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It's not okay to pretend your software is open source

186 点作者 Bl4ckb0ne超过 6 年前

16 条评论

staticassertion超过 6 年前
I believe I&#x27;m in the minority when I say this.<p>Ultimately, if I choose to, I will license my project however I want. If I want to restrict others from selling my product I will do so.<p>Calling it Apache 2.0 + Common Clause makes sense, it&#x27;s an extremely well known license and it&#x27;s easier to start there and then say &quot;but with some restrictions&quot;. That said, I do see the issue that people may use this software and not understand that the restrictions are there (but they clearly didn&#x27;t look at the license) so changing the name is a reasonable ask.<p>This article definitely reads as overdramatic, as do the repeated comments on the subject.
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Fuxy超过 6 年前
I don&#x27;t understand why everyone is so against his point as far as I&#x27;m aware even wikipedia says under &quot;Open source license&quot;[1] that &quot;Licenses which only permit non-commercial redistribution or modification of the source code for personal use only are generally not considered as open-source licenses.&quot;<p>So his point is valid you can&#x27;t advertise your product as open source if it&#x27;s not and you shouldn&#x27;t be allowed to trick the community into thinking it is.<p>Companies can use whatever license they like it&#x27;s their right but advertising it as open source when it isn&#x27;t just to take advantage of the now large community of open source contributors is not acceptable.<p>Using “Apache+Commons Clause” is just one way used to trick people into believing it&#x27;s open source when it&#x27;s not; you may not be using it like that but do you honestly think a company with a team of lawyers didn&#x27;t do this intentionally so they can take advantage of the open source community?<p>[1](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Open-source_license" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Open-source_license</a>)
freehunter超过 6 年前
I agree that if you&#x27;ve labeled your software incorrectly as open source and you&#x27;ve been corrected, it should be re-labeled and the problem shouldn&#x27;t be ignored.<p>I will say, though, that personally I feel &quot;free&quot; software has a labelling problem. I&#x27;m not heavily engaged in the open-source movement, and a lot of the terms and wording and licensing confuses me to the point where I don&#x27;t want to use it because I&#x27;m not sure what legal or press hell I might be unleashing in the future. The fact that &quot;free&quot; needs to be clarified with &quot;free as in beer&quot; or &quot;free as in speech&quot; is the most notable. Any thesaurus can give a dozen or more great words to use other than the ambiguous &quot;free&quot;.<p>Some of the OSI&#x2F;FSF licenses can be (in my opinion) just as restrictive and encumbered (albeit in different ways) as non-free&#x2F;non-open licenses. The biggest ambiguity to me is having multiple pieces of software with different licenses. I&#x27;ve seen some Ruby gems where they&#x27;re GPL&#x27;d, and I&#x27;m not sure what the definition of &quot;modified&quot; means as it pertains to when I need to redistribute the code. If I used MIT licensed code inside of a GPL application, do I need to release the MIT code too? What if I need to use non-free code in an otherwise GPL codebase? I&#x27;m just SOL? Do I need to guarantee my released GPL code works, or can I release completely broken code and still satisfy the license?<p>And this post highlights that pretty well those franken-licensing problems. What the hell is Commons Clause? I&#x27;ve never even heard of it... or maybe I did hear of it and like the post says I just thought it was Apache Commons or Creative Commons. Again, ambiguous terms that have tons of better words in a thesaurus.<p>FSF&#x2F;OSI have changed the world for the better for sure, but like with the million and a half Linux distros, the tyranny of choice ends up making the process harder. I&#x27;ve never released any of my code as open-source because to be honest, I have no idea what &quot;open source&quot; actually <i>means</i>.
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kijin超过 6 年前
Creative commons licenses have had optional NC (no commercial use) and ND (no derivative works) clauses for years. FOSS purists don&#x27;t like them, but a lot of artists depend on those clauses to make a living.<p>There is no widely recognized equivalent of a CC-BY-NC license for software, partly because neither the FSF nor OSI will recognize such a license. Maybe someone needs to write one nonetheless. And stick it on their software clearly and unambiguously. They obviously think that OSI-approved licenses don&#x27;t suit their needs. Then don&#x27;t use them, period.<p>The author is right that &quot;Apache 2.0 + Commons Clause&quot; is potentially misleading. We&#x27;ve seen &quot;GPLv2 + Classpath Exception&quot; before, but that was to give additional permissions, not a restriction. Similarly, most examples of dual-licensing don&#x27;t add restrictions to either license. Adding a restriction is something new. It&#x27;s understandable that people find it disingenuous.<p>Just write a new license already and call it Redis Labs Open License (RLOL) or something like that.<p>I&#x27;m sure antirez would be rather unhappy if you forked Redis, deleted a bunch of features, and called it Redis Lite. At least have the courtesy of changing the name if you&#x27;re going to use an incompatible license.
koonsolo超过 6 年前
We need a different name for this, so either<p>- Source-available software (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Source-available_software" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Source-available_software</a>)<p>- Shared source (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Shared_Source_Initiative" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Shared_Source_Initiative</a>)<p>So that it&#x27;s clear that source code is available in some form, but it&#x27;s not open source.
