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by Someone
1079 days ago
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>> 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) |
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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.