I tried a couple license finders and I even looked into the OSI database but I could not find a license that works pretty much like agpl but requiring payment (combined 1% of revenue per month, spread evenly over all FOSS software, if applicable) if one of these is true:
- the downstream user makes revenue (as in “is a company” or gets donations)
- the downstream distributor is connected to a commercial user (e.g. to exclude google from making a non profit to circumvent this license)
I ask this because of the backdoor in xz and the obviously rotten situation in billion dollar companies not kicking their fair share back to the people providing this stuff.
So, if something similar exists, feel free to let me know.
Thanks for reading and have a good one.
You can put up a non commercial license and write that if this is for a commercial application they can get in touch with you and you can discuss together a new license for their use case.
Yeah, I’m thinking of a more easy to understand thing. “Get in touch” is too much of a barrier imo. “Agpl but you need to pay 1% of your revenue to FOSS software”
They would have to get in touch to figure out how to pay 1% either way, no?
No, because my idea was that they have to pay 1% to all foss projects (total, not individual) they use and if the projects want donations, they have to post it on their repos. if its not on the repo, no donation is required.
1% is an exorbitant amount of money, and more than most businesses would be able to donate via credit card, so they would still have to reach out to repository owners for banking info
Actually, we are currently working on something like a payment union for FOSS developers. That would make this significantly easier. And also, I dont care if google has to do it, I just dont want everyone to have to contact me for 1.50 $/€.
You are probably better off setting up a non-profit and running traditional license fees through it into your payment union then. I can’t emphasize how much of a non-starter 1% of revenues is for any business (it’s my company’s entire IT budget, including salary) - you are basically just saying “personal use only” with more words.
Actually, I‘m just excluding companies like yours because they are making way too much revenue on the basis of FOSS without giving back. We would have millions of FOSS developers if this were the case and we would solve dozens of current problems.
For example every employed sw dev with a specific skill set would then be able to go self employed immediately since they can provide insane foss code, stuff that we currently dont have and every company in the world can use it, just making sure they pay FOSS tax, so to speak.
It would completely break the locked down proprietary software model and break walled gardens wide open.
From my experience, companies would rather just pay for a commercial license. Anything abnormal gets trashed and banned in my company.
I think it’s more easy to understand “pay exactly this amount to use commercially” than the legal and accounting teams trying to work out how much to pay when you say 1% of their revenue to FOSS software. You can always donate the profits anyway
Yeah, I get that. Its a tough topic, especially with many folks not trying to understand the point I was trying to make and trying to shut me down instead.
Dual license is probably the way to go then. Have a nice day and thanks for elaborating.
App stores and game engines are examples where you are paying a percentage of revenue. Not that it makes this scenario make any more sense, but there are models out there that operate this way. However, in both you are working in pretty locked down environments.
Just a remark about “can donate profit anyway” which I understand for corporations doesnt apply to public and semi-public services (ofcourse).
Which often happens to be a target group that is well aware of public values etc and the notion of community-culture among each other. Often other libraries or other schools for example treat each other as collegues etc.
BUT those type of organisations arnt allowed to donate (Giving away taxmoney) AND often cant allocate developer time (because there arent any within those organizations).
Here (NL in EU) we depend on the same FOSS as everyone else, but cant donate. We do must look for other ways to contribute tho.
Generally, a free software license has to grant the 4 freedoms to be compatible to the gpl and co.
Freedom 0 is running the program however you wish, for any purpose. Imagine if that wasnt standard for free software, and having to read every license of every program you are using to find out if you are allowed to run it!
So your funny license would sadly be incompatible with other free software. Consider dual licensing it instead, with agpl + a propriatary license for businesses that hate free software, and make them pay through the nose for it.
I dont know why my license idea would be funny but thanks for elaborating. I‘ll read up on dual licensing.
They meant funny “different”, not funny “haha”.
Oh, ok. Yeah, different is kind of my forte.
yes, sorry for the unclear wording.
We do have funding models for open source and free software. The linux foundation for example takes donations from big players. Its not a forced donation like you suggest, but enough companies see the benefit to fund software they use, so it works. The fsf works a bit like that too, a foundation that, among other things, provides funding for important software. So we do have a way do this, but stuff slips through the cracks, like xz.
Thanks for clarifying. Im mean that is something, which I appreciate.
