Re:An update to the Timescale license
by dragonwriter on Friday September 25, 2020 @12:12PM
(#24591324)
> "source available" already has a long established meaning, and one that it far more restrictive than the TSL.
The established meaning is “any non-F/OSS licenses that nevertheless provides free access to source code, which may or may not also provide some usage rights”
TSL is exactly that.
There might be some utility to a name for a new subcategory of source available, but it's not meaningfully similar to open source since it remains, ultimately, a traditional, rent-protection proprietary license. The fact that current market conditions give a very particular rent-extracting opportunity that the vendor wants to protect and the vendor focussed rent protection where the most value is...is not unusual, even if the exact current valuable rent-extraction opportunity is different than it was even a few years ago.
The established meaning is “any non-F/OSS licenses that nevertheless provides free access to source code, which may or may not also provide some usage rights”
TSL is exactly that.
There might be some utility to a name for a new subcategory of source available, but it's not meaningfully similar to open source since it remains, ultimately, a traditional, rent-protection proprietary license. The fact that current market conditions give a very particular rent-extracting opportunity that the vendor wants to protect and the vendor focussed rent protection where the most value is...is not unusual, even if the exact current valuable rent-extraction opportunity is different than it was even a few years ago.