is exactly right.

XiZhao5• 8 years ago

Kevin Wang here. Thanks Drew for the thoughtful post.

I can accept that you might not appreciate my work on the Commons Clause, but I'm glad to see you acknowledge why funding OSS is so difficult.

I think it's okay to fear the world of open source becoming a bit more closed. I do too. Whether that's a better world or not is up to debate, but I certainly don't think so.

I think where we might disagree is what the greatest threat to "open-ness" is. Sometimes people do bad things to open source projects, and force them to go closed. The license choice will inevitably follow -- and when they do, they can choose to close the source entirely or choose a licensing scheme that makes it available.

Licensing follows intent, and I certainly don't think the Clause inspires people to close their source. But sometimes people need to change their license -- and I think it's unrealistic to say that this doesn't happen.

Sir_Cmpwn4• 8 years ago

Hi Kevin, Drew here. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I appreciate your response, but I find it frustratingly vauge. What kinds of bad things happen to open source projects that drive them to this? If you are fearful of open source becoming more closed, why are you promoting that very approach?

Did you consider promoting alternatives like AGPL first? Before I see an option violating one of the four essential freedoms I would really like to see a detailed exposition on why the AGPL or other approaches discussed in my article are not suitable. I don't think that the brief summary on AGPL on your website is detailed enough - it doesn't have any specific criticisms of AGPL.

The problem with "needing to change their license" is that it's really just a few people who "need" to change it. In reality, open source projects are community works, and even the maintainers don't have the (certainly moral, and usually legal) right to change the license.

I think your Commons Clause gives vulnerable people (open source maintainers struggling to make ends meet) an easy but despicable option for their projects. Especially in cases like Redis, where a company has ulterior motives and employs the maintainers, they can strongarm maintainers into making choices which are not in the best interests of the project.

XiZhao5• 8 years ago

The Clause was drafted as a reactionary move to solve against specific bad behavior. I'm not entirely sure it's my place to call out these actors (I'll leave that to the users of the Clause), but our job was to open up an option that isn't quite "screw this, let's go full closed source".

See the commons clause FAQ for answers to your other questions:

https://commonsclause.com/

cryptonector6• 8 years ago

An open source project can (and some do) require copyright assignment such that there is a single owner who can re-license at will. It's a fair thing to do: would-be contributors know this is happening and can choose to not participate.

I have no objection to owners taking a codebase proprietary. It doesn't change the fact that earlier versions stay open source and third parties (including the community) can still fork them if they want to. That's because have no objection to proprietary codebases to begin with, even though I appreciate open source, use open source, and prefer to make my code open source.

Open source is not an end for me, but a means to: a) establish/burnish the authors' reputations, b) benefit from third parties' contributions in-kind. Monetization is not so much dependent on whether a codebase is open source or proprietary, nor on its license, but on the codebase's value (to others) including the value of future development on that codebase.

Monetizing infrastructure software can be very difficult, especially when it is a commodity, but SQLite3 has succeeded at that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17819950

justinjlynn2• 8 years ago

My fundamental issue with the clause is that it fundamentally changes the nature of the licences it infects. It is just as disingenuous to say "we're an Open Source plus Common Clause project (Apache + Common Clause)" as it is to say "We host Redis (we mean Redis + Proprietary add-ons we use under the AGPL from Redis Labs, that you can't have, which make us incompatible with Open Source Redis)". There's nothing new or controversial about relicensing your project. I'd bet what most people have a problem with is the "open sources but not open source" angle the clause pulls. Given the confusion it creates by piggy backing on existing well-known licence brands, I see why they have a problem with it.

XiZhao5• 8 years ago

I don't think the Clause is necessarily the most elegant end-all solution, but there are often broad business, timing and legal requirements that make it really hard to draft a full license to satisfy everyone.

In fact, I'd love to see a v2 standalone license. One of the design constraints was size and readability. I think part of the goal here was to start with something extremely short-form.

