The license is actually pretty restrictive: you can only use this if you own a small company or work for government / non-profit.

Most average human's (including myself) can't use the source code in any way:

> You may use the software under this license only if (1) your company has less than 1 million USD (2024) total revenue in the prior tax year, and less than 10 million USD (2024) GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), or (2) you are a non-profit organization or government entity.

The way it's been phrased, it seems like if you want to use the code to run a small webshop for some goods, you can use it, but if you're actively trying to run a resale platform, that's when you get in trouble.

I don't think not being open source is that big of a deal in this situation, they aren't the only player in this space anyway. (Woocommerce to my knowledge still dominates the "small business webshop" market and probably always will for as long as the typical shared webhost webstack is still an AMP stack.)

It's risky if you have any chance of ever crossing $1M in company revenue because the license will terminate as soon as you reach that and you'll have to rewrite everything.

> The licensor grants you a copyright license for the software to do everything you might do with the software that would otherwise infringe the licensor's copyright, but only as long as you meet all the conditions below.

> You may use the software under this license only if (1) your company has less than 1 million USD (2024) total revenue in the prior tax year, and less than 10 million USD (2024) GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), or (2) you are a non-profit organization or government entity.

To be fair, getting a platform for free that can potentially bring you to $1M is a very good deal, I'm quite sure you ll figure out a strategy before you get to $1M, and perhaps even get a good deal on the license from them. However I do think they should've been more upfront about the licensing.

1M revenue isn't that high a bar to clear in retail, just takes one popular/meme product. After all the COGS/fixed costs are tallied up, that could leave you with significantly less with which to contemplate custom development or platform changes.

I'm sure if you're lucky to get near 1 million in revenue you can reach out and pay for a license.

You are not required to rewrite everything if you exceed $1million in annual revenue. You are required to get a commercial license from them, which costs money.

That's not the same thing. And quite frankly, if you're making over $1 million in annual revenue you should be able to afford the license fee for the most important part of your company.

There's no guarantee that a commercial license will be available at a reasonable fee, or available at all. You'll have nothing to negotiate with because the alternative is to rewrite or shut down immediately.

Isn't that true of anything?

At renewal software provider X might hike license fees for Y to an unreasonable fee, or decide you're not worth the time at all.

I assume you can get a commercial license at any point, not only after you reach X revenue too?

It's true for proprietary software yes. The title of this post was "Gumroad is open source" (which has now been fixed).

Must be awesome to use this software in a country that does not use the US Dollar as its currency :)

let me tell you about currency exchange rates...

License only mentions USD. So as far as you have no USD revenue, you are fine.

The intepretation would be done by a court. Not sure they would agree that the intention was to allow unlimited revenue in other currencies.

Exactly :) Good luck non-US companies! :)

LMAO. Everybody keep quiet..... Don't let them change their license.

And even if they change their license , we need to fork this with this specific license right now!!

Going to fork it right now

That's not how it works, of course.

It's your FX-converted revenue, meaning, whatever currency you use converted to USD. The license doesn't bother to state this because they assume basic common sense on the part of the licensee.

If that's not enough, they have the backing of several decades of industry practice[1] and several centuries of law.

[1] For example, take a look at the Steam and Epic creator agreements, which also use USD for financial thresholds even though their stores operate in dozens of countries and accept dozens of currencies.

They are probably also trying to get free contributions to the codebase. Gumroad is infamous for underpaying and using cheap labor where possible.

> Gumroad is infamous for underpaying and using cheap labor where possible.

What? Where do you get this from? It's quite the opposite.

> The license is actually pretty restrictive: you can only use this if you own a small company or work for government / non-profit.

I wonder if this can be worked around by setting up an OpenAI-style non-profit arm to use Gumroad.

So true. A very misleading title. This license is far away of any approved OSI or FSF Foss license. Gumroad is a great service, the value is imho not in the software. But in the execution of it’s mission and the very simple way to lower the bar to sell digital goods without upfront costs.

It's open source as the average person would understand it. This source available stuff is just confusing and the average person would not understand it. What matters is people understand what people are saying and it's quite clear to nearly everyone except pedantic people that you can now go and fetch the Gumroad code and modify, run, etc. "Source available" does not convey that which means using it results in a failure to properly communicate to the average person.

