Reusing code is not freeloading in the Open Source (capitalized) movement -- at least, not the kind of freeloading that we'd like to discourage.
I don't know what else I can do as an Open Source developer in my projects and my terminology to imply that when I say, "you can reuse my code for any reason" I actually mean it. I guess traditional Open Source advocates could abandon the entire term and go off and create a brand new movement where we try to make that even more explicit, but people are just going to follow us there and then try to coopt the term again.
> people with the temerity to offer source-available licenses get treated like shit anyway because they aren't giving away the farm
I will call out people who are doing that.
But really, the only comments I have about source available products are:
A) they don't offer all of the advantages of Open Source (although they offer many more benefits than fully closed-source software), and I think that pointing that out is not a moral judgement, just a statement of fact about what the licenses do and do not allow.
B) people who offer source available licenses need to stop saying that they're basically the same as Open Source, or that they're just a subset of Open Source, or that they exist because Open Source has lost its way.
Because the licenses are not the same. All other debates aside, both us at this point in the conversation recognize this, right? You and I are disagreeing about a fundamental philosophy on what rights and moral responsibilities people have around code. You fundamentally disagree with me about whether or not large companies have the right to completely freely reuse permissive code, or whether they have an obligation to pay for it. That disagreement is so large that it affects our attitudes about whether offering large-scale commercial hosting of an Open Source product is moral.
And it's fine that you and I disagree on that point, but we can look at that disagreement and say that clearly your goals when licensing software are different than mine. So to me, it seems pretty reasonable that people who have this fundamental disagreement with the OSI should acknowledge that instead of acting like the Open Source movement is broken. It's not broken, it disagrees with you about the goals are in making code available to other people.
It's not people being stubborn, it's not that the OSI doesn't understand the consequences of Open Source, it's that it does understand the consequences of Open Source and it disagrees with you about what consequences are desirable. The Open Source movement doesn't need shared source advocates to 'save' us, we need them to acknowledge that their goals are different than ours.
What’s your stance on Dual licensing? I honestly have had mixed Opinions on this, but I finally settled on Dual licensing and/or BSL 1.1 as a nice compromise. I think open source developers create a lot of value, and should have the facility to be compensated and have their passion become their job. Plus this whole Re-Licensing trend toward SSPL/BSL/Dual is IMHO the natural evolution of open-source strategies.
Dual licensing (using the GPL and a separate proprietary license) is kind of a hack solution that takes advantage of the fact that business hate the GPL. It can introduce some problems (it effectively bars you from accepting contributions unless you use a CLA, which many contributors won't do). However, while community is an important part of Open Source, the most important part of Open Source is the lack of restrictions on how people use/modify/share the code, so while people can debate whether or not dual licensing is a good idea, that doesn't mean the GPL stops applying.
Any code that is GPL licensed is Open Source. It might be distasteful to some people to force contributors to sign a CLA, you might get some criticism from some segments of the community, but it's not problematic in a way that means it's fundamentally non-FOSS.
BSL on the other hand is not Open Source, but becomes Open Source at the point where the BSL license expires and is replaced by an Open version.
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Personally, I might get some pushback on this, but I actually kind of like BSL more than dual licensing. Dual licensing relies on the fact that people find the GPL toxic. It feels much more to me like a temporary solution, and one that only works by kind of dragging the GPL through the mud. Even among people who don't hate the GPL, it encourages them to think of it as a tool to enforce 'fairness', rather than as a complicated way to use copyright to push towards a world where every user has the rights guaranteed in the GPL for every program they run.
TBH, I vaguely suspect that some of the movement towards SSPL is an evolution of people's attitude towards dual licensing, where they thought that the un-attractiveness of the GPL was the point of the GPL, and now feel like it's not living up to it's 'promise'. The fact that Amazon is able to use GPL code to provide commercial services is seen by those people as a bug, not a feature.
Many of the downsides and restrictions around community contributions with BSL are also present in dual licensing because of the implicit CLA requirements in dual licensed projects. So it's not clear to me that BSL is more harmful to community-built software than dual licensing, and given the above trend, it seems a bit more honest (for lack of a better word).
Because dual licensing doesn't really affect companies like Amazon, it kind of encourages people into these arm races where people say that the GPL has failed in its job because some companies don't hate it (again, the point of the GPL is not to be impossible for companies to use). BSL on the other hand is very straightforward, and because it's upfront about its goals, it's not subject to the same kinds of weird arm races and escalations. You release software as proprietary, we all recognize that it's proprietary and that you want compensation for it, and then at some point it becomes Open Source. That's a really simple model to think about and build around.
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But all that being said, code that is licensed under the GPL is Open Source, period, regardless of what other licenses it is simultaneously offered under.
BSL licensed code before it expires is not Open Source or FOSS: it's proprietary code that later is Open Sourced once a certain amount of commercial value has been extracted from it.
I don't know what else I can do as an Open Source developer in my projects and my terminology to imply that when I say, "you can reuse my code for any reason" I actually mean it. I guess traditional Open Source advocates could abandon the entire term and go off and create a brand new movement where we try to make that even more explicit, but people are just going to follow us there and then try to coopt the term again.
> people with the temerity to offer source-available licenses get treated like shit anyway because they aren't giving away the farm
I will call out people who are doing that.
But really, the only comments I have about source available products are:
A) they don't offer all of the advantages of Open Source (although they offer many more benefits than fully closed-source software), and I think that pointing that out is not a moral judgement, just a statement of fact about what the licenses do and do not allow.
B) people who offer source available licenses need to stop saying that they're basically the same as Open Source, or that they're just a subset of Open Source, or that they exist because Open Source has lost its way.
Because the licenses are not the same. All other debates aside, both us at this point in the conversation recognize this, right? You and I are disagreeing about a fundamental philosophy on what rights and moral responsibilities people have around code. You fundamentally disagree with me about whether or not large companies have the right to completely freely reuse permissive code, or whether they have an obligation to pay for it. That disagreement is so large that it affects our attitudes about whether offering large-scale commercial hosting of an Open Source product is moral.
And it's fine that you and I disagree on that point, but we can look at that disagreement and say that clearly your goals when licensing software are different than mine. So to me, it seems pretty reasonable that people who have this fundamental disagreement with the OSI should acknowledge that instead of acting like the Open Source movement is broken. It's not broken, it disagrees with you about the goals are in making code available to other people.
It's not people being stubborn, it's not that the OSI doesn't understand the consequences of Open Source, it's that it does understand the consequences of Open Source and it disagrees with you about what consequences are desirable. The Open Source movement doesn't need shared source advocates to 'save' us, we need them to acknowledge that their goals are different than ours.