More broadly, the average OSS license is far from robust.

s73v3r_2• 8 years ago

Can you at least change the name, to something that's not CC? It's going to be confused with Creative Commons otherwise.

etatoby3• 8 years ago

That's their purpose. This entire endeavor is quite evil IMHO.

pvg• 8 years ago

An alarmist title, I know, but it’s true. If the Commons clause were to be adopted by all open source projects, they would cease to be open source1, and therefore the Commons clause is trying to destroy open source.

But it's not true, it's complete, self-admitted clickbait. An asteroid will destroy most life on Earth tomorrow. If a sufficiently large asteroid strikes Earth tomorrow. It's an overwrought premise leading to predictably overwrought handwringing.

kup02• 8 years ago

Regardless of whether or not it is harmful to open source, I find the choice to use two words beginning with C (thus CC as an acronym) flawed, as that abbreviation is typically used to refer to Creative Commons, and Commons Clause and Creative Commons sound quite similar too since they both use the word Commons.

I would hope this was not an intentional choice to sow confusion.

Edit: obvious spelling error :)

mongol• 8 years ago

I am sure it is intentional

rectang3• 8 years ago

Between the name, the abbreviation, and the suggested usage of "Apache + Commons Clause" for a proprietary offering, this "Commons Clause" project has severe problems with deceptive messaging.

If it was unintentional it was incredibly foolish; if it was deliberate....

Either way it should be junked.

paulddraper3• 8 years ago

Apache + Commons...Apache Commons...how confusing can you be?

https://commons.apache.org/

codeflo2• 8 years ago

The plus sign suggests an additional right, as a dual license would offer, instead, it removes rights from the Apache license. I don't think that's an accident because judging from the website, this seems to be a very serious attempt to put a positive spin on "look but don't touch" style proprietary licensing schemes. Fuck this.

jtbayly• 8 years ago

yes, I assumed they were related.

dantillberg• 8 years ago

Tiny note: "sew confusion" is a malapropism; "sow confusion" is the canonical expression.

kup02• 8 years ago

Thanks! I knew something didn't look right, but apparently hadn't had enough sleep or caffeine to figure it out.

lliamander• 8 years ago

I agree it is confusing. However, there are Creative Commons licenses which do restrict resale of the licensed work (in the same way that this clause restricts resale of the licensed software).

In my mind, this fact somewhat diminishes the scale of the deception.

kjeetgill• 8 years ago

I agree. I think this is my biggest objection with it. Aside from that attempt to hijack mindshare (consumer protection and trademarks anyone?) I couldn't care less about the license. Proprietary licenses are a dime a dozen.

rmc2• 8 years ago

And since Creative Commons have a non-commerical licence, which is similar in aim to this. Plenty understand that as "CC-NC"

phobosdeimos• 8 years ago

Childhood is believing in free software, adulthood is knowing Microsoft was right.

What kills open source software is greed, and very few people are immune from that.

umanwizard• 8 years ago

What in the world are you talking about? We’re living in the golden age of free software. It’s doing better than it ever has before, and even Microsoft and Apple are enthusiastically contributing to it.

squarefoot• 8 years ago

This. FOSS can be monetized by making it an investment rather than a product: offer services, let the software free then get paid for support and customized patches. This works, unless one wants to keep the money flowing while twiddling thumbs.

sipos4• 8 years ago

Even Microsoft doesn't think that anymore.

CogitoCogito• 8 years ago

The example clause at https://commonsclause.com/ does not really make any sense. It first says you can't sell the software and then provides example text below like this:

Software: [name software]

License: [i.e. Apache 2.0]

Licensor: [ABC company]

If they actually used the Apache 2.0 license anyone would have the right to sell the software. Hence putting that clause and then putting "Apache 2.0" as the license makes no sense. The licensing terms would be contradictory.

binomialxenon4• 8 years ago

I agree, it's terribly misleading and could cause a real lack of licensing clarity.

jahewson2• 8 years ago

Yes, exactly. You can't use an unmodified Apache 2.0 license and then try and tack on some extra clause which is incompatible with the underlying license and end up with an intelligible end result. You certainly can't call it "Apache 2.0" and direct people to apache.org. It looks like a legal nightmare.

