I tried a couple license finders and I even looked into the OSI database but I could not find a license that works pretty much like agpl but requiring payment (combined 1% of revenue per month, spread evenly over all FOSS software, if applicable) if one of these is true:
- the downstream user makes revenue (as in “is a company” or gets donations)
- the downstream distributor is connected to a commercial user (e.g. to exclude google from making a non profit to circumvent this license)
I ask this because of the backdoor in xz and the obviously rotten situation in billion dollar companies not kicking their fair share back to the people providing this stuff.
So, if something similar exists, feel free to let me know.
Thanks for reading and have a good one.
You can put up a non commercial license and write that if this is for a commercial application they can get in touch with you and you can discuss together a new license for their use case.
Yeah, I’m thinking of a more easy to understand thing. “Get in touch” is too much of a barrier imo. “Agpl but you need to pay 1% of your revenue to FOSS software”
They would have to get in touch to figure out how to pay 1% either way, no?
No, because my idea was that they have to pay 1% to all foss projects (total, not individual) they use and if the projects want donations, they have to post it on their repos. if its not on the repo, no donation is required.
From my experience, companies would rather just pay for a commercial license. Anything abnormal gets trashed and banned in my company.
I think it’s more easy to understand “pay exactly this amount to use commercially” than the legal and accounting teams trying to work out how much to pay when you say 1% of their revenue to FOSS software. You can always donate the profits anyway
Just a remark about “can donate profit anyway” which I understand for corporations doesnt apply to public and semi-public services (ofcourse).
Which often happens to be a target group that is well aware of public values etc and the notion of community-culture among each other. Often other libraries or other schools for example treat each other as collegues etc.
BUT those type of organisations arnt allowed to donate (Giving away taxmoney) AND often cant allocate developer time (because there arent any within those organizations).
Here (NL in EU) we depend on the same FOSS as everyone else, but cant donate. We do must look for other ways to contribute tho.
Generally, a free software license has to grant the 4 freedoms to be compatible to the gpl and co.
Freedom 0 is running the program however you wish, for any purpose. Imagine if that wasnt standard for free software, and having to read every license of every program you are using to find out if you are allowed to run it!
So your funny license would sadly be incompatible with other free software. Consider dual licensing it instead, with agpl + a propriatary license for businesses that hate free software, and make them pay through the nose for it.
That’s the FSF definition. Most users and developers of open source do not care at all about that, and certainly do not care about protecting corporate right to use their software without giving back.
To many of them, open source is about transparency, community driven development, open contribution model, forkability, etc.
no, thats also the open source definition point 6: No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor.
A license that reatricts use would be a “source-availible” license aka corporate bs “work for me for free” licenses.
Also, with strong copyleft licenses, businesses must give back, namely when expanding the program. I think thats what many programmers like about open-source and free software. And yeah, a free software license is a precondition to bazaar style development.
with strong copyleft licenses, businesses must give back, namely when expanding the program
A user is required to make the source open only if they create a derivative work of the copyleft licensed work, and only if said work was distributed to users. And if I remember correctly, it is only required to open the source to the users it was distributed to.
They do not have to do any profit sharing or donation. They are not even required to make the code open source if they merely use this program, or they interface with it. They are not required to do anything if they only use it internally.
no, thats also the open source definition
Correction: the definition of open source by a specific organization, the OSI.
I don’t remember voting or appointing the OSI as our legitimate representative. But you know who did? Corporations like Amazon, Google, Bloomberg, and many of them: https://opensource.org/sponsors
I do not subscribe to a definition from such an organization, just because it has open source in the name.
I dont know why my license idea would be funny but thanks for elaborating. I‘ll read up on dual licensing.
If you want to sell proprietary software, why not just write and sell it? Or as others have suggested, dual license it? Hell, even the old shareware model could work for what you’ve described.
Unless you’re paying enforcers, how would you know if a corporation paid the right amount to use the code? How would your union determine distribution amounts to projects? How far upstream would payments go? How will disputes among developers be resolved?
