[kmeisthax]

Any time someone uses the word "sustainable" in regards to a FOSS project, I know they're buttering up the community as they plan to make the project not FOSS anymore.

In this particular case, it's not as bad as that, as Open WebUI is merely introducing a more onerous version of the BSD advertising clause. BSD 4-clause was considered a FOSS license but, in practice, demanding specific forms of attribution was incredibly problematic, especially in projects with multiple contributors. The attribution clauses in Creative Commons licenses are similarly if not more problematic; to the point where there is a cottage industry of copyleft trolls abusing pre-4.0 licenses as a way to rugpull people and coerce them into massive settlements.

Furthermore, the way this specific attribution requirement is written sounds like a possible future trademark landmine. Like, imagine if Firefox shipped with an attribution requirement that prohibited removing the trademarked Mozilla branding. That would effectively make the project non-FOSS because anyone who wants to use their FOSS rights is in a catch-22. Either you violate copyright and remove the trademarks, or you violate trademark by using your rights under the license in a way that violates trademark policy.

I'm also particularly not fond of the plan to demand CLAs and sell white-label licenses; my personal opinion is that you should almost never sign a CLA for a FOSS contribution. At the very least CLA signers should be getting paid a revenue share of the white-label licensing revenue.

[riffraff]

I think CLA signing is fine if the projects is owned by a reputable organization (Apache, FSF, whatever).

If the project is controlled by a commercial entity, you just have to understand it will likely change in a way you disagree with.

[soraminazuki]

A CLA is all about changing the terms of the deal after the deal. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which that can be legitimate.

[riffraff]

The scenario is that the world in which those terms were written changed.

E.g. the original GPL or Apache licenses did not consider patents, DRM or Tivoization, but the modern versions do.

I think it's legitimate for a project to say "we think we should address these issues but we didn't think of them" and update their license.

I'm not saying this is always the case, but it's the reason I think it's ok to sign a CLA for an organization you trust: it's _likely_ you'd also trust their choice to change a license.

[wkat4242]

OpenWebUI has always had commercial inclinations. You can tell by the way they're promoting their website for plugins. As long as I can still use the free version it's fine by me. But not sure if I'd pay for it. It's just a web interface really. If it would become paid I'd just move to another one.

[Onavo]

> Like, imagine if Firefox shipped with an attribution requirement that prohibited removing the trademarked Mozilla branding.

Icefox anyone?