Re:N8n.io – Workflow automation alternative to Zapier
by certera on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @03:04PM
(#21195864)
If it dies, there can be a point where the maintainer can re-license under more open terms, no? Until that point, the work and contributions are ensured to help sustain the creator.
I'm planning on releasing my project under similar terms. I'm not particularly interested in community contributions, but rather for there to be trust in ensuring privacy and security. Sometimes, there isn't a one-size-fits-all with the available OSI licenses and I appreciate what op has done to do his best to find what works well for him and the community.
Re:N8n.io – Workflow automation alternative to Zapier
by ApolloFortyNine on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @04:28PM
(#21196857)
It's less a community in that case than potential customers. Your creating a product, which is fine, but words like 'open source' and 'community' are quite misleading.
Re:N8n.io – Workflow automation alternative to Zapier
by smashthepants on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @07:25PM
(#21198394)
The words 'community' and 'customers' are not mutually exclusive and using the word community to refer to your customers is not misleading in the slightest...
It's not so much that somebody can make money with it. It's that you, the project maintainer, will be reaping all the monetary benefits for yourself. With open source software theoretically anyone can benefit. If you don't like what the maintainer is doing, you can fork it. In this case, though I believe the commons clause does allow you to fork it, you would still be the one reaping any monetary benefits from the fork.
In my opinion the biggest issue with the commons clause is it no longer makes logical sense to fork the project. If the project dies because you couldn't make any money off it, and you don't go back and relicense your work, the code is practically dead as an 'open source' project. Well, that and that the consulting clause seems to be just sitting there waiting for a major court case to decide what it truly means (even the lawyer who led drafting the clause admitted as such [1]).
[1] https://github.com/fossas/commons-clause/issues/4#issuecomme...