This gatekeeping of what is and is not open source is harmful to the industry. No random organisation defines what the phrase means, what the phrase open source means is defined by what people understand it to be. That's how word definitions happen. And open source phrase is used by a lot more than just tech folk.

And the definition of "open source" as per Oxford Dictionary is "denoting software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified." Dictionaries outrank everything else when it comes what something means.

The thing is, HN is a technical audience, not an average person in this regard.

People here know the difference or are easily able to understand it if they haven't been confronted with it.

>People here know the difference or are easily able to understand it if they haven't been confronted with it.

No. They're trying to force a definition of open-source that does not exist to make it FOSS because FOSS people want everything to be FOSS so try to pressure people into it.

The definition is defined by dictionaries and it's different from what is said on here. Quite simply, they're wrong. They want it to mean one thing however the definition of the word by Oxford and Webster applies to what is done in that repo. It is open-source by the definition of the word by people who define and clarify words and not by FOSS devs who want everything to be FOSS. It is open-source! And the fact, people on here don't know that shows people on here don't know the difference.

Says it is open source but not FOSS is just silly. You know what the OSS part of FOSS stands for right?

We all know the difference and the difference here is enormous.

>It is open-source!

No, it's not. Please read number 5, it might enlighten you to what people colloquially consider open source, which didn't have a dictionary definition until technical people started using this definition: https://opensource.org/osd

>And the fact, people on here don't know that shows people on here don't know the difference.

..What? Do you know what OSS vs FOSS is?

OSD is god and gets to prescribe what is and is not open source? Says who?

This doesn't match the Webster's definition either. If your response to that is "there are no gods anyways" then you've earned yourself a chuckle.

The whole idea is that we need a definition that everyone agrees With. The OSD is what the software community at large agreed, so any licences that claim to be open-source are compared to that.

People who develop software have to understand what "open source" means (technically, not just some sloppy interpretation), because using a non-open-source package in an otherwise open source project can contaminate the whole thing. License violations can pose high risks, both financial and reputation losses.

Because of that, a lot of effort goes into helping make sure that software stacks are using consistent licenses. There's a whole industry of standards, audit processes, software and companies to help with this; for example, see:

https://licensehawk.com/software-license-compliance-audits/

https://spdx.org/licenses/

https://www.flexera.com/products/flexnet-manager

People who develop software have to understand the difference between FOSS and Open-Source. We already have a term for what you want to describe as open-source, it's called FOSS.

Words have meanings they're collected and recorded in dictionaries, these are the source of truth for the definition of words. It's important that we have them so we can all talk and know what we mean. This is at the very core of languages.

This open source has to be FOSS is some straight-up bullshit by people who spend all their time in the FOSS community.

By every definition other than the FOSS community, this is open source. That is a fact.

Btw: FOSS means Free and Open Source Software. Even the FOSS community fundamentally says that open source does not neet to be free.

> Dictionaries outrank everything else when it comes what something means.

TFA's license doesn't meet the definition you posted. It restricts who can use/redistribute/modify the software.

> open source as the average person would understand it ... and it's quite clear to nearly everyone except pedantic people that you can now go and fetch the Gumroad code and modify, run, etc.

The average person would also assume that "open source" means "I can legally use this for my business", especially given that Gumroad is a tool that only makes sense if you're running some kind of business.

Unfortunately, this is true here only with a very large asterisk that says "as long as you never make more than $1 million in revenue". Anyone who attempts to treat this software as Open Source in the way they would treat, say, Postgres, will find that the instant they cross the $1 million threshold they have to rebuild their entire e-commerce setup or be in violation of copyright.

For some people maybe $1 million in revenue (not profits, revenue) is legitimately not possible and not worth worrying about. But for others it is, and that's why definitions matter.

(There's also the fact that, intentionally or unintentionally, the license assumes that you either have a business with some amount of revenue or are a government entity or nonprofit. Which means technically a strict reading of the license would suggest running the software without a business is not authorized.)

> Dictionaries outrank everything else when it comes what something means.

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.