Even if you like this license, please never use it!

dragonwriter5• 8 years ago

I actually think open source will destroy the “Commons Clause”, which is just a name for a model that keeps being tried (shared source with limited free use but pay us for the use we think we'd like to monetize) that keeps getting killed by open source again and again and again.

dwheeler3• 8 years ago

There are several challenges here.

One challenge is the name "Commons" is very misleading. It's not creating a commons, and it's also confusingly similar to the term "Creative Commons" which has been around for a really long time.

Also, the Commons website says that the Commons license is not OSS "at least not by the official definition set forth by the OSD". Yet that is the official generally-accepted definition.

dragonwriter5• 8 years ago

One challenge is the name "Commons" is very misleading. It's not creating a commons

“Commons” isn't the thing the clause creates, it's the problem it aims to solve. Naming contract or license clauses after the problem they address is not uncommon.

binomialxenon4• 8 years ago

It would be terrible PR to call this the "Anti- Commons Clause", but it would indeed be accurate.

licyeus• 8 years ago

This is humorously illustrated in Antirez's blog post on this matter[1]: "We at Redis Labs are sorry for the confusion generated by the Creative Common page".

They really should've run the name by someone familiar with the copyright landscape.

[1] http://antirez.com/news/120

forrestthewoods• 8 years ago

What is the difference between Commons Clause and non-commercial use? Is there one?

arminiusreturns3• 8 years ago

It drives me nuts how much people talk about OSS when they need to at least mention the difference between FOSS and OSS. One more reason to stick to FOSS instead, as OSS proponents seem increasingly disingenuous.

paulddraper3• 8 years ago

Help me understand. Which of the following are FOSS licenses and which are OSS licenses?

- Apache

- Apache + Common Clause

- BSD

- MIT

- GPLv2

- GPLv3

arminiusreturns3• 8 years ago

The FSF can explain it better than I can.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html

cryptonector6• 8 years ago

Software is hard to monetize, whether it be open source or not.

The best open source monetization case I've seen yet may be SQLite3, which is in the public domain. SQLite3 has a consortium, has some proprietary products (e.g., the more extensive test suite) not available to the public at large (in source form or otherwise), and is so ubiquitous that there are a number of large companies that are so utterly dependent on it that they are practically obligated to be members of the consortium. I've no idea just how profitable SQLite3 has been for D.R. Hipp and friends, and I don't want to know, but I assume it's been good enough that they are happy to continue working on it. SQLite consortium members probably (I imagine anyways) get to influence SQLite3's development, and that's one generic way to monetize source code regardless of license: get paid to do further (specific) development / bug fixes / support, but SQLite3's proprietary test suite makes it very difficult for third parties to be able to have contributions welcomed by the core, which tends to limit third party commercial support.

Choice of license doesn't seem to have that much to do with whether something can be monetized. Consider the Linux kernel, which is GPL'ed: prolific contributors profit mostly by being well-employed to continue being prolific contributors, but almost certainly no one is making a dime from commercial Linux kernel usage without source code distribution. There might be some GPL licensed codebases where the copyright owners are making a few bucks from commercial usage by third parties who don't want to distribute their changes, but probably not a lot. There are almost certainly no BSD/MIT licensed codebases where the owners are making any money from commercial usage by third parties -- the license simply allows third parties to use such code outright with absolutely minimal obligations on the third parties.

You can have open source and monetization for some value of "open source", but not one that most people would really consider "open" -- getting to see the source code != open source.

Getting paid to support open source (e.g., add features, fix bugs) can be very difficult when it is easy for anyone to do that. SQLite3 has a mechanism for limiting third party contributions (a proprietary test suite) which limits third-party commercial support though in general that would also increase the risk of forks (but SQLite3 is so widely used that forks are extremely unlikely). The SQLite3 approach won't work generically for very many open source projects as it depends on SQLite3's popularity and very widespread use.

