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Ask HN: Using BSL (Business Source) License as a Dual License?

9 pointsby osdevover 4 years ago
Hey everyone, what do think of open-source projects adopting the BSL ( Business Source License) with &quot;Additional Use Grants&quot; to allow production use for educational, non-profit, personal, private ( non-competitive ) users? This effectively allows the BSL to function as a &quot;Dual License&quot; where it can be configured to work as an &quot;Apache 2.0 &#x2F; MIT&quot; like license for the majority of people ( via the use grant ) but restricts its usage by competitive companies&#x2F;cloud-providers&#x2F;etc which may take advantage of such services? I&#x27;m considering releasing a set of libraries ( and complementary web client&#x2F;tools ) but under a BSL license and trying to gauge what the responses might be like. Also, do you think this is preferable to setting up a GPL&#x2F;AGPL license with option to upgrade to a more permissive license?<p>BACKGROUND: I&#x27;ve noticed some open-source projects ( specifically larger ones like databases ) adopt BSL (Business Source License) license or similar as an alternative to pure &quot;Open-Source&quot; licenses like Apache 2.0, MIT, etc. The intent seems to be to prevent larger companies and cloud providers( AWS, Google, Azure) from abusing&#x2F;taking advantage of their software it seems without any contributions&#x2F;returns.<p>LINKS: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mariadb.com&#x2F;bsl-faq-adopting&#x2F; https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.adamretter.org.uk&#x2F;business-source-license-adoption&#x2F;<p>EDIT: Added links

1 comment

hosker4uover 4 years ago
It makes sense to me.