Still, I think making something like „FOSS tax“ which applies to companies who use software with this license would break both the software market wide open and tenfold the foss dev crowd because people actually get paid if their controbution is good. The quality of foss software would shoot through the roof.
That’s the FSF definition. Most users and developers of open source do not care at all about that, and certainly do not care about protecting corporate right to use their software without giving back.
To many of them, open source is about transparency, community driven development, open contribution model, forkability, etc.
no, thats also the open source definition point 6: No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor.
A license that reatricts use would be a “source-availible” license aka corporate bs “work for me for free” licenses.
Also, with strong copyleft licenses, businesses must give back, namely when expanding the program. I think thats what many programmers like about open-source and free software. And yeah, a free software license is a precondition to bazaar style development.
with strong copyleft licenses, businesses must give back, namely when expanding the program
A user is required to make the source open only if they create a derivative work of the copyleft licensed work, and only if said work was distributed to users. And if I remember correctly, it is only required to open the source to the users it was distributed to.
They do not have to do any profit sharing or donation. They are not even required to make the code open source if they merely use this program, or they interface with it. They are not required to do anything if they only use it internally.
no, thats also the open source definition
Correction: the definition of open source by a specific organization, the OSI.
I don’t remember voting or appointing the OSI as our legitimate representative. But you know who did? Corporations like Amazon, Google, Bloomberg, and many of them: https://opensource.org/sponsors
I do not subscribe to a definition from such an organization, just because it has open source in the name.
The people who coined the term “open source” are the same people who founded OSI. If you don’t like their term, don’t use it.
I have two arguments: first, it’s not true that the OSI coined the term. But more importantly, it isn’t even important if it was true. What matters is the context in which the open source movement emerged, and how people who use the term think of it.
The open source / free software movement was born in universities who primarily wanted to erase the barriers on collaboration between them, and wanted to follow an open model. They grew frustrated of the proprietary and opaque model of software written by major corporations. They could not use it. So they decided to write their own free software and combine their efforts to not rely on corporate or proprietary software.
Back then, corporations were uninterested in open source. In fact they were hostile to it and wanted it to die. The issue that we deal with today of corporations leeching on open source did not exist, so the fact that the movement did not specifically fight this does not mean they’re okay with it. The corporate hostility took a different form and that’s what they combatted.
On OSI coining the term, the OSI themselves claim it was coined by Christine Peterson. They do not claim that they founded the term, nor that the founder had an affiliation with them: https://opensource.org/history
If you want to sell proprietary software, why not just write and sell it? Or as others have suggested, dual license it? Hell, even the old shareware model could work for what you’ve described.
Unless you’re paying enforcers, how would you know if a corporation paid the right amount to use the code? How would your union determine distribution amounts to projects? How far upstream would payments go? How will disputes among developers be resolved?
I dont want to write proprietary software. I write foss software. But i dont want you to make money off of my invention without giving back, easy as pie.
The rest would obviously have to be determined. A union is a separate entity, same as the linux foundation seems to distribute donations (from another comment) it would have to be discussed and agreed upon.
Still, those who use foss, make money and dont donate upstream are scum imo.
i dont want you to make money off of my invention without giving back
Why do you think that you’re interested in writing FOSS software? Nothing you’ve posted here supports that claim. You do, however, speak like a textbook entrepreneur who wants to be paid for their innovation.
Their concern is obviously solving the dire problem of FOSS maintainers not getting compensated for their work, not getting rich themselves.
Obviously. With this much “I/me/my” in their rhetoric, it’s clear that they’re thinking about everyone else.
I have built stuff to help people all my life and have gotten fuck all for it. Its very easy to understand why I sound like this. Because I dont like people freeloading on others. Its selfish and disgusting.
If you don’t like people accepting what you freely offer, then don’t offer it. If you want to be paid, sell your work. It’s extraordinarily simple.
I dont like your condescending tone mate. I can have my opinion without having this and that ascribed to my personality every step of the way. Stop projecting.
I‘m ending this now. Good bye.
On the contrary, friend, I’m simply trying to help you see that you’re reinventing the wheel. Literally everything that you’ve said you want in a software license already exists. Bill Gates already did it. It’s called proprietary software. Develop it and license it to whoever wants to use it.