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npr11超过 6 年前
This post seemed aggressive and vague to me. I&#x27;m not even sure what problem the author has with these licenses. I _think_ the issue is confusing naming - which seems pretty solvable - and not a fundamental problem with &quot;dual licensing&quot; &#x2F; &quot;source available&quot; &#x2F; &quot;commons clause&quot; software?<p>People can develop software out in the open and say &quot;use it as it is, for free!&quot;, &quot;use it as part of a new product, for free!&quot;, but also say &quot;please do not sell this software as it is&quot; and &quot;please do not make and sell an almost-identical product using this software&quot;. That seems good to me, if the other option is closed-source.<p>E.g. I could make a product, you can use it for free, I will try to make money selling consulting services around the product (you can compete with me on that!) just don&#x27;t sell the software.<p>I am happy to be corrected if there is a problem with these licenses being misused (or misrepresented as free and open source), but the post didn&#x27;t give any examples.
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hendzen超过 6 年前
At the end of the day, open source projects need developers... and developers need to eat.<p>These license changes have been forced by the business reality of larger cloud companies capturing all the value created by open source communities and leaving OSS developers to starve.<p>Who deserves the value created by Redis? Antirez and the Redis Labs developers? Or Jeff Bezos?
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stevenacreman超过 6 年前
People are upvoting the title because I guess they agree to some extent.<p>It seems everyone starting an open source project nowadays needs to protect against the cloud providers.<p>The topic on here about the new CI tool from the creator of Ansible also had an element of this. But I actually quite liked his solution. He gives everything away for free and the source is open. You just cannot profit from his work unless you join a partner system.<p>Maybe I&#x27;m being naive but that seemed like it may work. Although not sure how you qualify not being used for commercial benefit if the software you&#x27;re building with the CI tool produces a paid product. I think the software creator would only really enforce the license if you started a business up doing hosted CI with it or offering it as a cloud service.
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zekevermillion超过 6 年前
People are talking past each other here b&#x2F;c we can&#x27;t decide if we&#x27;re concerned primarily with the ethics of software freedom, or just with confusion of Open Source (TM) labeling.<p>This discussion says to me that maybe RMS was right to insist on using the term &quot;free software&quot;, and to refuse to promote &quot;open source&quot;. When we debate the merits of an &quot;open source&quot; (or more confusingly, a &quot;FOSS&quot;) license, people end up talking past each other. Are we talking about what is an effective licensing &#x2F; development strategy, or are we talking about software ethics? People who do not agree with the free software ethos are understandably confused to find themselves criticized on moral grounds for choosing a license that makes source available but does not permit full exercise of user freedom. Hey, I thought we called it open source b&#x2F;c we didn&#x27;t want to focus on user freedom as ideology? Right? Maybe that was a mistake.<p>My personal view is that there is no logical problem in an author talking about open source as the basis for a restrictive, source-available license -- as long as there is no implication that the license is endorsed by a particular standards body. And conversely if you are a proponent of software freedom, maybe you have to recognize that there is some merit in referring to this as &quot;free software&quot; instead of something else, to avoid confusion.
barnson超过 6 年前
Blocking the sale or hosting of software is one thing; Commons Clause also blocks any &quot;consulting&#x2F; support services related to the Software.&quot; That&#x27;s way too broad; is a system that uses Redis &quot;related to the Software&quot;? It&#x27;s also short-sighted: it limits the ecosystem&#x27;s growth to the ability of one company to expand and take on &quot;consulting&#x2F; support services.&quot;
myWindoonn超过 6 年前
At least non-free licensing gives us an easy way to tell which software is not worth using. It&#x27;s funny how these recent packages in the news all have FLOSS alternatives:<p>* Mongo? Why not Pg?<p>* GitLab? Why not Fossil?<p>* Redis? Why not better architecture?<p>* Vespene? Why not Nix tools?<p>You may see each of these as flamebait. I see each of these as a discussion that, here on HN, usually ends in stalemate. What I&#x27;m suggesting, then, is that we simply allow these package authors to tip the scales decisively for us: Reject non-FLOSS and the path is clear.