The fact is that for many of us open source is just a way to build and maintain a reputation, and we then monetize the reputation.

I myself have been offered payment for development on open source codebases that I maintain, and I always reject such offers, mostly because accepting them would interfere with my main responsibilities, and in some cases also because it's not my right (e.g., I don't think it would be fair to take money to work on jq without giving @stedolan the right of first refusal). If I were to lose clients/employment, I might reconsider this.

runningmike• 8 years ago

The real value is not and never the code, but the product that is enabled by software. Software is not and never an end product that gives real value. software creates value by making valuable products possible.

phkahler• 8 years ago

GPL does not allow the addition of this clause, anyone who did so would be in violation of the GPL. For license that would allow it, it's not fair to say License+CommonCrap - not to the license, and not to the users.

Skunkleton• 8 years ago

Say I made a sizable contribution to an OSS project, one that qualified me as an expert. For projects that have this clause, I wouldn't not be able to make money directly with the source that _I wrote_. I would certainly not lend my expertise to a project that put me in this position, and I would guess that others would feel the same. Imagine if the Linux kernel had this clause. All this "commons clause" will do is remove the community from an open source project, and probably kill open source adoption as a result.

api• 8 years ago

I understand the objection but in general I support the Commons Clause-- as long as developers can easily opt out for projects where it isn't desired or doesn't make sense.

Open source developers are building software for free that is then used by extremely large corporations to make vast amounts of money without compensation to the original author. Even worse much of this revenue comes from business practices that the original authors may find highly objectionable including mass surveillance, "surveillance capitalism," and data-driven propaganda, con artistry, and manipulation.

If you create open source today you have no choice but to indirectly offer free labor toward the construction of a global surveillance state. The commons clause offers a way out while still encouraging people to use your software for personal, private, academic, and other purposes and retaining the openness of open source.

The "free as in beer" part of OSS is a relic of the 1990s when the prevailing enemy was "embrace-extend-extinguish" at the hands of (mostly) Microsoft. It was sort of a growth hack to enable open source software to gain critical mass and challenge closed source proprietary platforms.

Times have changed. Today the big threat is SAAS walled gardens, surveillance capitalism, and other business models that in many cases run on and depend upon open source. In some cases SAAS can verge on piracy-- not necessarily in the legal sense since nothing is being done to violate any license but in the moral sense of profiting handsomely from the work of others without compensating them.

Edit: I will provide a concrete example of the last point: RethinkDB.

RethinkDB was probably the best NoSQL database, at least before Mongo was improved enough to challenge it on robustness and versatility. It still has features Mongo and others lack.

Unfortunately RethinkDB the company failed because... well... nobody paid them. Instead they paid services like compose.io to run RethinkDb for them in the cloud. Cloud SAAS database services were making more money off RethinkDB than the database's own developers were. In the end they failed and the project is now almost abandoned.

There are numerous similar examples. AFIAK the Commons Clause would have prevented this, allowing either RethinkDB to capture their own SAAS market or charge compose.io something for making money off their software.

DannyBee5• 8 years ago

So let me see if i've got the details right:

1. A group of people go off and, without involving their communities at all, try to solve a problem they think they have.

2. They spring it on their communities suddenly and without warning

3. Negative reaction ensues.

4. People decry death of open source.

5. Author of clause bemoans on twitter that the reaction of community should have been collaborative problem solving (and "starting a conversation"), despite completely failing to attempt collaborative problem solving with their community.

Is that about right?

If so, this is a great object lesson in how not to do this.

If you want the reaction to be collaborative problem solving, engage people in collaborative problem solving.

If you want the reaction to be to your solution, present people a solution. But expect people to do precisely that!