It actually sounds like you want to open a software development studio or a consortium of independent contractors. It’s a great idea. Run with it.
If you don’t want to give it away for free, then just don’t make it FOSS. It’s that simple. People use free-libre licenses because they want to use that license model. If you don’t want to, then don’t.
I‘m gonna say it again. Condescend and dogpile on someone else. I‘m trying to discuss something here. Good bye
Think of all the other free software you’ve used in your life. Were you selfishly freeloading?
Not ever. I started donating when I could financially and understood why it is important.
The discussion we had was that people who can, who profit from this software, give back their fair share.
People can disagree with my idea all they want but profit seekers freeloading is a huge flaw in foss.
The whole point is that their fair share is sharing code modifications and making them available to be merged upstream.
Do you think Redhat and the many other companies writing open source tools and drivers should be paying some of their revenue even though they’ve contributed a shit ton of code upstream?
No. To the contrary. I think companies controbutions to foss should be weighed against it but I also think that using others work should come with an obligation to contribute an equal value than you get if you are profitseeking.
The reason is that a lot of companies contribute nothing and say they would pay if they had to but cant donate because its optional and their policy is to spare respurces as much as they can.
This is not FOSS then. FOSS puts no restrictions on downstream use of your software other than that you acknowledge and credit the original authors… This is “Open Source” with strings attached. It’s no different than being forced to sign an NDA to see your code.
You either make it free for everybody, or then it isn’t free software.
Wrong. Free in FOSS means freely distributable, not free of cost. My idea of cost is just different than “pay for download”.
It does mean free of cost if the person downstream from you decides to not charge for it after getting it from you and forking it. That’s why you’re not finding a FOSS license that allows this. Because again, that’s not FOSS.
From the osi website i read a text that leads me to believe that the person downstream can charge as much as they want, they never have to give you anything for it if they add at least one more product.
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
To me this reads like a corpo scam to get free work.
By definition, if the user of the software is not free to do as they wish with the software, the software is not free/libre. It could fit the definition of open source, but it is not free/libre if you are restricting what the user can do with your source code.
And starting comments with “Wrong.” Is just rude.
> It could fit the definition of open source
It doesn’t https://opensource.org/osd
My bad, thanks for the source!
Here’s Stallman’s/FSF’s view on requiring
loyalties (lol)royalties (read the whole section, it’s explicitly stated at the end), and here’s similar requirement in OSI’s Open source definition.You are free to use whatever license you wish, but don’t call it FOSS/Open source if you don’t agree with their definitions.
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
So, if I understand this correctly, open source means free beer, just not if you sell the end product.
its all a scam for free work for corpos then. Very disappointing.
So, if I understand this correctly, open source means free beer, just not if you sell the end product.
Yes, once you give the beer to someone, you can’t require any further payments no matter what they do with it. Free software philosophy says users are free to use the software however they wish and for whatever purpose they wish without any barriers (like having to pay for commercial use).
its all a scam for free work for corpos then. Very disappointing.
I’m sorry you feel that way, and it’s becoming a not-so-rare sentiment lately (or at least I’ve started noticing it more), but I don’t agree. Look at (A)GPL and how many companies are doing their best to avoid such code - like when Google made their own C library for Android and even stated that its main goal was to avoid copyleft licenses. I’ve also seen plenty of people say that GPL code is pretty much useless for their work due to their company’s policies forbidding its use.
I also think that revenue-based loyalties screw over small companies the most - sure, you get the donations from the massive companies that can work with 1% of their revenue gone while also keeping it free for non-commercial users, but in my view you also help those same massive corporations by making the software less viable for their smaller competitors who don’t have the economies of scale on their side, and for whom that 1% might legitimately break the bank.
And to be clear, I don’t mean any of my arguments as some kind of “gotcha! Look, I’m right and you’re wrong”, I just thought I might share my reasoning for why I don’t think your statement is fair.
Thats a very reasonable answer, in brutal contrast to all the childish trolls in this community that flooded my inbox and are blocked now.
I‘ll probably just leave it at that. Its probably agpl forever for me since I‘m not giving my work to anyone who thinks they can just fuck over the little man. If we cant work out a foss version that is fair to devs then it is copyleft.
Still very disappointing. Thank you for providing the explanation though. I appreciate it.
You should not be a mod here.
