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by jonaf 2418 days ago
New business model idea: write open source software with a license that requires, well, a license to _operate_. It's free in all the typical APL2 senses, except that you can't sell it "as a service" without signing, effectively, a "lease." Now, supposing the project gains sufficient popularity / community / traction, all you have to do is wait for Amazon to take note of the project and contact you for a lease. You ask for 30% and retire. And if they invent a competing project that is at all API-compatible, they have to prove in court that they haven't plagiarized any of your open source code; but, that wouldn't happen anyway, since by their own admission, they're not focused on writing software, they're focused on operating it.

Someone with experience/knowledge in this area tell me if I'm off my rocker. I know it sounds too simple. But why wouldn't this work?
3 comments
jakelazaroff 2418 days ago
Aren't you basically describing SSPL? That's MongoDB's license that does pretty much what you're describing, except it's not considered open source [1]. And in response, Amazon created an API-compatible alternative called DocumentDB [2]. There's also the Commons Clause [3], which I think Redis Labs uses to license its Redis satellite products.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/mongodb-open-source-server-sid...

[2] https://aws.amazon.com/documentdb/

[3] https://commonsclause.com/

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jonaf 2418 days ago
This looks like a great case-study. Basically, it seems that if the licensing isn't in Amazon's favor (take the OSS project, put it into operation, sell it as a service), then Amazon is likely to simply build their own implementation that is API-compatible. It remains unclear whether the ROI for this exists, especially for larger/more complex projects, but the precedent is very discouraging for my idea.
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pritambaral 2418 days ago
The problem is in how you define what "a service" is. Legally. See, for example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18301116
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dhd415 2418 days ago
FWIW, that sounds relatively similar to the licenses that Redis Labs, Mongo, and Elastic recently applied to their software. I have no problem with that, but judging from the discussions here on those licenses, lots of other people did.
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