jdev - 2021-01-15

"doing open source work is like doing normal paid work, except that you get paid in complaints instead of cash" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XCDm3MoXUY

True fact.

Tho sometimes people send you thanks as well, so that's nice.

related: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1349287213884792834 (thread!) ✏

Great talk; thanks. It's too bad there's not a license that's basically just "BSD if you're using it for free in your own open source project, use whatever the project has setup for payment or email for terms if using for commercial use"

(A widely used license, I should say; I'm sure someone has written one if you're willing to proliferate more licenses and use some random persons pet license)

Please define "for free". Does a project where all sources are published, binaries freely downloadable, but it accepts donations or can sell physical copies on dvds count as "for free"? what about something like Conversations?

yah, I dunno how commercial use is defined. Maybe it's just "if you're unsure, ask".

Seems like it could be done.

Sam: There's the sleepycat license, which is similar, I think.

I haven't heard of that; I'll look it up, thanks

According to TL;DR this one does allow commercial use without restrictions: https://tldrlegal.com/license/sleepycat-license

tl;drLegal, I mean

Ah, yes, that's right. It was 'you must supply source or pay us'. I misremembered.

or at least, the only restriction is you have to provide the source code you linked

jinx

Although for most (not all) intents and purposes having to provide the source to your application works as an anti-commercial clause.

oooh, this is for the whole application, I misunderstood

yah, this wouldn't work. I don't want to stop commercial use, just say "if your primary purpose is commercial, pay for it"

That's what this does, no?

(Assuming commercial = not supplying source)

You either buy a commercial license, or you supply source.

(A bit like GPL dual-license but without the dogma)

oh yah, I guess you could provide a commercial alternative and the license doesn't have to mention it, fair

From the page you linked: " the only alternative is to pay the copyright holder for a commercial use license" ;)

oh hey, there's a summary, didn't see that

I always struggle with what license to use.

I typically pick BSD2clause if I want to allow commercial use, or GPLv3 if I don't.

(Using the GPL as a way of getting license fees paid is not exactly what it was intended for, but it's the most widely used license that has that effect, IMO. It's just a shame you have to include the dogma to get there)

I don't like GPL because of the viral component; for the rare time where I think a project has commercial potential I want open source projects to be able touse it without restriction

(or without them also potentially having to be GPL or be confused about what kinds of linking or including of my thing constitute redistribution, etc.)

That is fair. Although it gets very very complicated if you don't want those projects to then be used commercially...

yah, good point

I dunno how you draw the line or how any of that would be defined legally (which is why I try to use only one of the handful of popular licenses where I trust the organization that wrote it to have thought of legal issues)

Sam Whited, GPL without the automated upgrade to GPL to unrelated components that happen to end up in the same project is either LGPL or MPL.

LGPL has the requirement that the user must be able to change the LGPL parts with their own.

MPL is only concerned about source code, if you modify a MPL file in your project you must redistribute it under the same license, but if you use any other license for any other file you can continue doing so.

I can at least sort of live with the LGPL, but I still don't like it. That's mostly for political reasons though, I just think GNU are all harmful zealots.

I can't remember all the LGPL requirements, but I remember MPL still being more than I wanted for open source. Basically I want BSD "at your own risk, do whatever" for non commercial.

Although to further my license confusion I've also thought maybe I should switch to Apache. It's long and confusing and hard to read, but as far as I can tell it's strictly superior to BSD/MIT in that it basically does the same thing but also gives you the ability to require distribution of a NOTES file or whatever which is an nice option to have and covers patents (which may or may not be good, so that part always confuses me)

I dunno, OSS licenses are obnoxious if you don't have a lawyer to help you.

But they're necessary unfortunately, so I just stick with the smallest one for the most part and hope it's okay.

It's not like it will ever really matter for the things like my XMPP library where there's absolutely no commercial potential anyways I guess

AGPLv3 is the one and only appropriate license to use for all the things :)

if you don't believe me check https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/

If you want to prevent commercial use, that contradicts the notion of opensource (which is more or less about giving unrestricted "do whatever you want" permissions. So indeed you won't find what you want in common open sourge licenses (not saying that's a good or bad thing)

Licenses working on these aspects would be for example creative commons (by-nc-*). That's not specifically about software however