Yeah, that’s cool and all, but your software isn’t FOSS if ppl have to pay to use it… Just license it under the AGPL and call it a day
You dont understand what FOSS means then. Free in FOSS means freedom, not free beer. You can absolutely charge someone to use it, which I’m not suggesting. I’m saying if a corpo uses software under my idea of a license, they have to pay fairly, thats it.
I know what FOSS means, but it seems like you think a license only needs to comply with one of the rules set up by OSI to be a FOSS license. If you charge your users (corps are also users) licensing fees, then you’re discriminating against specific fields of endeavor (users making money using your software). I’d argue you’re also interfering with other software projects, as some projects are strictly refusing donations (uBlock Origin as a popular example). As a last point: how would a business know which software it’s using and how do you define what project should get how much of their 1% of revenue? If a business is using proprietary ERP-Software, and that is using any random FOSS-Library, then how would that business know that the library is being used and, assuming they found out, how would they determine how much to donate?
Many questions. Thanks for asking.
As I understand it, you can very well charge for your software under foss terms. otherwise it would he free beer, no?
Who would get how much is to be determined. I asked a question and since it doesnt exist, I proposed an answer. So far, I‘m at equal shares. 10 projects means 0.1% revenue for each. If one doesnt take donations, its more for the rest, etc.
If I use a proprietary software I am not liable to their licensing agreements upstream. Pretty easy actually. I dont care what deal micorosoft has with some other dude when I install windows. Thats just absurd. But yes, your vendor would have to pay since they used the code.
You can charge for FOSS, but you can’t prevent the first person who buys your software from sharing it with everyone else for free.
You can technically charge for FOSS, but that sort-of collides with the freedom to redistribute the software. You may have heard about that when the whole RHEL/Rocky Linux dispute happened.
Equal shares can also be kind-of unfair if your backend is using sqlx for the entire database communication and then you also use some small image-conversion library to convert the favicon from .png to .ico.
My last point may be a bit confusing, let’s try to make it a bit easier to understand: In this case, you are a company, that is directly using a piece of code that is licensed under the license you’ve been thinking about, and you’re also using a piece of proprietary software, e.g. some ERP-Software. The proprietary software is using a FOSS library that permits it to be used in a proprietary binary, let’s say because it’s BSD-Licensed. How do you know that the ERP-Software is using that library, and how would you determine how much you’d have to donate to them. You kind-of have to donate to them, because your ERP-Software wouldn’t run without that library
The best use case for purchasing FOSS software is contractor work, specific modules for existing platforms and/or FOSS projects. I’ve done that myself in the past. The client pays for the custom software, it’s written, and then they gets to do absolutely whatever they want with it. If the client wants to publish it, they’re well within their rights. Most of the time it’s too entangled with their internal company workflow to be useful to anyone else though.
I can see that this for some kind doesnt work with the current state of foss. Its basically free work for corpos.
I will therefore implement 100% agpl in my projects and make them incaccessible for anyone who tries to put into proprietary software.
The equal shares are just one possible solition and since this community is full of trolls who cant just discuss something (you and a handful peeps excluded), I‘m not really in the mood to think about this anymore. I‘ll just use the most restricted license and call it foss just to piss people off.
To your last point I dont know what the misunderstanding is. As I read it, you‘re saying the proprietary software includes a foss library. I wouldnt know or care because I bought a product not a library. My idea was for using the code not for the end user of a derivative work.
Removed by mod
It’s pretty common for software to be free for personal use only.
Not FOSS software. Free as in Freedom.
feels like i got under your skin. i like it. Now shove off.
Just make it proprietary. Hear me out. I get that FOSS comes with altruism, but you also have no obligation to share with someone (or corporations) that don’t share our values. Make a proprietary version for them and if you still want an open version for who ever might find it.
You’re basically saying what I’m saying just with different words. I dont want two versions. Free doesnt mean free beer. I want companies to pay for it (and all other foss projects) period. The reason I want it in one is that its still foss (because it doesnt have to be free of cost) but companies cant weasel their way around giving back.
@haui_lemmy That’s like saying “I want to fly but without losing touch with the ground” - it is possible, it’s just called “walking”. If you “don’t want someone to make money off of your invention” then that’s called “proprietary”.
You forgot the „without giving back“.