This is like when people drop completely designed/implemented megabombs of stuff on OSS projects and then complain when there is pushback.

dgreensp• 8 years ago

Does a software license actually have the power to prevent you from selling consulting services? All a license can do is grant you rights you wouldn’t otherwise have because of copyright law, right?

I’m new to the matter, but I do see in the Commons Clause an intent to manipulate and mislead. If the goal is to provide an option for companies who would otherwise take their software closed-source, why does that option have to sound super-duper open sourcy while not having terms recognizable as open source? I’m not even a rabid free software guy or anything, but just compare the name to the terms. There is no possible way that “Commons Clause” is not intended to be confused with, or somehow gain a positive spin that has nothing to do with its content from, CC or Apache Commons.

People who care about things like Creative Commons or about open source as anything more than “source available” will label this as “evil” or at best a marketing ploy.

marshray• 8 years ago

Services+software is older than software licensing itself.

DFSG #6 is written to address this specifically: "No discrimination against fields of endeavor, like commercial use." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guideline...

majewsky• 8 years ago

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

All a license can do is grant you rights you wouldn’t otherwise have because of copyright law, right?

No, it can absolutely restrict your rights. A license is a contract, and other contracts can also restrict your rights in exchange for other legal goods (see e.g. NDAs, or non-compete clauses in employment contracts).

jondubois• 8 years ago

I think that the Commons Clause is good for Open Source. There aren't many alternatives at the moment; it seems better than allowing external corporate sponsors to dictate the direction of the project.

In the case of Redis, I think that it's a really deserving project and I fully trust the integrity of the people behind it.

As someone who created a popular OSS project outside of Silicon Valley, I can relate to how difficult it is to be an outsider in this industry and I understand why Redis Labs would feel entitled to capture a tiny fraction of the enormous value that they created.

I think that if the Commons Clause is just related to optional things like plugins or addons then I honestly don't see any harm; at least the plugins/addons are still available for small companies to use for free so it's still a step up from the typical OSS freemium model where they sell the plugins.

sipos4• 8 years ago

at least the plugins/addons are still available for small companies to use for free so it's still a step up from the typical OSS freemium model where they sell the plugins.

This doesn't allow any companies (except not for profits) to use the plugins without buying them.

t0mbstone• 8 years ago

"This Clause is not intended to be applied against at-scale existing open source projects, but incrementally on top of commercial counterparts that need to be transitioned to source-availability to satisfy urgent business or legal requirements."

floatboth• 8 years ago

As a non-commercial user, I'm okay with using stuff that's for non-commercial use only.

The problem is when I want to, say, copy a few functions into my own project which I'm publishing under completely unrestricted terms (say, Unlicense). Or use as a dependency, etc.

So, I'd say it's okay-ish for "product-like" stuff, for user-facing applications. But please NEVER publish libraries everyone depends upon under these terms.

wemdyjreichert• 8 years ago

Please, somebody fork redis.

tunesmith• 8 years ago

What's the difference between the Commons Clause and the GPL?

What's the difference between the Commons Clause and the creative commons "nc" (non-commercial) license?

I'm having trouble seeing how the Commons Clause is a threat to open source, while the GPL and Creative Commons are not.

mort96• 8 years ago

There's nothing preventing you from using GPL licensed software commercially.

erik_seaberg2• 8 years ago

Apparently you can no longer do business as a Redis consultant or offer hosting. If it were GPL'd, you could, as long as you don't sell binaries without source.

brians• 8 years ago

I don't think the Commons Clause is going to go anywhere: it's not DFSG-free, so Debian and core Ubuntu won't distribute it.

skymer• 8 years ago

Here's a possible way around this clause: An AWS-like hosting service prepares images of every clause-bound instance users might want (e.g. Linux + Redis + Redis Add-ons), and provides them completely free for download. They also rent users a virtual machine and the ability to quickly load one of these free images.

sqs• 8 years ago

There are 2 separate issues here:

1. The existence of the Commons Clause. 2. The application of the Commons Clause to software that previously was not subject to it.

