> There’s been a lot of discussion about licensing in the news, with Red Hat and now Hashicorp notably adjusting their licensing models to be more “business friendly,” and Codecov (proudly, and mistakenly) pronouncing they are now “open source.”
Red Hat has not adjusted any of their "licensing models." They've simply stopped publishing the RHEL sources publicly. They're still published and fully available to paying customers, who are the only ones they are legally[1] required to distribute them to. None of the licenses (GPL, MIT, etc) have any requirements to publicly distribute code.
[1]: there is some dispute over whether the customer agreement violates the GPL in spirit or letter, but that's a different question. It's not a licensing thing, it's a business agreement/contract that is completely separate from the licenses. The licenses don't require you to do business with people you don't want to do business with, and they don't require you to give away your product for free.
Indeed, I don't understand it, especially when it's a back-end service they're running, not even something they are modifying and reselling. The GPL is completely safe for that.
It's FUD. Microsoft in particular and proprietary software companies in general have long been scaremongering about the alleged dangers of using GPL code as a marketing tactic, and some people believe them.
I'm not sure what the overall point here is. The headline and article are framed in a way that makes it seem switching from GPLv3 was the catalyst for increased profitability but this is never clarified or quantified:
Two years later, Sid at Open Core Ventures (OCV) contacted me about creating a company, building on the features and functionality of authentik. It was a dream opportunity: work full time on my hobby project and make 25% more in the process. But I had to let go of the GPL license.
It seems the investors stipulated the license change to secure funding versus the change itself resulting in increased profitability. And the justification seems based on speculation about marketability:
The drawback of building commercially on top of open source software using GPL is that the copyleft aspect can put some people off. Not every person or business wants to have to expose their code for every minor change or bug fix they may add, and they will sooner find a competitor with a more permissive license than adopt your software. This is obviously not ideal when you’re trying to get traction and grow a business.
OCV proposed we switch back to MIT.
Obviously something like the MIT license is more attractive to corporations. Now they can just steal all your hard work, integrate your code into their commercial product and not even have to pay or so much as credit you now. I'm sorry, it sounds you may have just been hustled out of your app.
It sounds like he was paid, and gets to work on his app. It may not be maximizing the value, but it seems to be similar to accepting a job at a company. He has steady income instead of long term rights.
Perfectly reasonable choice. So would putting a second license for paying customers as an available choice.
Is GPL vs. MIT even relevant in this case? GPL only requires providing sources with the distributed binary, but for server-side code you don't distribute the binary so don't have to publish sources. The whole point behind the AGPL is to close this loophole.
Further I don't think the change to GPL even fixed the author's original concern of something like AWS taking it and standing up a service on it. The GPL wouldn't prevent that because again, no binary distribution.
I don't doubt that the author was told this by Sid at OCV, but it seems like a misunderstanding on both their parts of what the licenses actually require and don't require.
The whole thing about how GPL propagates to unrelated works that happen to use a GPL licensed software is a misunderstanding. One that the FSF foundation is happy to propagate, but not one that would hold in court.
The concept of derived work in copyright law has nothing to do with how the binaries are linked together nor is an entire work derived from a GPL library just because they happen to call it at one point. Lawyers look at this very differently.
I don’t see definitive statements in that article. It’s a lawyer stating opinion, using qualifiers like “in most cases” and “I would argue”. Most concerning is:
> This is a complex topic that courts and lawyers disagree on
I would argue, in most cases, the benefits aren’t worth the risk, nor the legal fees spent to ascertain and manage that risk.
>The drawback of building commercially on top of open source software using GPL is that the copyleft aspect can put some people off. Not every person or business wants to have to expose their code for every minor change or bug fix they may add...
That's the entire point of copyleft licenses. Businesses want to benefit from the community without giving back.
It doesn't prevent them from benefiting from the community. They're deciding they don't want to be beholden to a license that requires them to contribute back, and they're blaming the license itself for their selfishness.
I wasn't thinking of hardware vendors, but you are right that here the copyleft license works well. The reason I think is that in this case the companies are making their money from selling hardware not drivers.
I looked at OP's account. No comments at all, and every submission leads to his own website. Many of them marked as [dead]. I thought this was strictly against HN guidelines?
Guideline: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."
OP has made 5 submissions in 7 months. All for blog posts tangential to their product, not even direct product offerings, not even directly pitching their product. (I read the posts and still don't know what they actually sell.)
Actually OP has made 12. Only 4 of them escaped death. This is clearly a case of using HN only for self-promotion. I wouldn't suggest we should stop them as it doesn't cross into abusive IMHO, but it does seem against the guidelines. It may not be reason to take action but doesn't seem like a nothingburger either.
Probably 80% of my submissions are “Show HN” links to my work. It’s me saying “hey look at this cool/silly thing I just made!”. I don’t necessarily ask for feedback when I do that, although I do appreciate it.
The author talks about several very different issues: (1) him switching between GPL and MIT, both of which are open source licenses, (2) Hashicorp switching to BSL, which is not an open source license (by the OSI definition), (3) Red Hat providing sources as per GPL requirements to paid customers only and stopping to provide it to the whole world (there is more to it when you remember how red Hat started, why CentOS appeared, how it they were bought etc.). There is only some superficial similarity between these two (as the author says, nobody objected when they switched from GPL to MIT).