Lots of foss use dual license: free for individual or non-profit use, but pay for commercial use, or even commercial use above a specific threshold. As part of my job, I’ve had to remove several of these, where the developer thinks it’s free but the corp can’t comply with the free licensing. It works.
Here’s an extremely well known example
I still haven’t decided what kind of company mine is with respect to foss. Its a good thing that they put effort into complying with licensing terms, they do support developers making contributions back, and historically they’ve “bought” a few foss projects (hire the developer, include that in his job responsibilities)! However I haven’t yet seen them make a corporate contribution and the first response with being out of compliance is to remove the dependency.
So it’s good that we take it seriously, and good that we historically contributed, however we don’t seem to co tribute much anymore and clearly get more benefit from foss than we give back
I thought Docker is FOSS but Desktop is not.
Branding confusion aside they are distinct, but complimentary, products with distinct licensing.
I dont want to write proprietary software. I write foss software. But i dont want you to make money off of my invention without giving back, easy as pie.
The rest would obviously have to be determined. A union is a separate entity, same as the linux foundation seems to distribute donations (from another comment) it would have to be discussed and agreed upon.
Still, those who use foss, make money and dont donate upstream are scum imo.
This is not FOSS then. FOSS puts no restrictions on downstream use of your software other than that you acknowledge and credit the original authors… This is “Open Source” with strings attached. It’s no different than being forced to sign an NDA to see your code.
You either make it free for everybody, or then it isn’t free software.
Wrong. Free in FOSS means freely distributable, not free of cost. My idea of cost is just different than “pay for download”.
i dont want you to make money off of my invention without giving back
Why do you think that you’re interested in writing FOSS software? Nothing you’ve posted here supports that claim. You do, however, speak like a textbook entrepreneur who wants to be paid for their innovation.
Their concern is obviously solving the dire problem of FOSS maintainers not getting compensated for their work, not getting rich themselves.
I have built stuff to help people all my life and have gotten fuck all for it. Its very easy to understand why I sound like this. Because I dont like people freeloading on others. Its selfish and disgusting.
Yeah, that’s cool and all, but your software isn’t FOSS if ppl have to pay to use it… Just license it under the AGPL and call it a day
You dont understand what FOSS means then. Free in FOSS means freedom, not free beer. You can absolutely charge someone to use it, which I’m not suggesting. I’m saying if a corpo uses software under my idea of a license, they have to pay fairly, thats it.
Just make it proprietary. Hear me out. I get that FOSS comes with altruism, but you also have no obligation to share with someone (or corporations) that don’t share our values. Make a proprietary version for them and if you still want an open version for who ever might find it.
You’re basically saying what I’m saying just with different words. I dont want two versions. Free doesnt mean free beer. I want companies to pay for it (and all other foss projects) period. The reason I want it in one is that its still foss (because it doesnt have to be free of cost) but companies cant weasel their way around giving back.
@haui_lemmy That’s like saying “I want to fly but without losing touch with the ground” - it is possible, it’s just called “walking”. If you “don’t want someone to make money off of your invention” then that’s called “proprietary”.
It doesn’t matter how hard you want to call it FOSS, but with this licensing terms you describe it is not FOSS, period. And to be honest, you calling out various people for not getting what FOSS is, while you fully ignore the agreed on definition by people who are actually doing FOSS is you discrediting yourself.
You haven’t found a license like this, because your model is flawed: A licensing like this will disqualify you from any kind of usage in an actual FOSS licensed environment. Personal users, which will not be providing revenue, will not be really affected by this, and are irrelevant for your point. Corporate users, which you will mostly target by this new license probably won’t be able to use your funky new license because they will need to check with legal, and your software will need to have a lot of USPs for someone to bother with that. A 1% corpo-richness-tax will not be approved by any kind of bigger company, because it’s a ridiculous amount from the perspective of your potential customers.
