Re:The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
by mindcrime on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @12:39PM
(#17819951)
There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code.
Right. And if they would just call it that and not try to make it sound like it's "sorta / kinda Apache licensed" then I wouldn't really care. But it's like people using this clause want to benefit from the general perception of open-ness and the wide acceptance of the ALv2, while not actually being Open Source. It's just dishonest.
Re:The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
by kazinator on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @03:47PM
(#17821486)
You are right; if you're going to radically change a license by adding a free-for-noncommercial-use type clause, you should change the name, and don't maintain even the slightest insinuations that it's related to the original license. Textually it may be, but legally it's a completely different beast.
Re:The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source
by int_19h on Wednesday August 22, 2018 @06:37PM
(#17822869)
> There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code.
The problem is the definition of "commercial use" here, which is broader than most proprietary licenses, since it includes e.g. consulting.
There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial" or "freemium" with source code.
It's a good thing for customers and would-be customers. Customers can track down bugs and security flaws if they have access to the code. Would-be customers can evaluate the product based not only performance of the executables but code quality.
It is a "better proprietary", in other words.