As is the whole field of linguistics, as you will learn in the very first lecture in such a program. If the grammar rules you learned in school disagree with (any!) native speaker, the rules are wrong.

There should be a middleground between "The dictionary is law" and "Any native speaker can redefine a language".

At the very least the direct consequence of

>If the grammar rules you learned in school disagree with (any!) native speaker, the rules are wrong.

is that every language has as many dialects as speakers.

Imo dictionaries are descriptive rather than prescriptive not because it is impossible to have prescriptive definitions or grammar, it is just that dictionaries do not even try; usually they just list common usage of words.

> is that every language has as many dialects as speakers.

This is actually treated as linguistic fact, although we call them "idiolects" when we're talking about that level of granularity.

> not because it is impossible to have prescriptive definitions or grammar, it is just that dictionaries do not even try

They don't try because the field of linguistics has arrived at the conclusion that the role of the linguist is to document what is, not to prescribe what should be. They arrived at that conclusion by studying languages and discovering that they are far, far more messy than prescriptivists had hitherto believed.

The only role that prescriptivism has these days among serious academics is an acknowledgement that while all forms of language are well-structured according to well-defined grammatical rules, cultures assign value judgements to certain forms of speech and so it's valuable to learn your culture's value judgements and learn to speak and write in a way that earns you credibility in your culture.

But even this looks very different than the prescriptivism of old, because what forms of speech and writing get creds vary dramatically from generation to generation, place to place, and even context to context. Learning the grammatical rules taught in traditional schools will not help you fit in on modern social media.

But even knowing all of this, prescriptivism was beaten into many of us growing up, so some internal cringe is unavoidable.

For ex still cringe at people saying “anyways,” even though I know it’s a losing and pointless battle.

Not sure what the biggest driver is - being shamed while growing up, or just latent pedantry.

I have no issue with the linguists deciding that their discipline is descriptive rather than normative. Most scientific endeavours are.

My issue is with the claim that there is no sense in which a native speaker can make a grammar error. Maybe we should call them "idiolect incongrueces" I do not care.

In my language there is a verb tense that is often misused, I often misuse it and I can hear the resulting sentence I say feel wrong. That is a grammar mistake the same way missing a note in a song is a mistake.

If linguists want to work towards reducing the stigma issues of standardized grammars I commend them and wish them good luck. But that is different from saying that grammar mistake do no exist.

> If the grammar rules you learned in school disagree with (any!) native speaker, the rules are wrong.

I understand the sentiment of "the language is defined by its speakers", but this statement seems a bit overblown. According to that logic, it is literally impossible for someone to be incorrect about the meaning of a word.

> it is literally impossible for someone to be incorrect about the meaning of a word.

Yeah, it's important to frame it in terms of idiolects and dialects—any given speaker has an idiolect, and that idiolect is worth describing and documenting uncritically. But that speaker also benefits from speaking a shared dialect with other speakers, and it's valuable for that speaker to be on the same page with other speakers of their dialect about definitions.

I think what OP is getting at is that it's not the role of linguistics to assign a value judgement to a given usage—there are merely benefits that speakers can derive from better understanding the dialects that they use in daily life.

This actually strikes at the heart of the disconnect between open source philosophy and common vernacular.

I've argued for years that "free" does NOT mean "free to use as long as you follow my restrictions". To me the only licenses that meet this criteria are the permissive ones such as MIT, BSD and friends where the only requirement is preservation of the copyright notice. The vast majority have limits of what you can do, or when you have to pay, or some other BS that just complicates everything and IMHO just reeks of "I'm manipulating the FOSS community so I can make a buck" or "I'm pretending to give this software away but actually have a laundry list of rules you have to live by". Basically the opposite of what "free" means!

Similarly, "open source" implies that I can do whatever I want, since it is "open". But most open source licenses - including this one - have restrictions and in many cases pretty strict ones that forbid use for many. This is not open at all.

Either give it away, or lock it up, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop with the hypocrisy, lying and wordplay so you can make a buck (or satisfy a religious tilt). If you want me to help you with your code then you gotta let me use it how I see fit!

