As far as I can tell, no one is really taking Fair Source seriously except a handful of tech startups that wouldn’t have really been contributing anything meaningful to the commons anyway. I mean, it’s dumb, but I can think of five much worse things without even thinking very hard.
Agreed. Ironically, even the author almost makes this point when they talk about cloud companies. I made this point in another thread, but cloud providers are currently kings of the software space, and they do not like fauxpen source, because it messes with the developers who want to use their cloud. The mass forking of Redis is a prime example of this. Fauxpen source is just a tech startup trend, and we all already learned to ignore most tech startup ninnies after they couldn’t do anything but spout buzzwords about cryptocurrency and AI. They’re going to quickly learn how unpopular this maneuver makes them.
The ultimate problem with criticizing all these intermediate licenses (that lie somewhere between completely closed-source and FOSS) is I never hear an economically-viable alternative that isn’t either (1) closed-source, or (2) results in AWS getting most of the value of their hard work.
I used to maintain two Free Software projects with a few thousand stars between them, and I can tell you, I did NOT do it to enrich Bezos.
Is there an alternative out there that isn’t 1 or 2 above? The only thing I’ve heard of that comes close is Attribution-Based Economics, which is purely theoretical at the moment.
I used to maintain two Free Software projects with a few thousand stars between them, and I can tell you, I did NOT do it to enrich Bezos.
So why did you do it?
Personally, I use permissive licensing (usually BSD) because I’m writing things to be used. I had a problem, I solved it, I made my solution available so people don’t have to waste time or effort reinventing it. A surprising amount of the time, other people will contribute improvements to it!
“It might make someone’s business a bit more efficient/profitable” is not a failure case to me. Quite a lot of the open-source software I’ve contributed to has also been stuff I’ve used at work. I’ve been able to argue for time to contribute to some projects specifically because my employer used them.
Sp, sure, someone else might benefit from my contributions, but that’s the whole point: if I wanted to selfishly say that only I can benefit from software I wrote, or that only people I personally approve of can benefit from it, I’d just make it proprietary. When I make something open source I’m explicitly saying i want the world at large to be able to benefit from it. That means, yes, some people I don’t like might benefit, or some people who will have purposes I don’t approve of might benefit, but that is the cost of a general good and one I’m willing to pay in order to also have all the people I do like, and all the purposes I do approve of, benefit.
I maintained them because I needed to use them for my own projects, and the creator had moved on.
“It might make someone’s business a bit more efficient/profitable” is not a failure case to me
It is to me, these days. I’m more concerned about economic and political justice than the nebulous FOSS concept of a “user” that lumps all downstream entities together. It’s wild to me that with a FS license, I can’t tell arms manufacturers to f*@# off, but I can with a proprietary license. That’s just backwards to what I think is important in the world.
some people who will have purposes I don’t approve of might benefit, but that is the cost of a general good and one I’m willing to pay in order to also have all the people I do like, and all the purposes I do approve of, benefit.
Ahh, this is the difference in our thinking. It’s not all-or-nothing. Free Software advocates continually frame these intermediate licenses as GPL-minus, instead of proprietary-plus.
But as you point out, the primary alternative is purely proprietary, not purely FS. By rejecting “off-ramp” licenses for impurity, this position probably leads to less FS in the world, not more.
If nothing else, all these discussions on Lobsters make it seem pretty thankless to attempt an intermediate license, so I’d probably just go purely proprietary for any business I’d start.
If nothing else, all these discussions on Lobsters make it seem pretty thankless to attempt an intermediate license, so I’d probably just go purely proprietary for any business I’d start.
I promise, Lobsters isn’t the real world. There’s valuable discussion here, but it’s a different crowd. The real test is with customers. And customers do like FSS, in my experience, and are very thankful.
they’re not considering free software though (if that’s what you mean by FSS). they’re deciding between source-available proprietary and closed source.
Proprietary software doesn’t avoid (2) anyway. Amazon can just buy the company, then they get even more benefit from the project than they would if it were copyleft. Many such cases. Copyleft at least limits the amount of exploitation and control that can be exerted by monopolies.
??? Huh? Amazon buying the company is the opposite of (2).
Amazon can just buy the company, then they get even more benefit from the project than they would if it were copyleft.
Even assuming AWS would get more benefit were true (which I doubt), they’d have to pay for the privilege, no? Instead of paying nothing to an unaffiliated FOSS programmer, or paying payroll to have staff work on it, they have to actually buy the whole company. This avoids (2).
The goal here is to capture the value of one’s work, and prevent large cloud companies from being free riders.
Copyleft at least limits the amount of exploitation and control that can be exerted by monopolies.
