[ThenAsNow]

> If you want people to pay then be paid software.

It seems like source available type licenses (e.g., Kyle Mitchell's Big Time license: https://bigtimelicense.com/ ) are a reasonable middle ground for being paid software without giving up many of the benefits of open source.

I'm hoping there's a notable uptick in adoption of licenses like these.

[josephcsible]

They're not reasonable at all. They deceive users and leach off of the good name of open source while preventing any actual open source projects from incorporating any of their code. I'm hoping there's a notable drop in adoption of licenses like them.

[Someone]

>> It seems like source available type licenses (e.g., Kyle Mitchell's Big Time license: https://bigtimelicense.com/ ) are a reasonable middle ground for being paid software without giving up many of the benefits of open source

> They're not reasonable at all. They deceive users and leach off of the good name of open source

I disagree. Source available licenses are reasonable, but not “a middle ground for being paid software without giving up many of the benefits of open source”.

Reading the https://bigtimelicense.com/ and https://bigtimelicense.com/versions/2.0.1, though, I don’t think that’s a source available license. It doesn’t mention source code at all.

It’s a license that allows small entities to use a binary for free, and promises larger companies to give “fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms” (I guess that’s in the license to ‘guarantee’ smaller companies they will be able to get such a license and that they will be able to afford it. IANAL, but I think the “nondiscriminatory” guarantees the former, but “fair and reasonable” doesn’t fully guarantee the latter)

“Source available” is more or less the reverse: it guarantees you can view the source, but doesn’t necessarily give you the right to modify or even compile it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software)

[ThenAsNow]

We probably need better, consistent terminology for different types of "not all the freedoms of open source but not proprietary secret source either", the way "open source" means something very specific.

The Wikipedia page you cited opens with "Source-available software is software released through a source code distribution model that includes arrangements where the source can be viewed, and in some cases modified, but without necessarily meeting the criteria to be called open-source."

So by this definition, "source available" is a superset of FOSS, but not specific enough to imply what the user can and can't do with the source code. It makes sense to name classes of license within the "source available" umbrella that spell out what freedoms are restricted/preserved.

The Big Time license is not specific as to whether the covered software is provided in source or binary form, and is easily applied to source code distributions. Probably the reason I associated this license with "source available" is the primary license author is a prominent U.S. lawyer involved with open source and I'm pretty confident it is written to be applicable to source code even if it is not explicit about it. Similarly, the BSD license doesn't require that the license be attached to source code - one could release binary-only software under the BSD license.

[ThenAsNow]

> They deceive users and leach off of the good name of open source

How do they do that if they don't call themselves open source (or "Open Source (TM)" if you prefer) in the first place?

Regardless, something needs to be done about the sustainability gap in open source other than writing messages like what's linked. The inability of your project to incorporate someone else's code shouldn't consign the rest of us to not have the benefits of access to that someone else's code outside of a proprietary binary.

[josephcsible]

> How do they do that if they don't call themselves open source (or "Open Source (TM)" if you prefer) in the first place?

First of all, some of them DO call themselves that even though they unambiguously aren't. And even for the ones that don't, they usually try to sound as similar as possible to it and downplay the differences.

> Regardless, something needs to be done about the sustainability gap in open source other than writing messages like what's linked.

That feels like the politician's fallacy. We need to do something, and switching to fauxpen source is something, but that doesn't mean we need to switch to fauxpen source.

> The inability of your project to incorporate someone else's code shouldn't consign the rest of us to not have the benefits of access to that someone else's code outside of a proprietary binary.

It's not just one project that can't. If a given bit of code isn't open source, then NO open source projects can incorporate it.

[ThenAsNow]

> First of all, some of them DO call themselves that even though they unambiguously aren't. And even for the ones that don't, they usually try to sound as similar as possible to it and downplay the differences.

There was understandably uproar about things like the "Commons Clause" and similar attempts to retrofit obligations to pay onto open source licenses. I have no disagreement with rejecting these as misrepresentations of open source. But if no such misrepresentation takes place, this line of objection is bogus. I gave an example of one license that does not misrepresent itself in such a way. I'm sure there are others and if not, attempts should perhaps be made to develop others, just as we have multiple open source licenses available.

>> Regardless, something needs to be done about the sustainability gap in open source other than writing messages like what's linked.

> That feels like the politician's fallacy. We need to do something, and switching to fauxpen source is something, but that doesn't mean we need to switch to fauxpen source.

I regret my phrasing, "something needs to be done," which does indeed sound like a politician. So let me rephrase. There is an axis, with proprietary secret source code and FOSS anchoring the ends. This axis is a good proxy for monetizability, but the axis itself is about freedom. With secret source, no user gets any benefit from the source. Source available, is, to me, a genuinely constructive attempt to address the need for developers to be compensated, while still giving users many of the benefits of access to the source.

I don't think source available is going to be something we "switch to" so much as, if some developers need income from the code they put out there, this is a far more user-centric option than telling everyone to download binaries for platforms they may or may not use and submit themselves to intrusive license checks. If you want to get a job at a RedHat or Collabora or try to have your employer cover your open source time instead, more power to you, source available certainly doesn't stand in the way of that.

> It's not just one project that can't. If a given bit of code isn't open source, then NO open source projects can incorporate it.

Open source projects have no hope of incorporating secret source software either. At least with source available, users can look at the code, make changes, build it themselves, and if they fit whatever "gratis" criteria are a part of the license, they don't have to pay either.

[Schnitz]

They are very reasonable and they solve a real problem. A big corp won’t use a library from a tiny 1-5 person shop if when they get acquired or go under the library dies and all they ever got was binaries. A source available license solves this because the big corp knows they can maintain the library themselves in that case.

[josephcsible]

Doesn't real Open Source solve that problem just as well?