You’re taking yourself way to important. Open source software is not replaceable as a whole, but individual projects are. If you want to earn money with your project, that’s good on you, license it accordingly, but do not try to upsell it as FOSS.
And I fully get your point, and I’m currently working on the same problem in my in-development project, and I’m not sure yet whether to dual-license it, for similar reasons you stated, and live with the consequences of providing OSS, but non-FOSS software, or do FOSS and provide it for actually free.
Edit: Also, the xz backdoor has nothing to do with funding. Any long time maintainer (as in not just a random person contributing pull requests) going rogue can happen in funded scenarios as well.
it is not FOSS
If you take the OSI or FSF definition, sure. Not all of us take that definition.
For many people, the appeal of open source has nothing to do with how easy it is for corporations. It is about transparency, the ability to contribute, and the community driven product as a result. It is about the ability to pick up the project if the original developer stops using it, even decades later. It’s about the ease of interfacing with said software.
Again, you may quote the FSF, but there are too many users of open source, as well as developers, who got into it for the reasons I stated. I can assure you that they are not doing it so that corporations can profit off their software without giving back.
Again, you may quote the FSF, but there are too many users of open source, as well as developers, who got into it for the reasons I stated. I can assure you that they are not doing it so that corporations can profit off their software without giving back.
If you are developing open source, you are not necessarily developing FOSS. If you are developing FOSS, you are also developing open source.
FOSS is well defined by the FSF, and it has been for ages, and to be frank, therefore no one cares for anyone’s personal definition of it.
What I am against is having the cake and eating it, as it’s being proposed with this licensing. Either you do FOSS, or you don’t. Either you do open source, or you don’t. Either you do proprietary software, or you don’t. It’s really that simple, because depending on your project, you take the terms that you see fitting and live with the consequences. The whole goal of this proposal was to be taken more serious as open source developers and projects, and to ensure funding for further development. Cherry picking the best parts of every model, and making irrational demands does not achieve that.
As I said, I’m absolutely on board that open source licensing and open source development being taken for profit by corpos absolutely sucks, and the usual licensing models have not aged well with the much wider adoption and usage of open source, and there is a need for change - as it’s being done e.g. by elastic, redis and others with their dual licensing.
> It is about transparency, the ability to contribute, and the community driven product as a result. It is about the ability to pick up the project if the original developer stops using it, even decades later. It’s about the ease of interfacing with said software.
That’s… exactly what the FSF and OSI definitions are all about.
The FSF and OSI do not allow licenses that limit corporate leech or restrict profiting of software without giving back.
No, there isn’t and there won’t be any since what your saying is absolutely against FOSS values. You are in non-commercial/commercial license territory, give a look at winrar’s/unity’s and the like, gpl is not for you.
Could you elaborate how it is against foss values to keep people from being exploited?
“Forcing donations” is just a fancy way of saying “charging licensing fees”.
It’s clearly a license fee. I don’t see how a license fee stands in conflict with FOSS though. FOSS is Free as in freedom, not free as in gratis.
The godfather of all FLOSS licenses himself (GPL) contains explicit terms to allow license fees too.
Nope. I want people to share their profit made from foss, thats it. Licensing fees are applicable to anyone and thats not what I‘m saying.
Another user, toothbrush, has already posted a link to the 4 freedoms, I’d recommend reading that entire page for a most thorough explanation.
But basically your plan goes against three of them (assuming you’re going to release the source code, if you don’t your not granting any of them). Freedom 0 says you can use the software however you like, for any reason including for profit. You can charge the users but once you give them the (Free) software it’s completely theirs. Freedoms 2 and 3 state they can redistribute copies or distribute their modified version in any way they want provided that the give their users the same freedoms they were given.
I still dont see how this breaks any of these. They get the source code and they get to sell it (or whatever), they can change it however they see fit. They still have to provide fair upstream financial kickback imo.
A fee for comercial use or corporate users sounds like “discrimination against fields of endeavor” to me.
