[fishtoaster]

An increasingly common situation for open source projects is:

1. The FooLabs company creates the Foo open source software, which gets popular

2. FooLabs offers FooCloud, a paid, hosted, managed version of Foo for those who don't want to run Foo themselves.

3. AWS sees that Foo is popular and creates a competing paid, hosted, managed version of Foo (say, "AwsFoo").

4. FooLabs' hosted version doesn't really have much advantage over AWS and AWS has a huge base of existing customers, so it outcompetes FooLabs.

5. FooLabs perceives this as unfair. They did all the work creating + maintaining this software, but are unable to reap any rewards.

Different people have different opinions on #5, ranging from "Hell yeah, screw AWS!" to "What did you expect when you made this open source?"

As a result, there have been a wave of not-quite-open-source licenses aimed at preventing #3, often with a clause like "This license doesn't let you run a paid, hosted, managed version". GitButler's license is aimed at doing exactly that. People have been calling that "source available." Some people are trying to rebrand that as the cooler-sounding "Fair Source."

Some of these have caused huge community upsets because Foo is often popular because it's open source, and it feels like a bait-and-switch to suddenly yank that away once Foo reaches a certain point of growth. ElasticSearch is the biggest example that comes to mind: https://www.elastic.co/blog/licensing-change. GitButler, thankfully, is being much more up-front about it!

[yjftsjthsd-h]

I think some of the tension is that:

> 2. FooLabs offers FooCloud, a paid, hosted, managed version of Foo for those who don't want to run Foo themselves.

> 4. FooLabs' hosted version doesn't really have much advantage over AWS and AWS has a huge base of existing customers, so it outcompetes FooLabs.

FooCloud is often run with what is perceived as excessive costs/margins, so 1. they get really poor uptake, and 2. it's really easy for AWS to undercut them.

[snotrockets]

(I'd rather not discuss the tension described and am going to be vauge on purpose, as I work on SaaS that has multiple completing services from other providers)

Some SaaS, when operated by a vendor also selling IaaS, is sold at so low cost over the IaaS, that it doesn't matter how cheaply other vendors can build on top of that same IaaS, they could never compete on price.

[escapecharacter]

I’m trying to find a clear distinction between “Source Available” and “Fair Source”. Sounds like there isn’t any common definition for source available other than that you are allowed to read the code.

[fishtoaster]

From use, it seems like "Source Available" generally means "it's not open source, but you can go and read the code somewhere." So it's more a definition by contrast, really. "Fair Source" is a new term defined more precisely by https://fair.io/about/ - it seems to refer to be a more specific term referring to this specific license type.

[ezekg]

Exactly. The problem with "Source Available" is that it has no real definition and it conveys no user freedoms outside of the (loose) freedom to read the source code, which is why the term has never taken off with anybody. It's wholly inadequate. That's why we needed a new term that does have a concrete definition and does convey user freedoms. Fair Source is meant to sit on the gradient between Open Source and Source Available.

[3np]

It seems that the only relevant license in context is the Functional Source License (FSL).

What's the point of this new term only encompassing the accompanying new license from the same authors, other than to manipulate our minds to associate "FSL" with "fair"?

FSL is a source-available license. "Fair Source" is the name of an industry lobby group. Uncritically adopting their retaxonomization of software licenses and newspeak is not advisable.

The FSL seems like a valuable contribution and can make sense for companies like GitButler and Sentry. The accompanying lobbying and propaganda (aka "PR") spoils that somewhat.

[ezekg]

Not just FSL. There's also the Fair Core License [0], the Business Source License [1], and we're open to adding more given they abide by the Fair Source Definition. We're just getting started.

[0]: https://fcl.dev

[1]: https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-mariadb/

[paxys]

You forgot 1.1 – FooLabs takes hundreds of millions of dollars in VC funding and these VCs want to see a 10x return on their investment, which is incompatible with keeping the software free and open source.

[somebodythere]

Sure. Presumably also the developers at FooLabs would like to continue having a job developing Foo, and the broader software community would like to continue benefiting from additional features and improvements to Foo, which probably wouldn't happen if developing Foo was economically unviable.