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by ezekg 614 days ago
> What if the producer moves into a field that I'm in and is now a competitor - have I suddenly run afoul of the license, even though I wasn't before?

If a user moves into the producer's field and becomes a 'competitor', or the producer moves into a user's field, the user simply cannot upgrade to the latest version of the software. But they're access to previous versions would remain unaffected, as far as I understand.

Here's more explicit language from the FSL:

> A Competing Use means making the Software available to others in a commercial product or service that: ... substitutes for any other product or service we offer using the Software that exists as of the date we make the Software available; or

As you can see, terms are "as of the date we make the Software available", so nobody can retroactively be in violation of the license, but they can be restricted i.r.t. upgrading to newer fair source versions. Since they now compete, they will need to use the open source version released under DOSP moving forward, typically 2 years out of date.

I'll be honest and say that I think that's totally fair.