Lots of foss use dual license: free for individual or non-profit use, but pay for commercial use, or even commercial use above a specific threshold. As part of my job, I’ve had to remove several of these, where the developer thinks it’s free but the corp can’t comply with the free licensing. It works.
Here’s an extremely well known example
I still haven’t decided what kind of company mine is with respect to foss. Its a good thing that they put effort into complying with licensing terms, they do support developers making contributions back, and historically they’ve “bought” a few foss projects (hire the developer, include that in his job responsibilities)! However I haven’t yet seen them make a corporate contribution and the first response with being out of compliance is to remove the dependency.
So it’s good that we take it seriously, and good that we historically contributed, however we don’t seem to co tribute much anymore and clearly get more benefit from foss than we give back
I thought Docker is FOSS but Desktop is not.
Branding confusion aside they are distinct, but complimentary, products with distinct licensing.
You are correct, my example is not a perfect fit.
It doesn’t matter how hard you want to call it FOSS, but with this licensing terms you describe it is not FOSS, period. And to be honest, you calling out various people for not getting what FOSS is, while you fully ignore the agreed on definition by people who are actually doing FOSS is you discrediting yourself.
You haven’t found a license like this, because your model is flawed: A licensing like this will disqualify you from any kind of usage in an actual FOSS licensed environment. Personal users, which will not be providing revenue, will not be really affected by this, and are irrelevant for your point. Corporate users, which you will mostly target by this new license probably won’t be able to use your funky new license because they will need to check with legal, and your software will need to have a lot of USPs for someone to bother with that. A 1% corpo-richness-tax will not be approved by any kind of bigger company, because it’s a ridiculous amount from the perspective of your potential customers.
You’re taking yourself way to important. Open source software is not replaceable as a whole, but individual projects are. If you want to earn money with your project, that’s good on you, license it accordingly, but do not try to upsell it as FOSS.
And I fully get your point, and I’m currently working on the same problem in my in-development project, and I’m not sure yet whether to dual-license it, for similar reasons you stated, and live with the consequences of providing OSS, but non-FOSS software, or do FOSS and provide it for actually free.
Edit: Also, the xz backdoor has nothing to do with funding. Any long time maintainer (as in not just a random person contributing pull requests) going rogue can happen in funded scenarios as well.
it is not FOSS
If you take the OSI or FSF definition, sure. Not all of us take that definition.
For many people, the appeal of open source has nothing to do with how easy it is for corporations. It is about transparency, the ability to contribute, and the community driven product as a result. It is about the ability to pick up the project if the original developer stops using it, even decades later. It’s about the ease of interfacing with said software.
Again, you may quote the FSF, but there are too many users of open source, as well as developers, who got into it for the reasons I stated. I can assure you that they are not doing it so that corporations can profit off their software without giving back.
Again, you may quote the FSF, but there are too many users of open source, as well as developers, who got into it for the reasons I stated. I can assure you that they are not doing it so that corporations can profit off their software without giving back.
If you are developing open source, you are not necessarily developing FOSS. If you are developing FOSS, you are also developing open source.
FOSS is well defined by the FSF, and it has been for ages, and to be frank, therefore no one cares for anyone’s personal definition of it.
What I am against is having the cake and eating it, as it’s being proposed with this licensing. Either you do FOSS, or you don’t. Either you do open source, or you don’t. Either you do proprietary software, or you don’t. It’s really that simple, because depending on your project, you take the terms that you see fitting and live with the consequences. The whole goal of this proposal was to be taken more serious as open source developers and projects, and to ensure funding for further development. Cherry picking the best parts of every model, and making irrational demands does not achieve that.
As I said, I’m absolutely on board that open source licensing and open source development being taken for profit by corpos absolutely sucks, and the usual licensing models have not aged well with the much wider adoption and usage of open source, and there is a need for change - as it’s being done e.g. by elastic, redis and others with their dual licensing.
> It is about transparency, the ability to contribute, and the community driven product as a result. It is about the ability to pick up the project if the original developer stops using it, even decades later. It’s about the ease of interfacing with said software.
That’s… exactly what the FSF and OSI definitions are all about.
The FSF and OSI do not allow licenses that limit corporate leech or restrict profiting of software without giving back.