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mrjn超过 6 年前
(Author of Dgraph here).<p>To Drew Devault: Just came across this article, and there&#x27;s no comments section in your blog post.<p>&gt; Finally, I have some praise to offer. Dgraph was briefly licensed under Apache plus the Commons Clause, and had the sort of misleading and false information this article decries on their marketing website, docs, and so on. However, they’ve rolled it back, and Dgraph is now using the Apache 2.0 license with no modifications. Thank you!<p>Please don&#x27;t &quot;praise&quot; us. When we switched to the clause (back in April 2018), we had changed wordings on our site (we don&#x27;t do any marketing, so not sure which marketing website you&#x27;re referring to) to not mention open source but to mention liberally licensed (which I strongly hold that Apache + Commons Clause is, more so than AGPL). There was no false or misleading information. In fact, that was pointed out to you multiple times, but that didn&#x27;t change your rhetoric.<p>Dgraph is no longer under Commons Clause and (its core) is under Apache 2.0 license, so I think I can speak as an open-source guy here. There are people like me out there, who&#x27;d like to ensure that they can make a livelihood out of writing open source software, without asking for donations, or doing another job. We&#x27;d also like to ensure that if we run a company around open source, that company can be sustainable and profitable. If your answer to these people is to switch to closed source, then you&#x27;re doing a bad job of promoting open source.<p>In fact, your attitude towards open source is damaging to anybody who is willing to spend their time and effort building open source and expects to make a good living out of it.
_wmd超过 6 年前
If you don&#x27;t like software with these new style licenses, then don&#x27;t use software with these new style licenses. Explain what it is that apparently so deeply violates your right to exist, but puritanical screaming and finger-pointing black &amp; white contrasts never really convinces people of anything. All these rants are lame.<p>The best comment I&#x27;ve heard so far w.r.t. CC is how it complicates acquisition of software by businesses. That&#x27;s a hugely legit complaint -- but the same complaint applied to the GPL not more than 2 decades ago. Companies adjusted before, assuming value exists in this new breed of license, they&#x27;ll adjust again.<p>Meanwhile as a free software author, I&#x27;m very happy to see smaller companies experimenting with methods to protect their work in whatever way they see fit. Hopefully something &quot;socially acceptable&quot; comes from all this that might be useful to me at some stage in future.<p>Finally it&#x27;s worth remembering that there is a HUGE degree of freedom to explore between closed source, pay-only software and free software as we have it today. I have yet to see a recent example of a license that removes what for me is the greatest benefit of all: the ability to fix and debug things without opening a ticket. Fundamentalist shouting matches erupting every time someone tries something new reminds me of another modern debate - religion, and like there, the loudest and most annoying rarely have meaningful new information to share<p>----<p>There is another angle that seems very interesting. Industry consolidation and typical policy within large companies towards employees working on free software (&quot;you can&#x27;t unless it&#x27;s approved &amp; we own copyright&quot;) means &#x27;the movement&#x27; that existed in the 90s is all but dead and gone. Any big real development that happens in the open typically happens because some employer is explicitly paying an employee to advance their agenda through technical means (see e.g. Kubernetes).<p>To me, a new license that not only incentivized but made practical and sustainable large software projects independent of those large consolidated employers is far more valuable than not having to toss a few dimes in the pot if that software is used in some circumstances where profit is made.
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nqzero超过 6 年前
i&#x27;m sympathetic to (and in the same boat) as the developers that are considering &quot;licenses&quot; like this one. but i agree with the author that the language being used is fraudulent and the terms are one-sided (hence the quotes). i&#x27;ve made an attempt at coming up with a license that better bridges the gap between open and closed. my goals were:<p>* pay to use the software * assure developers that they can also monetize their work * assure users that prices won&#x27;t change unpredictably<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;db4j&#x2F;pupl&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;PUPL.md" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;db4j&#x2F;pupl&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;PUPL.md</a><p>would love any feedback or alternative licenses that capture similar elements
kowdermeister超过 6 年前
He should have been linked to one repo to have some context. Is the commons clause limited to the project itself or can I still sell my software using a library with a commons clause?
fiatjaf超过 6 年前
Why is there a canonical definition of free English words guarded by an institution? Isn&#x27;t the English language free and open?