[_msw_]

Disclosures: I work for Amazon, but my positions as a long time Free Software advocate and copyleft supporter are my own. I do not speak for Amazon here. I served on the board of directors for Software Freedom Conservancy at its inception, but now I am only a financial supporter in an individual capacity. I do not speak for SFC either.

The SSPL isn’t the same as the GPL. The GPL is a tool that was invented to advance the Free Software movement agenda: protecting the freedoms of users of software. The SSPL does not do that. It protects the interests of companies that want to maintain exclusivity in offering software services.

This post from SFC can explain the problems with this far better than I can in a HN post: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality...

[antirez]

My parallel is between AGPL and SSPL. The SSPL protects from companies like Amazon: it can protect other companies, or can protect hackers that don't want to see their work exploited (and make zero profits from their stuff). It's a tool. I don't know if I would use it, but it makes totally sense IMHO.

It's simple to see things from the POV of other smaller but yet VCs-backed companies only, when evaluating the damage of Amazon. Things are actually more complex. For instance OpenRedis was one of the very first Redis SAAS services ran by the same folks that contributed to Redis in the first days, that provided the logo and so forth. Guess who is also impacted by the Amazon monopoly?

[_msw_]

The needs of those who want to capture the majority of the value they create when they author digital goods like software haven’t been the concern of either the Free Software movement nor the Open Source movement. These movements are rooted in the nature of digital goods: they cannot be “exploited” (like strip mining for extracting materials from a mountaintop does) because they are naturally abundant. “Create more value than you capture” was the mantra.

The “free rider problem” has been used to justify licenses that protect the interests of software authors since before we called it “open source”, long before Amazon was made a scapegoat.

“The free rider problem is when someone is allowed to package free software in non-free or less-free bundles, and that's precisely the area of the GPL that I thought I needed to do something about in making the Aladdin license”—Peter Deutsch, October 1998 [1]

The point I am trying to make is that legal tools like the Aladdin Free Public License and SSPL do not protect FOSS, or advance the social movements that have produced a bountiful commons of digital public goods. Those that craft those tools and apply them to their works have every right to do so, but they do so because they choose to do so, not because a company like Amazon “forced them” to.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20041013082602/http://devlinux.o...

[antirez]

The SSPL is useful exactly for the reasons you outlined, mainly. To preserve the ability to make money of the original authors is just a side effect. The SSPL point from the point of view of the Free Software Movement is (whatever was the reason for the creation of such license): people will start to write less and less free software (it is happening already) if they see their software exploited by megacorps. As less free system software is produced, the society captures less and less value. It's exactly the same idea as AGPL. Also if the original authors have a viable income, they no longer need to do things as a side project, and can write more and better free software, so also to avoid Amazon stealing the potential money output is a direct way to maximize the free software main goal.

[_msw_]

There is more Free Software produced today than ever before, even if some firms are deciding they no longer want to produce it. There are far more who are continuing to add to the commons of public software unnoticed; those who publicly quit get far more attention.

I’m all about increasing the private provision of public goods. I don’t think that licenses that give firms exclusive rights to monetize the goods they produce advances that goal. That’s just the status quo of firms being landlords of their intellectual property, extracting rents from others who want to enjoy them. That’s just proprietary software, which is clearly a useful thing for society to have.

The thing that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth is when you apply your resources to produce common goods, and then one party declares that you are somehow a “bad actor” while changing the terms to enclose the goods and exclude you from enjoying that common good.

Luckily with FOSS, those who are excluded can move their efforts elsewhere. But the future goods will not be the same. And I think that’s a shame.

[PeterZaitsev]

SSPL protects vendors from competition of likes of Amazon, cool, but is this what Open Source is about ? I belive first and foremost Open Source (term) is first and foremost about value for Users of Open Source Software.

As a vendor/developer you surely can chose not to provide software users some freedoms, but when lets not call it Open Source

More in this https://peterzaitsev.com/open-source-perspectives/