@cyclohexane Yes, but… For many people, the appeal of open source has nothing to do with how easy it is for corporations. So any license that limit “corporate leech” is NOT FOSS because FOSS is about having no such limits. At the same time FOSS doesn’t say you can’t charge money, because FOSS is NOT about restricting profit.
I am pretty sure that if you ask most open source developers if they are happy about corporations profitting off their software without giving back, they would say no.
No, there isn’t and there won’t be any since what your saying is absolutely against FOSS values. You are in non-commercial/commercial license territory, give a look at winrar’s/unity’s and the like, gpl is not for you.
Could you elaborate how it is against foss values to keep people from being exploited?
“Forcing donations” is just a fancy way of saying “charging licensing fees”.
Nope. I want people to share their profit made from foss, thats it. Licensing fees are applicable to anyone and thats not what I‘m saying.
If you want a share of their profit, how much is enough? Would it be a pay-what-you-want model, without any restrictions or how’d you define the minimum amount to stop them from donating 1$? A rate based on profits would be pretty much the same as charging a license fee based on a companies worth.
I get why you want to force donations, but at the same time restrictions like that aren’t compatible with the FOSS freedoms. Like others said, dual-licensing or a source-available license is probably the closest you’ll get. It’s not a license I prefer, but it’s okay. For example I’d rather have a non-compete clause for two years than something being proprietary for eternity.
restrictions like that aren’t compatible with the FOSS freedoms
They are.
FOSS freedoms are about what you’re allowed to do with the code, not about providing those privieges for free (as in: gratis) to everyone.
It’s whether the freedoms are attainable at all; in proprietary software, the freedoms are not attainable, no matter how much you pay for it. Paying for the privilege of being granted those freedoms does not stand in direct conflict with FOSS IMV as long as it is reasonably possible to attain them.Where it gets complex is transitive freedoms. If I sell you my FOSS program and grant you all the freedoms that includes the freedom to grant those freedoms to others. Such “licensing proxies” are impossible to forbid without limiting essential freedoms of FOSS.
One possible method that sprung to my mind is to only allow granting the rights on modified copies (“modification” meaning original work atop of the licensed work) or even just the modifications themselves. This would technically restrict an essential freedom but I don’t consider those to be set in stone either.
It would be extremely difficult to implement this in a manner that actually makes the freedoms attainable and there are tons of complexities in this that I’ve glossed over but I don’t see a licensing model that requires monetary payment in exchange for the freedoms as fundamentally wrong or incompatible with the spirit of F(L)OSS.
It’s clearly a license fee. I don’t see how a license fee stands in conflict with FOSS though. FOSS is Free as in freedom, not free as in gratis.
The godfather of all FLOSS licenses himself (GPL) contains explicit terms to allow license fees too.
The freedom in Foss is freedom to redistribute (under the same license).
Is the the distributor or the og developer getting the licensing fees? Neither makes any sense to me.
That’s the hard part: Who has claims to how much of the license fees. That’s an extremely tough question to answer because it necessitates quantification of code contributions which is far from a solved problem.
Another user, toothbrush, has already posted a link to the 4 freedoms, I’d recommend reading that entire page for a most thorough explanation.
But basically your plan goes against three of them (assuming you’re going to release the source code, if you don’t your not granting any of them). Freedom 0 says you can use the software however you like, for any reason including for profit. You can charge the users but once you give them the (Free) software it’s completely theirs. Freedoms 2 and 3 state they can redistribute copies or distribute their modified version in any way they want provided that the give their users the same freedoms they were given.
I still dont see how this breaks any of these. They get the source code and they get to sell it (or whatever), they can change it however they see fit. They still have to provide fair upstream financial kickback imo.
They still have to provide fair upstream financial kickback imo
Then it’s not FOSS. I don’t see how it’s very different from Unity (for example) licensing model. So maybe a license like that can have a place, but not in the FOSS space and it will be definitely not compatible with any gpl.
Unity is insane, asking for money per download, leading to completely lopsided situations where you get ruined if you have too many users for free.
And thanks for your opinion. My opinion is that this is what foss needs and its very much foss. The foss principles I read clearly state free as in freedom, not free beer. Putting in an elaborate payment scheme that benefits small companies and individuals and makes large companies pay their share to help counter the thankless grind of foss development is totally in line with the principles imo.
