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Some startups going 'fair source' to avoid the pitfalls of open source licensing

18 pointsposted 4 hours ago

6 Comments

OutOfHere

an hour ago

These companies take software usage and contributions for granted. "Fair source" software will lose out in usage and in contributions to open source software. It's a vain attempt at getting contributions without giving back. They might as well stop the pretense and keep it private. As I see it, if your startup's business model relies on your core code being proprietary, you don't have a business model.

mu53

40 minutes ago

Permissive licenses give mega-corps (AWS,GCP,Azure) the ability to use software projects without contributing to it. This mechanic in the market is going to dramatically shorten the runway for open source projects turning into mature companies like redis and elasticsearch. Once they hit a certain marketshare, cloud companies can take away one of the primary revenue streams large enough to support teams of developers improving the project. I know big corps contribute developer time to projects, but it doesn't hurt to have more competition.

This will lead to more market consolidation and less innovation in the cloud space. Taking advantage of licensing to stifle companies has turned out great for the mobile phone landscape. I love having essentially two choices for a phone.

Open source is amazing, but this is one of the weaknesses that have been exploited in recent years that medium sized and newer companies are combating with server-side public license. Linux is not just kernel, but its backed by a foundation that can protect it's revenue streams with GPL licensing.

RecycledEle

5 minutes ago

One look at the guy's pic, and the look on his face tells me he is a professional con-artist.

jacoblambda

2 hours ago

I feel like fair source exists as a concept mainly because of fearmongering about free software and copyleft licenses. There is little reason projects can't dual license a copyleft license like the GPLv3 or AGPLv3 with a proprietary license.

The problem clearly isn't that the source is available but rather that companies don't feel like they can monetize their products in an open source ecosystem.

However frustratingly these same companies avoid copyleft licenses that would give them that exact ability to effectively monetize (via a dual license) without unduly limiting users rights to use the main version of the product.

rdtsc

23 minutes ago

That’s what I think as well. They are beating around the bush, everyone inventing their own license types. If I see some unknown license, I will assume it’s a trap and stay away. I don’t have lawyers on retainer to interpret new license types for me.

GPL and AGPL are already there, I know what they are and the intention is clear. And like you said, if they want to dual license it, they still can.

brainless

2 hours ago

I think there is a whole world between going all in on an open source license and allowing funded companies to simply competing with you vs not releasing source at all.

We need a "fair source", or whatever we call it. We need a way for people to contribute, many ideas to gain a community of contributors, without a funded agent to simply focus on how to monetize the software.

Open source or "fair source" are all distribution models. For people to see, try, adapt and maybe even contribute to your software ideas. It enables everyone to build and share. And if someone wants to compete with the stated software, they can buy a license. That is a fair business model, IMHO.