[_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.