Your opinion is at odds with the rest of the FOSS community though, and always will be. You can license your software however you feel fit for your project, but don’t expect to get any traction from the Libre community when you do.
“Free as in Freedom” means a lot to people. Restrict that freedom and you’re out.
I see you quoting “Free as in Freedom” but you seem to imply that FOSS also means “Free as in gratis”. That is not true. FOSS does not grant you the freedom of receiving everything for free (gratis).
A fee for comercial use or corporate users sounds like “discrimination against fields of endeavor” to me.
I think it perfectly aligns with the freedom 2 “redistribute to help your neighbor”. It you dont make money with it, you dont have to pay anything, if you do, you should give back, simple as that.
Technically those wouldn’t be freedom licenses because it applies restrictions based on use and scale and profits. Such a license would be incompatible with open-source licenses and it turns it more into a source-available license. It’s basically a “free for personal use” license.
This is why Elastic, MongoDB, and recently Redis are changing their licenses, to stop big companies freeloading on them for profit without contributing upstream.
Whether this is okay is a matter of opinion and there’s good arguments going both ways.
Also, just as an example of how your license could be problematic: lets say AWS uses XZ compression internally for their S3 object storage service: 1% of monthly revenue would likely be millions if not billions. What does the XZ project do with this much money, and who gets it? All the contributors based on total lines of code attributed to them? What about those who disappeared or whose identity beyond their screen name is unknown? What about downstream sellers? If I sell an Ubuntu ISO on a DVD, do I now need to calculate how much I owe every project in Ubuntu?
Also of course it would automatically be incompatible with the GPL and even MIT/BSD licenses. So now if someone wants to use your software, it also can’t be GPL or any other open-source licenses.
It’s basically a “free for personal use” license.
Not sure I 100% agree on that.
If there was a license that i.e. required a certain percentage of all revenue that can be attributed to the usage of the software, a for-profit company could utilise it without paying a cent if they used it without generating revenue with it.
Fauxpen source licenses such as this are the answer to the wrong question.
“Other people making money with my stuff” was never a problem in the software-freedom community. Whether this means “selling my stuff” or “using my stuff in a commercial setting” (“commercial use” restrictions are confusing in this way). In the free-software world we just accept that our work belongs to the community and the community can use it in ways we don’t approve of.
(Edit: Likewise, it has never been an issue to sell copies of free software, although I should point out the very nature of software freedom makes it more difficult to guarantee a revenue stream in this way)
Rather, this is a symptom of the proprietary software world’s reaction to free software and co-option of it (in the form of the open source movement). Tom Preston-Werner, founder of GitHub, opined that proprietary software companies should open source almost everything - “almost everything” being anything that does not “represent business value.” In other words, open source cost centers but keep profit centers proprietary. Ideally, these companies would cooperate on widely used components (and some do!), but practically they spend as little as possible because capitalism. This is also why we see so many projects turning fauxpen source lately; these companies imagined they were developing cost centers and then realized they could be profit centers instead.
What was (and still is) a problem is people making proprietary derivatives of free software, and copyleft is the solution to that. If you want to extract license fees from proprietary software developers you can dual-license under a strong copyleft like (A)GPL for the free software community and sell proprietary licenses. Believe it or not, Stallman explicitly does not object to this - mainly because, if selling GPL exceptions to enable proprietary development is wrong, then releasing under a permissive license must also be wrong because that also enables proprietary development.
I think this has been the best explanation together with the least condescending attitude in this whole thread. Thank you very much for making this easily understandable. I feel understood and can now grasp this a lot better.
If more people were like you, this world would be a much better place. You have my deepest respect.
Have a nice day.
That’s not FOSS. All you’ll do is guarantee that no one will contribute to your project and will just wait for someone else to make their own FOSS version, or encourage corporations to write their own version in-house.
I think we’re far from solutions to ensuring money from FOSS goes to contributors, but moving to licenses that enforce it at the expense of the projects themselves is naïve at best
By now I get that FOSS mostly implies free work for corporations. I‘ll just go with agpl to ensure they get nothing from my work.
Sure. The point being though that companies will explicitly avoid projects that expect payment except for very specific circumstances.
And, as much as corporations get the work for “free”, so do other free software projects who will also explicitly avoid anything that adds further costs to their own work.
If you’re that afraid of someone getting your software for free then you might as well make your project proprietary because you’re misunderstanding, fundamentally, how FOSS works.
