Hi Ryan. Seeing as we’re going to see more and more of this sort of complaint come up because inherently the licensing situation with open source code is overly complicated, have you considered switching to use code where the licensing is clear: Github and Microsoft’s private codebases?
I empathize with the sentiment, but if you want to get paid for your open source work, surely it would work better to set up a Patreon and point people to it, rather than write "send me a six figure contract or fork this!" in a GitHub issue.
It's also weird to use a license that explicitly lets Fortune 500 companies use the code for free, and then write that you don't want them to do so in the issue. Just change the license if you don't want to license it freely to big companies!
If someone contributes to open source, then they shouldn't be surprised that someone else uses this code. The licensing hell is something that shouldn't belong in IT.
What about the sub-culture of open source who doesn't want their code used for profit without the result also being open sourced?
To put it another way, why should we have to treat Microsoft's EULA and licenses as ironclad while Microsoft gets to ignore licensing terms of code they want to use for their own products? Seems like an imbalance that's only possible because one side is more well-funded than the other.
I guess I've just never had to work with GPL code before, but the complaints essentially only seem to be coming from coders who like this style of open source where you still get to make it kind of a pain in the ass to actually use your software.
I guess you have the right to do this, but it doesn't mesh at all with why I personally contribute (without any expectation of attribution), which is that (much like stack overflow), programmers mostly agreed awhile ago that it's just easier if we all share.
So much of what's wrong with the modern economy comes down to seeking rent on an idea that should just be public knowledge.
Sorry if my viewpoint towards your work is apathetic, but the whole field is already infested with academics who only understand citation as a useful metric. Further, the point remains that anyone with enough money could do this - not just Microsoft (Salesforce has released several models for python competitive with Copilot). Times are changing - maybe don't share code anymore? I imagine in ten-twenty years this whole conversation will seem pretty petty though when your entire program is trivially recreated from its GitHub description without ever needing to have seen it in the first place.
I totally agree, this reaction seems very hypocritical. If some rinky dink startup did exactly the same thing - as they are entitled to do under the licences of huge swathes of code on GitHub - hardly anyone would bat an eyelid. But just because it’s a Microsoft-owned company, it’s somehow verboten?
That seems totally inconsistent with decades of people clamouring for more openness/liberty when it comes to IP rights.
Open Source has a) you guys implement it b) we sell it, thanks problem.
This license change addresses this very problem so cloud mega corps can't leech.
For me it sounds like better AGPL.
I don't give a shit about philosophical nuances and OSI-approved list – at the end of the day this is much less restrictive license than AGPL - I have source code, I can run it locally, I can run it on my projects, I can run it on my commercial projects, I can run it where I work, I can use it on bare metal, VM, Docker, k8s and from Azure the same way.
The fact that Microsoft will have to share cut of the premium they're already charging is irrelevant to me – if anything I applaud for finding sustainable business model around it.
Interestingly, the same companies who made the paid service by analyzing all of that open-source code would never, ever consider open-sourcing the code for that service.
> if you don't want people to learn off your code
"Learn" is a strange verb to use here. No one at Microsoft or OpenAI was scraping all of GitHub so that they could learn. They took people's licensed works, fed it into a very sophisticated copy-paste machine, and started making money off of it.
> just don't share it!
It's almost like licenses and copyright exist to protect the rights of their holders or something.
The entire point of licenses is to be able to share your work in a way that respects your wishes. "Just don't share it" is completely non-productive.
Licensing which is already a contentious subject within the open source community just got another layer of confusion. I agree with their stance here currently but it's something that needs to be addressed as LLM coding helpers are becoming the norm.
I don't feel like we're going to make any progress either if we consider it open source to toss random code up on github under random licenses with no legal review from any outside parties whatsoever. Sorry I don't mean to be snarky but someone has to fund the lawyers and organize the committees to look over this stuff and it seems those orgs are the only ones willing to foot the bills so far. The groups pushing for newer licenses that skirt the existing definitions almost never seem to be interested in doing this, they only really care about getting someone to bend the rules for their license.
OSS people complaining about licenses while simultaneously ignoring the license they granted Github is peak irony. I'm totally fine with it, it's why I do it, I don't need accolades and I'm not straddling a user with legal agreements, that's not freedom in my mind.
> Most of the important projects on GitHub are licensed under an open source license, which addresses intellectual property ownership.
This can be tricky in a legally messed up environment. In US, courts sided with Oracle about copyrightability of APIs. And guess who supported Oracle in that dispute? Microsoft. So how should open source projects feel about it, especially when they let's say implement MS own APIs?