To the original author: How would your view be different if a company released a new product or module that was Commons Clause-licensed from day 1? Would that still be a threat to open source? (What if the alternative to it being Commons Clause-licensed was that it wouldn't exist at all?)

platform• 8 years ago

CC should really be renamed to 'Corporate Continuation' (or abbreviation changed entirely).

Commons Clause is misleading in the context of Open source licenses.

On a separate note, it is important to address volunteer open source contribution and development. I think as a community we are missing a model that guides how :

a) developers,

b) their hosting organizations

c) financial contributors / donors

can all benefit from their activities.

Right now, there are different models and experimentation are being used.

But I think we, as a community, could come up with 3-4 models that make it worthwile to the above groups.

geephroh• 8 years ago

CC should really be renamed to 'Corporate Continuation' (or abbreviation changed entirely).

'Corporate Co-option' or 'Cash Capture' might also be appropriate...

WalterBright• 8 years ago

The D programming language uses the Boost license, the least restrictive license we could find. We aren't going to switch to a more restrictive one.

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

mslipper• 8 years ago

I'm genuinely confused why there is so much backlash against the Commons Clause. Ignoring for a second the confusion around RedisLabs and its relationship with Redis core, the Commons Clause is setting out to solve the following problem with open source:

  - A person or company creates an open-source library, at great cost of time and effort.
  - A big company adds that library to their cloud offerings, at arguably far lesser cost, and monetizes it.
  - The library author receives no compensation.

This article seems to argue against the Commons Clause because it's not 'true open source,' but this seems like a purely ideological argument that sidesteps the true problem that CC is trying to solve: open source creators not getting a cut of the profit they are generating for big companies. Am I missing something here?

int_19h2• 8 years ago

Affero GPL is the license that purports to solve this problem. It's been around for a while, and it's getting some use, but I wouldn't call it popular.

throw2016• 8 years ago

Antirez discovered github was using redis by accident on a non related thread here sometime ago, and there was very little outrage.

Open source should be just about taking, if million dollar companies, forget supporting projects they rely on, can't even tell the authors something has gone wrong.

Ideally those who can afford it should throw some support to the projects they use. But clearly this is not happening, if the project becomes too important then they simply acquire the project with downsides for everyone.

There has to be a middle way that has upsides for all parties and untill that is figured out this can work in the interim.

monster2control• 8 years ago

After reading your post, your comments here, the Redislabs post and the entire Commons Clause and FAQ, I feel like you didn’t read either of them completely yourself before getting all doomsday about it.

Redislabs made a good point, cloud providers are making huge amounts of money off these products and often contribute little back. Take Linode and their Block Storage service for example. They use Ceph, but contribute nothing to the Ceph open source. Or QEMU, the entire basis of their business, and not a single commit from anyone there.

The Commons Clause addressed the AGPL question you ask in your comment.

Redislabs states the goal is not to close source redis core, that will remain free forever, and that the use of the priority modules will be free for most use cases, but when companies makes money from packaging it all up as a service, they should have to pay a license fee, which seems completely fair.

I’ve worked for a large cloud providers and some small ones, it’s pretty common at these places to not care what the License is because as long as it’s running on a server, it doesn’t matter. And selling service based off them, just means profits without giving back in most cases.

The final point of the Commons Clause says very clearly that this was not meant to be slapped on every OSS license and that it’s not a final solution but meant to spark conversation.

In that way, it’s working exactly as intended.

jakobegger• 8 years ago

A common fear with Open Source software is "What if someone takes my work and profits from it?". But in my opinion, that's the point of Open Source! If you don't want others to profit from your code, make it proprietary!

But any attempt to make software open source, but still make sure that I get licensing fees or whatnot if someone makes a profit from it, is in my opinion seriously misguided.

With Open Source, our business model should be that lots of people work together to build an ecosystem; no-one profits directly from selling the code, but everyone profits from using the code. Some people contribute to the project because they offer consulting services, some people profit because they use it for their job, etc.

The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

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