I use GQIS and OSM professionally. My company also contributes to both projects. You WANT companies to adopt free software because they’ll put resources into improving it, which improves it for everyone.
Are they doing it to make money? Yep.
But it’s good for the product and every user of the product. It allows hobbysts and individual users to benefit from corporate resources without ever giving the corporations money or data.
I get it. My point was that profitseeking and charity dont mix well imo.
Open Source software isn’t charity. It’s a group effort that anyone can use.
I want to say that all this backdoor incident (s, not the first and certainly not the last) only shows how well the FOSS model works. Not only for catching it promptly before it even was released, but these attacks which require a good amount of skill and time, and therefore probably money, demonstrate that some bad actors are fearful of FOSS. Also I want to point that voluntary FOSS contributors are not exploited even if some big corp uses their software without paying anything, as long as they respect the freedoms they have to give to their users. Also many (maybe most idrk) contributions to FOSS aren’t made by volunteers, but through foundations/donations models paid professionals or companies putting developer time to them (I suspect this could be the case here with the guy from Microsoft that caught it).
I agree that it shows that the model works. It also shows where it can be improved. Markedly by paying the initial maintainer so they would have been able to make this their only job if they so chose (which would be no problem I assume if companies had to pay 1% of revenue in total to all FOSS they use and which take donations).
@haui_lemmy Look, I think we all agree that the maintainer financing needs to be improved, but what you are suggesting is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You would remove the whole “F” of the “FOSS” by adding restrictions on the freedoms. So we just need to keep looking, this is not it.
I will. Thanks for the hard but constructive feedback. 99% better than most reactions I got with posting an idea to help people.
You may be looking for the Big Time Public Licence: http://bigtimelicense.com/
This is pretty cool. I’ve got a couple repos that Microsoft uses for VS Code. I switched one of them to GPLv3, but maybe I’ll switch the other to this license.
Thats pretty good! I havent found anything of the source code being available but I am in a hurry so I skimmed through it fast.
Even proprietary software can be “open source”, you just wouldn’t have any freedom to use that code without paying.
Man, lemmy will just let anyone moderate.
Now I get it. OP wants to turn FOSS into a Ponzie scheme: https://lemmy.giftedmc.com/comment/768869
Reminds me of this one : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beerware and the fact that some projects have dual licensing like https://www.qt.io/licensing/open-source-lgpl-obligations Not what you are asking for but I can imagine that a project can make commercial companies pay for the usage of the source code and have it free to use for non commercial purposes.
Dual licensing seems to be a good idea. Although I’d like something like “it’s agpl but making revenue means you pay 1%”
Yeah its called an End User License Agreement.
If you pull this shit, nobody will use your application. And don’t pull that double dip like Redis is doing, all you’re doing is dooming your project.
As you can see from upvotes, the demand for fair treatment of developers by financial benefactors is there.
But since 90% of folks here dont get the issue and rather troll dan dogpile on someone instead of discussing possibilities, I will just stay with agpl to make it impossible for companies to use my stuff.
I wanted to go a different route but the scorched earth solution is okay too.
Don’t confuse Lemmy upvotes with Reddit agreement or Facebook likes. As often as not, upvotes here just mean “You gotta see this!”
I definitely understand that paying OSS developers is a growing concern, and if not addressed, a lot of software will go back to being proprietary. The Redis/Terraform double dip is the solution they want, but it just means PlaceholderDB and OpenTofu have to pick up the pieces.
That I can agree with. One reason why this will happen is because people are unwilling to see that solutions need openness. Being able to disagree without shitting on someone seems to be a rare skill in the IT community as a whole.
Look at the thousands of reports of people who wanted solutions for their problems and asked them online just to get dogpiled on and laughed out of the room.
I have a cynical joy in thinking that everything will go to shit because of these disgusting creatures.
All it takes is for people to say „I disagree“ without calling the other person an idiot for ten seconds.
Isn’t QT’s dual licence policy basically this?
Thanks for mentioning it. I searched for it but I cant find the clause you’re referring to. Feel free to provide a source.
That’s because “Dual License” means there are two licenses. Anyone can use it under the terms of the LGPL. If a company doesn’t want to abide by those terms, they can pay them not to by buying one of the commercial licenses