This hasn’t been true for 20 years. The rise of Linux servers may have exerted pressure on Windows and Sun back in the 90’s, but the GPL hasn’t thrown up the slightest road block to Amazon’s path to monopoly and monopsony ecommerce power, Google’s monopoly on search, and the Facebook/Google dominance of advertising. They all monopolize just fine with oodles of Free Software.
The Free Software licenses and movement weren’t about economics, which means any prosocial economic benefit is accidental, and not by design. This is what I mean when I point out that the GPL is economically naive. In many cases, it primarily benefits massive tech companies, who have no incentive (or force) to pay even a pittance to the developers actually building the software they benefit from.
Even assuming AWS would get more benefit were true (which I doubt), they’d have to pay for the privilege, no? Instead of paying nothing to an unaffiliated FOSS programmer, or paying payroll to have staff work on it, they have to actually buy the whole company. This avoids (2).
The goal here is to capture the value of one’s work, and prevent large cloud companies from being free riders.
OK so (2) is not about opposing Amazon in general, it’s specifically about preventing them from getting any value that they don’t pay for. If that’s your criteria, then closed-source is the way to go. With source-available proprietary, Amazon engineers can still study the code and derive benefits that they haven’t paid for.
Copyleft at least limits the amount of exploitation and control that can be exerted by monopolies.
This hasn’t been true for 20 years. The rise of Linux servers may have exerted pressure on Windows and Sun back in the 90’s, but the GPL hasn’t thrown up the slightest road block to Amazon’s path to monopoly and monopsony ecommerce power, Google’s monopoly on search, and the Facebook/Google dominance of advertising. They all monopolize just fine with oodles of Free Software.
Nobody said that free software prevented things that already happened. Proprietary software didn’t prevent that either. I said copyleft limits the amount of exploitation and control, which it does. For instance, people who use Linux through AWS can switch to another cloud provider while keeping the same OS. That would not be true if Linux were not FOSS.
The Free Software licenses and movement weren’t about economics, which means any prosocial economic benefit is accidental, and not by design. This is what I mean when I point out that the GPL is economically naive. In many cases, it primarily benefits massive tech companies, who have no incentive (or force) to pay even a pittance to the developers actually building the software they benefit from.
I’m not sure what you mean by “primarily.” If you mean that massive tech companies get more benefits than users, that doesn’t seem true at least compared to proprietary software. With proprietary software, users have no defense and the owner controls everything. The tendency under neoliberalism is for assets to be consolidated into monopolies, so even if proprietary software starts out being owned and controlled by a benevolent entity it will tend to be owned by monopolies eventually, who will then benefit from their users’ lack of rights. But you don’t care about that anyway right? As long as Amazon paid for the software at some point it’s fine?
Fair Source says, in essence, “You have all the rights of open source until your derivative work is actually popular. At that point you must pay.”
This seems to refer to an earlier model of Fair Source. The current model says “You have all the rights of open source except directly competing with the author for 2 years, after which it becomes Apache/MIT licensed.”.
As far as I can tell, no one is really taking Fair Source seriously except a handful of tech startups that wouldn’t have really been contributing anything meaningful to the commons anyway. I mean, it’s dumb, but I can think of five much worse things without even thinking very hard.
I think it is useful to have distinction between Free/Open/Libre (cross out unneeded) licenses and this things.
Agreed. Ironically, even the author almost makes this point when they talk about cloud companies. I made this point in another thread, but cloud providers are currently kings of the software space, and they do not like fauxpen source, because it messes with the developers who want to use their cloud. The mass forking of Redis is a prime example of this. Fauxpen source is just a tech startup trend, and we all already learned to ignore most tech startup ninnies after they couldn’t do anything but spout buzzwords about cryptocurrency and AI. They’re going to quickly learn how unpopular this maneuver makes them.
The ultimate problem with criticizing all these intermediate licenses (that lie somewhere between completely closed-source and FOSS) is I never hear an economically-viable alternative that isn’t either (1) closed-source, or (2) results in AWS getting most of the value of their hard work.
I used to maintain two Free Software projects with a few thousand stars between them, and I can tell you, I did NOT do it to enrich Bezos.
Is there an alternative out there that isn’t 1 or 2 above? The only thing I’ve heard of that comes close is Attribution-Based Economics, which is purely theoretical at the moment.
So why did you do it?
Personally, I use permissive licensing (usually BSD) because I’m writing things to be used. I had a problem, I solved it, I made my solution available so people don’t have to waste time or effort reinventing it. A surprising amount of the time, other people will contribute improvements to it!
“It might make someone’s business a bit more efficient/profitable” is not a failure case to me. Quite a lot of the open-source software I’ve contributed to has also been stuff I’ve used at work. I’ve been able to argue for time to contribute to some projects specifically because my employer used them.