As a company and a real legal entity, we would have recourse if something like AWS/Elasticsearch were to happen
What does that mean? Didn't AWS just take advantage of the terms of the license and do something they were allowed to, couldn't the same thing happen here? What recourse would there be?
I had the same thought. Elastic was a real legal entity too, and clearly they didn't have recourse...
There are a number of errors/incorrect info in this blog post. I don't mean to be critical, but I hope nobody is looking to this post for advice because it has some bad advice (such legal recourse, what different licenses achieve the objective of protecting from the concerned case (GPL doesn't)).
The difference between MIT and GPL is that MIT favors immediate users who are developers, and GPL favors end-users. These interests are always in tension, and one of them just be chosen as favored.
In both cases, the original authors are giving up their rights for the benefit of users.
So no one has standing to attack the original authors. If you use the original software, you can enjoy it either way. If you are in business, MIT is better for you. If you are a user of an intermediary, that's for you and the intermediary to deal with, no the original author.
If you are afraid of the intermediary being evil, than go directly to the original source, or find a GPL or MIT(!) intermediary.
> Initially, authentik used the MIT license. When Elastic called out AWS for trademark abuse (offering Elasticsearch as an AWS service without collaborating with Elastic), I changed it to GPLv3 because I didn’t like what AWS did in principle, and didn’t want it to happen to authentik.
GPLv3 doesn't protect SaaS users anyway! That's the whole point of AGPL. lol
IOW, GPLv3 doesn't prevent Amazon or Google or Microsoft from offering a hosted version of your project without sharing source code changes with customers.
I am not sure I understand what they (the business behing "authentik") hope to gain from having their Open/Libre variant available under MIT instead of under GPLv3, when they do have a fully proprietary ("you may look at the source" or not, meh) alternative that they are trying to sell INSTEAD of the free variant? Is it because they hope that MIT-licensed software is more readily adopted by businesses, and they hope to get their foot in more doors for their proprietary "premium" version that way? Or is there something else/in addition to that that I cannot see?
people always howl that "its no longer open source", and maybe that's true. but the source code is still on GitHub as its always been, and you can still do whatever you want with it, as long as its not for commercial purpose. I offer a commercial license for a fee. so despite the roar of complaints from open source purists, it works for me.
> people always howl that "its no longer open source"
That's a legit complaint, particularly if someone contributed to it, gave feedback, was part of the user community, depended on it etc and would have chosen differently it they knew it wasn't open source. You changed the terms from "everyone can profit from this" to "only I can profit from this" which is a pretty big change. It's your right, but it shouldn't be surprising people don't like it.
The problem with that is that a lot of non-profit organizations that do use libre software cannot use your software because it violates one of the fundamental requirements of libre software guidelines: No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor / The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). So such software become automatically disqualified for non-profits that want to run themselves on libre software.
I know it is your software and you are totally entitled to release it under any license you want and make money off it. Nothing wrong with it. But I'm hoping you can see why this is a problem for those who want to use libre software who are also entitled to ignore your software and keep looking for something that is actually libre.
yes, I understand that. the "noncommercial" in the license URL is a pretty big sign that "any purpose" is not allowed.
> The problem with that is that a lot of non-profit organizations that do use libre software cannot use your software because it violates one of the fundamental requirements of libre software guidelines
this doesn't make logical sense. non-profits are not commercial, so they are allowed usage, both in the license terms and by me now, saying explicitly, that I am allowing that usage of my software. if THEY CHOOSE to restrict themselves by requiring "pure" open source software only, thats THEIR fault, not mine.
> if THEY CHOOSE to restrict themselves by requiring "pure" open source software only, thats THEIR fault, not mine.
It is nobody's fault. Just like nobody can force you to choose a "pure" open source license, nobody can force them to use your software. Just like you have the prerogative to choose whatever license you want, they have the prerogative to choose "pure" libre software. It's all fair and well and nobody is at fault for exercising their choices.
Most of the time though, the non-profits go for "pure" libre software because their legal team has already provided a blanket approval for all libre licenses. So it is less hassle for them to choose libre software available under these licenses. Choosing a noncommercial license would be more procedural hassle for them in terms of reviews, approvals, etc. Yeah it may sound stupid to not use otherwise perfectly good software due to a legal and procedural technicality, but I'm just saying how things are and not necessarily how things should be.
People are upset that they can't profit off your labor without a license? Those don't sound like open source purists to me. They sound like straight up thieves lol.
> There’s been a lot of discussion about licensing in the news, with Red Hat and now Hashicorp notably adjusting their licensing models to be more “business friendly,” and Codecov (proudly, and mistakenly) pronouncing they are now “open source.”
Red Hat has not adjusted any of their "licensing models." They've simply stopped publishing the RHEL sources publicly. They're still published and fully available to paying customers, who are the only ones they are legally[1] required to distribute them to. None of the licenses (GPL, MIT, etc) have any requirements to publicly distribute code.
[1]: there is some dispute over whether the customer agreement violates the GPL in spirit or letter, but that's a different question. It's not a licensing thing, it's a business agreement/contract that is completely separate from the licenses. The licenses don't require you to do business with people you don't want to do business with, and they don't require you to give away your product for free.