And for the love of all things holy, quit calling restrictive licenses "free". This is a binary state, it is either free or non-free, and "you can only use this if you make less than X" or "only use this with other free software" or "if you make changes you have to share" are NOT FREE.

There. Thanks for reading. Stepping outside to yell at a cloud now. And get off my lawn.

> It's open source as the average person would understand it.

Factually, this is not true. Facts outrank everything else.

This is pedantry.

The source is open. It can be seen, edited, run yourself.

Just because the license isn’t what you expect doesn’t mean the source is not open.

This is not pedantry, this is adhering to the actual definition of open source that is generally accepted in our community:

https://opensource.org/osd

> Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code

No good deed goes unpunished around here.

I think it's more that bullshit is called when bullshit is seen.

This is just so hyperbolic? It's code for a project you can explore and learn from. License is not permissive? It's a friggin rails app - just look at the model or mechanism you are interested in copying, figure out the approach taken, and recreate that approach. Why is everyone in here with pitchforks?

It's not hyperbolic. We're in a profession that elevates each other via open source. Saying something that is open source when it's not is no different than snake oil salesmen selling whiskey elixirs in the 1800s as cure alls.

They are lying and need to be called out.

Hard disagree. In the real world, the source of this app is open and therefore it is open source. You guys are behaving like extremists.

Would you prefer nothing at all? Sounds like in this case everyone here is looking past the golden egg in front of you - a successful rails app you can explore and play with - and focusing entirely on the wrong thing.

You're acting as if there aren't already tens of thousands of actual open source projects that exist just fine, some even make enough money to support continued development.

Why are you acting like the alternative is to burn down the system, you realize that there are plenty of people, organizations, and businesses that make actual open source software right? Like today even.

it's not open source - this is clearly "source available." these are terms of art.

just because you can read the English literally and say "the source is open" doesn't mean you've proven anything.

> Why is everyone in here with pitchforks?

Personally, I get pissed when companies misuse "open source" because without open source, I probably wouldn't be a developer in the first place. Just call things what they are, and leave existing terminology alone. Defending "open source" is defending the opportunity for others who were in the same situation as myself in the past.

Otherwise we'll quickly see more of what already started today, companies calling things "open source" in their marketing material but "proprietary" in their legal agreements, and no one will be better off if that's accepted.

> Personally, I get pissed when companies misuse "open source" because without open source

In this instance, where did Gumroad claim that its code was open source?

In this case it seems like the person who submitted it to HN just used an incorrect title, so not that bad in the grand scheme of things.

My reply was more directed towards the "Why is everyone in here with pitchforks?" in a general sense, as it wouldn't have been the first time I read about someone not understanding why people who do "open source" would like the existing meaning to remain.

Are you talking about philipjoubert's good deed of linking the Gumroad source and informing HN that it is now source available (albeit misrepresenting its license out of ignorance or otherwise)? Or are you talking about Gumroad's good deed of making its source publicly available?

The "OSD" is not the actual definition of open source. The OSI has no special rights to the term open source (despite their failed attempt to trademark the term). The OSI did not coin the term, their founders did not coin the term, the term was in use to refer to non-commercial software with publicly posted source prior to the OSIs existence.

Open source is like any english term, its meaning is defined by its use, not by some special interest group.

The complaint about using open source to refer to non-commercial licenses absolutely is pedantry. But more than that, it's not even objectively correct pedantry. It, like most language, is subjective.

(Which isn't to say that I think this license complies with the common use of the term open source as actually used, but I disagree with your argument for why that's the case).

All true, but language changes. And today, open source in this context is universally understood to mean software released under a license complying with the OSD.

Free software doesn't have to mean "software released under the GPL, MIT, BSD, or other FSF-approved license". And yet, in this context, it universally does.

No it is not.

Opensource.org doesn't get to redefine what words mean to the rest of us. They should have chosen words that weren't already being used with common meanings if they wanted to be the say in what those words meant.

Feel free to make an industry friendly version of the organization then, otherwise it seems like a lot of devs are extremely passionate about open source not just in usage but a movement that literally allowed them to carve out careers from it.

> The source is open. It can be seen, edited, run yourself.

I can also take and eat food from the supermarket without paying. I just have to pay later in multiples, get jailed, or both. Or not.