Sp, sure, someone else might benefit from my contributions, but that’s the whole point: if I wanted to selfishly say that only I can benefit from software I wrote, or that only people I personally approve of can benefit from it, I’d just make it proprietary. When I make something open source I’m explicitly saying i want the world at large to be able to benefit from it. That means, yes, some people I don’t like might benefit, or some people who will have purposes I don’t approve of might benefit, but that is the cost of a general good and one I’m willing to pay in order to also have all the people I do like, and all the purposes I do approve of, benefit.
I maintained them because I needed to use them for my own projects, and the creator had moved on.
It is to me, these days. I’m more concerned about economic and political justice than the nebulous FOSS concept of a “user” that lumps all downstream entities together. It’s wild to me that with a FS license, I can’t tell arms manufacturers to f*@# off, but I can with a proprietary license. That’s just backwards to what I think is important in the world.
Ahh, this is the difference in our thinking. It’s not all-or-nothing. Free Software advocates continually frame these intermediate licenses as GPL-minus, instead of proprietary-plus.
But as you point out, the primary alternative is purely proprietary, not purely FS. By rejecting “off-ramp” licenses for impurity, this position probably leads to less FS in the world, not more.
If nothing else, all these discussions on Lobsters make it seem pretty thankless to attempt an intermediate license, so I’d probably just go purely proprietary for any business I’d start.
I promise, Lobsters isn’t the real world. There’s valuable discussion here, but it’s a different crowd. The real test is with customers. And customers do like FSS, in my experience, and are very thankful.
they’re not considering free software though (if that’s what you mean by FSS). they’re deciding between source-available proprietary and closed source.
I’m guessing that’s a typo. ezekg uses the Fair Core License for Keygen.
I hope it doesn’t stand for “Fair Source Software” though, because that will get confusing real fast.
Yes, FSS stands for Fair Source Software.
Err, if that ship hasn’t sailed, I would totally suggest trying a different acronym.
I predict FSS is going to get confused with FS and FOSS constantly.
Maybe “FairSS”?
From the article:
For sure… there’s just no guarantee that it would go to your startup, and not AWS.
Proprietary software doesn’t avoid (2) anyway. Amazon can just buy the company, then they get even more benefit from the project than they would if it were copyleft. Many such cases. Copyleft at least limits the amount of exploitation and control that can be exerted by monopolies.
??? Huh? Amazon buying the company is the opposite of (2).
Even assuming AWS would get more benefit were true (which I doubt), they’d have to pay for the privilege, no? Instead of paying nothing to an unaffiliated FOSS programmer, or paying payroll to have staff work on it, they have to actually buy the whole company. This avoids (2).
The goal here is to capture the value of one’s work, and prevent large cloud companies from being free riders.
This hasn’t been true for 20 years. The rise of Linux servers may have exerted pressure on Windows and Sun back in the 90’s, but the GPL hasn’t thrown up the slightest road block to Amazon’s path to monopoly and monopsony ecommerce power, Google’s monopoly on search, and the Facebook/Google dominance of advertising. They all monopolize just fine with oodles of Free Software.
The Free Software licenses and movement weren’t about economics, which means any prosocial economic benefit is accidental, and not by design. This is what I mean when I point out that the GPL is economically naive. In many cases, it primarily benefits massive tech companies, who have no incentive (or force) to pay even a pittance to the developers actually building the software they benefit from.
OK so (2) is not about opposing Amazon in general, it’s specifically about preventing them from getting any value that they don’t pay for. If that’s your criteria, then closed-source is the way to go. With source-available proprietary, Amazon engineers can still study the code and derive benefits that they haven’t paid for.
Nobody said that free software prevented things that already happened. Proprietary software didn’t prevent that either. I said copyleft limits the amount of exploitation and control, which it does. For instance, people who use Linux through AWS can switch to another cloud provider while keeping the same OS. That would not be true if Linux were not FOSS.
I’m not sure what you mean by “primarily.” If you mean that massive tech companies get more benefits than users, that doesn’t seem true at least compared to proprietary software. With proprietary software, users have no defense and the owner controls everything. The tendency under neoliberalism is for assets to be consolidated into monopolies, so even if proprietary software starts out being owned and controlled by a benevolent entity it will tend to be owned by monopolies eventually, who will then benefit from their users’ lack of rights. But you don’t care about that anyway right? As long as Amazon paid for the software at some point it’s fine?
This seems to refer to an earlier model of Fair Source. The current model says “You have all the rights of open source except directly competing with the author for 2 years, after which it becomes Apache/MIT licensed.”.
that’s right. the version of fair.io contemporary to this article was taken down in 2021, then this year it came back with a different model.
Why post a link to archive.com?
archive.org - because this is an old article and techrepublic.com no longer serves it.