[Pannoniae]

Corporate entitlement about using open source (and demand support for it) is enormous. I would love if licences with usage restrictions were more popular, and the OSI wouldn't just say "that's not open source!!!". It would prevent these kinds of situations.

[mcpackieh]

The GNU AGPLv3 makes corporate lawyers seethe so hard, it may as well be a non-commercial license. But it isn't, and it satisfies both the OSI and the FSF.

Anyway, it's good for OSI and FSF to take a hardline stance here. If your priorities don't align with theirs, why should they change to satisfy you? Simply use the license you like, even if they don't approve of it. Why is that a problem for you? Why do you need these orgs to stamp their approval on your choice of license, when you obviously don't share their values in the first place?

[LexiMax]

> I would love if licences with usage restrictions were more popular, and the OSI wouldn't just say "that's not open source!!!".

I agree with you, but guess who pays the OSI's bills: https://opensource.org/sponsors/ For their corporate sponsors, not supporting usage restrictions is a feature, not a bug.

There's also a ton of dogma surrounding the open source and free software definitions where you'll get dog-piled for not conforming to these definitions. These definitions are often considered as holy writ and their adherents refuse to entertain if perhaps these definitions might need to be adjusted for the realities of 2023.

Even if you try to ignore them and coin your own terminology so as to not to conflict, open source and free software advocates will continue to try and control the narrative by insisting on their own language, which is designed to have negative connotations in their circles.

[mcpackieh]

> but guess who pays the OSI's bills: https://opensource.org/sponsors/ For their corporate sponsors, not supporting usage restrictions is a feature, not a bug.

Stallman and the FSF are hardly darlings of the corporate world, but they also consider the first and most important software freedom to be: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0)." This is something people in this space earnestly believe in, not something they're just being paid by corporations to espouse.

If you don't share these values, then that's your prerogative. Simply use another license and ignore people who complain about it; since they don't share your values you shouldn't care what they think.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms

[LexiMax]

> Stallman and the FSF are hardly darlings of the corporate world

I imagine the corporate world is very happy with the FSF, because they represent the most popular non-permissive licenses by a significant margin, and RMS's stewardship of the FSF in the era of GPLv3+ has been an enormous help in the rise of popularity of permissive licenses.

> This is something people in this space earnestly believe in, not something they're just being paid by corporations to espouse.

I'm not implying that its adherents are influenced by corporations, but that its adherents have seemingly taken its tenants as holy writ instead of critically re-examining them in the context of today's open source landscape.

[account42]

> I'm not implying that its adherents are influenced by corporations, but that its adherents have seemingly taken its tenants as holy writ instead of critically re-examining them in the context of today's open source landscape.

You can imply that all you want but that doesn't make it true. Once you allow the terms to be muddied by usage restrictions you agree with you will quickly find them also used for software with usage restrictions that you don't agree with and soon the terms will be entirely meaningless. The point of open source licenses is that they effectively put the software into the commons (which copyright on its own fails to do) and, in with copyleft licenses, to keep derivatives in the commons as well.

Non-commercial restrictions specifically don't just afect big corporations but anyone who accepts money vaguely related to their use of the software. Accept donations? Do related work for hire? Agree to fix an issue for your friend in exchange for a beer? Accept any kind of reward or sponsorship based on your status from work using the software? Better call you lawyer first to make sure the conditions allow it. More often than not, the answer is going to be "no way to tell until you get sued".

[Pannoniae]

Yeah, you've put it way better than I could ever have, thanks. I just massively dislike how they pretend the OSI has a trademark over the word "open source" (which they don't) and that they presume everyone wants to have their work be freely combinable with others.

If you use it, great, if you don't want to because you are afraid of the legal issues, no problem. It's massive entitlement to think that just because you released the source code, anyone should be granted the four freedoms to essentially do whatever with it. (Which includes the SaaS loophole as well....)

[account42]

If you don't want to grant the four basic freedoms, simply don't call your license open source. Stop trying to mooch off of the goodwill around open source software.

[amiga386]

> I would love if licences with usage restrictions were more popular,

I would not. Or rather, not if the "usage restrictions" were outwith the varying strengths of share-alike enforcement provided by the LGPL, GPL, AGPL.

Freedom for users to run software for any purpose is freedom 0, and Stallman sets out very eloquently why usage restrictions would not help: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed...

As per the warranty disclaimer, free software is given to you with no strings attached. It is boorish to demand free support and maintenance as well, when you've already been gifted the freedom to make any amendments you see fit. I don't think changing the license would make such boorish people go away.

[the8472]

I think most people don't want to be that anti-corporate. Otherwise they wouldn't use permissive licenses in the first place.

And there may be non-license options that are friendlier to open source than corporate. E.g. if someone has a non-trivial issue they must publish a reproducer.

[II2II]

I'm not sure how that will solve the problem. Chance are the software would still be used in business environments and you would still have people asking for support on behalf of their employer. I have heard stories a plenty of businesses doing that in the 80's, when support was typically offered for free, with pirated software. The only thing that reduced that type of shenanigans were paid support contracts. Your only real recourse is suing for license violations, and relatively few open source developers are going to have the means to do that against a medium business, never mind a major corporation.

[Pannoniae]

I just find it absurd how you are literally not allowed to restrict who uses your software and for what purpose.

[Plasmoid]

What are you talking about? You can restrict your software from being used for anything at all.

iTunes is famously prohibited from being in the making of nuclear weapons.

[Pannoniae]

Sorry, I was a bit unclear. I was talking about the fact that if you release your code as open source but want to restrict how it is used, people will brigade you and flame you for not providing the users all the OSI freedoms.

OSI doesn't have a trademark on the expression "open source"....

[Plasmoid]

Words mean things. If you say open source, people are going to expect that your license is going to follow the existing expectations set by OSI.

Think about this as setting expectations. You can avoid all the controversy by saying that your software has a generous 'source-available' license. People will know they don't get all the freedoms, and that might be ok, but people won't get upset that you misled them.

[Pannoniae]

Fair enough, you are entirely right. But wouldn't that draw a different complaint about "why isn't this open source then if you published the code anyway"? I don't have an example right now but I've seen several projects where it's been a huge source of controversy that they've made it source-available but didn't use any FOSS licence for it.

[yawaramin]

So what? There's no trademark on 'email' either. Does that mean anyone can redefine it to whatever they want?

[ydlr]

Once you give it to them, its not your software. It is theirs.

[Pannoniae]

But this is the entire point - I want to publish my source code, but I also don't want to give it away in that way.

[morelisp]

You don't need to change the license to the software, only the license to access the bug tracker.