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by michaelmrose 2594 days ago
Android especially the google variants are pretty open and unlocked. The librem phone is due in Q3 of this year.

If you crowd fund development instead of try to sell consulting or a premium version then Amazon can't pull the rug out from under you by offering hosting and support because you aren't in that business. You may never have an IPO or make a <doctor evil>billion dollars</doctor evil> but if as the song says we "Try just a little bit harder" We may be able to offer sustainable income from making free software.

The common clause licenses isn't a "hybrid" its a proprietary software license. Calling it a hybrid is like saying a BLT without the bacon, lettuce, or tomato is a sandwich. It's not a solution its giving up.

1 comments

> The common clause licenses isn't a "hybrid" its a proprietary software license. Calling it a hybrid is like saying a BLT without the bacon, lettuce, or tomato is a sandwich. It's not a solution its giving up.

Well, it's more like tiramisu with chocolate instead of coffee. In the end, as a user, I would prefer a convenient and polished product (that I can't sell) to worse product that respects some other people's definition of supposedly my freedoms.

Agree that crowd funding is another way, yes. Probably works for very few projects (font awesome comes to mind) though.

Why would a license that discourages any community participation result in a more polished experience?

Got any examples?

Why do you think it discourages any community participation?

It does put some restrictions regarding the license for modifications (it must be permissive, or CLA needs to be signed), but anyone can fork, maintain or share their copy. They just can't make money by selling it, without also paying to original authors. Which seems fair to me.

Should contributors also be somehow compensated? Bigger ones, absolutely. How? I have no idea, but there's at least some chance of that happening with Commons Clause, while with FOSS there is none.

As for examples... From Commons Clause? No. But since Redis Labs changed the license for their modules I'm not aware of any projects using it. Unfortunately.

There are plenty examples in closed source space though... Windows, MacOS, Photoshop, Illustrator, Trello, GitHub.

There is interest in contributing to open source projects fake open source not so much.