No. The solution is to use a different license, one that doesn’t allow contributions to be re-licensed in this way. This isn’t as complicated as people are making out. They just don’t want to admit that the license is operating as intended, but rather, their feelings about classical ‘open-source’ have changed. Admitting that would be admitting that the Software Gods of the last ~50 years are imperfect in their eyes, which is jarring for the sort of people that complain about these situations in the first place.
Kevin Wang here. Thanks Drew for the thoughtful post.
I can accept that you might not appreciate my work on the Commons Clause, but I'm glad to see you acknowledge why funding OSS is so difficult.
I think it's okay to fear the world of open source becoming a bit more closed. I do too. Whether that's a better world or not is up to debate, but I certainly don't think so.
I think where we might disagree is what the greatest threat to "open-ness" is. Sometimes people do bad things to open source projects, and force them to go closed. The license choice will inevitably follow -- and when they do, they can choose to close the source entirely or choose a licensing scheme that makes it available.
Licensing follows intent, and I certainly don't think the Clause inspires people to close their source. But sometimes people need to change their license -- and I think it's unrealistic to say that this doesn't happen.
I am not trying to score points for any side, all of these projects can and do share code when it's practical and useful to do so. There is no "exclusivity", I'm sure you know that most of these licenses in use are compatible with each other. The end result is that we are already unwittingly on the same team, it took me a while to realize it but that's the whole reason things like Github and such have taken off. I'd love to discuss your experiences with that as a lawyer if you have any interesting stories, but I would have to ask you to please avoid the hostilities, that doesn't help when trying to fix issues. We both have the same access to the same code.
Lot of comments indicate that the code authors regret making their code open source because somebody rebranded their code or sold it and made money.
You always had a choice to stop development in the early stages and:
1) Make it proprietary - Why didn't you do it?
2) Have a commercial version - Why didn't you do it?
3) Change the license from MIT/Apache/etc - Why didn't you do it?
4) Charge for features/support/maintenance/etc - Why didn't you do it?
When you use certain OS licenses, you give the permission to its user to do whatever they wish including selling it and therefore, complaining about it later doesn't make any sense.
Mattermost for example, was APL. Then they changed it to AGPL because they experienced something similar.
Gitea was born out of the frustration that the original code was not maintained properly.
There are numerous examples like this.
So stop complaining and take action else embrace open source with all your heart.
When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.” These freedoms are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users' sake, but for society as a whole because they promote social solidarity—that is, sharing and cooperation. They become even more important as our culture and life activities are increasingly digitized. In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in general.
- Richard Stallman
A lot of these criticisms about the license are valid and I acknowledge that. I do understand it's concerning and,I use someone's words here extremely antagonizing for a lot of people to have this use the term open source when their expectations of open-source are so vastly different. And I want to address that particularly in another comment but let me address what is your misrepresentation or misinterpretation of the restrictions.
I totally agree that you could have a back door and that be something possible to distribute in a binary. That's a legitimate risk. At the same time I think it's disingenuous to say that opening the source code on GitHub is not adequate protection but having some sort of third-party builds would be adequate protection against that. I think having those source code in the open is the ultimate protection against sort of backdooring. And from there anyone can download and run it using node or they can make their own binaries. And with respect to using any bineries distributed by anyone else everyone needs to use their own risk tolerance. At the same time I don't think the license that I've made precludes third-party builds with the meaning of that being other people building their own binary from the source code and distributing that for other people, I feel okay you can do that you just can't charge people for it, or use it as part of a paid service or project intended to make money, and you can't deploy it for them as part of a paid service. Unless you're already working in that organization and making this deployment as part of the ordinary course of your duties (like you can't be doing this as a contractor, and it can't be part of being contracted to work for them). One purpose of this restriction obviously is to get organizations to contract Dosyago corporation when they need help to deploy that Dosyago IP. A way to make money through consulting that's an alternative to selling per seat or per site licenses.
So I definitely think the criticisms of this license are valid at the same time it's important to be clear about what actually, you know, the restrictions are and what the risks of that are.
I definitely think people should exercise caution with regard to any software but they should also protect themselves against misinformation. So in that light it is I think in the interests of everyone's safety to have an informed and open discussion. That's why I'm addressing what seems to me to be a misrepresentation, and why and I'm also not bristling and anyone raising concerns about the license. I think it's perfectly valid and it totally makes sense for them to be upset about this.
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