with permanent tensions The war between proprietary and open source software (OSS) is unlikely to end anytime soon, $3 billion startup The government is supporting a new licensing model – one designed to bridge the gap between the open and proprietary worlds, with new definitions, terminology and governance models.
Developer Sentry Software Company newly foot A new category of licenses called “Fair sourceSentry is one of the companies that has adopted this program early, as are half a dozen others, including Jet Butlera development tools company from one of the founders of GitHub.
the Fair Source Concept It is designed to help companies align themselves with the “open” software development landscape, without encroaching on existing licensing landscapes, whether it is Open source, open heartor Source availableavoiding any negative associations associated with “ownership”.
However, fair source is also a response to the growing feeling that open source does not work commercially.
“Open source is not a business model – open source is a distribution model, it is a software development model first and foremost” Chad Whitaker“In reality, this places severe restrictions on the business models available, because of the licensing requirements,” Sentry’s head of open source told TechCrunch.
Sure, there are wildly successful open source projects, but they are generally components of larger proprietary products. Companies that once raised the open source flag to protect their hard work have mostly backed away, moving either from a very permissive “copy left” license to a more restrictive one, as is the case with free software companies. The item did last year. and Grafana before thatOr get rid of open source altogether. HashiCorp made Terraform.
“Most of the world’s software is still closed source,” Whitaker added. “Kubernetes is open source, but Google Search is closed. React is open source, but Facebook Newsfeed is closed. With fair source, we’re carving out a space for companies to securely share these low-level infrastructure components, as well as share access to their core products.”
fair play
The guard, Application Performance Monitoring Platform Software that helps companies like Microsoft and Disney detect and diagnose faulty software was initially available under license. BSD Open Source License 3 ClausesBut in 2019, the product became Moved To license the source of the business (Busl), a more restrictive license is available to the source initially. Created by MariaDBThe move comes in response to what co-founder and CTO David Kramer called “funded companies that are plagiarizing or copying our work to compete directly with Sentry.”
Fast forward to last August, and we’ll see. It was announced He was making Recently acquired The developer tool is called Codkov “Open source.” This was To the sadness of manywho questioned whether the company could really call it “open source” since it was released under the BUSL license – a license incompatible with the Open Source Initiative (OSI). identification “open source”
Kramer fast Issued An apology of sorts, explaining that despite his misuse of the description, the BUSL license adheres to the spirit of many open source licenses: users can host and modify the code themselves without paying a cent to the creator. They simply cannot market the product as a competing service.
But the truth is that BUSL is not open source.
“We got into this situation and we started the debate again,” Whitaker said. “But in the discussion that followed, we realized we needed a new term. Because we’re not a proprietary company; the community clearly doesn’t accept that we’re an open source company. We’re not an open source company either.”
Those who follow the open source world know that terminology is everything, and Sentry is not the first company to fall into the trap of (mis)using established terminology. However, this incident has sparked a Adam JacobCEO and Co-Founder of Emerging DevOps Initiativefor challenge Someone was supposed to develop a brand and manifesto to cover the kind of licenses Sentry wanted to join—similar to what OSI had been doing for the past quarter century with open source, but with a more commercially attractive gradation.
This is what led Sentry to the fair source.
Currently, the main recommended license for Fair Source is the Functional Source License (English: FSL), any Sentry itself was launched last year. As a simpler alternative to BUSL. However, BUSL itself is now classified as fair source, as is another new license created by Sentry called the Fair Core License (Full line of credit), both of which are included to support the needs of different projects.
Companies are welcome to submit their own licenses for consideration, although all fair source licenses must have three basic requirements: the code must be publicly available to read; allow third parties to use, modify, and redistribute it with “Minimum restrictions“It has a Deferred Open Source Publication Clause (DOSP), which means it converts to a true open source license after a pre-determined period of time. With Sentry’s FSL, this period is two years; for BUSL, the default period is four years.
The concept of “delaying” the release of source code under a true open source license is a key element that defines fair source licensing, and separates it from other models such as open source licensing. Open source licensing protects a company’s commercial interests in the short term, before the code is fully open sourced.
But a definition that uses vague, subjective terms like “minimal restrictions” is bound to cause problems. What exactly does that mean, and what kinds of restrictions are acceptable?
“We only launched this a month ago — it’s a long game,” Whitaker said. “Open source (OSI definition) has been around for over 25 years. So some of this is open to discussion; we want to see what emerges and define it over time.”
The Main Source License for the Gallery follows a similar path to the Open Source licenses before it, insofar as: Non-compete terms Licenses that prohibit commercial use of competing products include any product that offers “the same or substantially similar functionality” as the original software. This is one of the fundamental problems with such licenses, according to Thierry CarrezGeneral Manager at Open Infrastructure Foundation Open Source Initiative Board Member: A lot of things are open to interpretation and may be “legally ambiguous.”
“Fair source licenses are not open source licenses because the freedoms they grant do not apply to everyone; they discriminate based on legally ambiguous non-compete rules,” Caris said. “So widespread adoption of these licenses would not only create legal uncertainty, but would also greatly reduce future innovation.”
Kariz added that there is nothing to prevent the terms of fair source licenses from being changed in the future, highlighting the problem of a license being controlled by a single entity.
“There are two ways to develop software: you can take a proprietary approach, where one party produces the software and makes a profit from it; or you can take a shared ownership approach, where an open ecosystem comes together around producing the software and sharing the benefits of it,” says Caris. “In a proprietary approach, nothing prevents the sole copyright holder from changing the terms of the deal in the future. So the exact terms of the license they’re currently using don’t matter as much as the trust you put in those companies not to change them.”
In many ways, fair source is simply an exercise in branding—allowing companies to pick and choose the parts of the established open source ethos they hold dear, while avoiding calling themselves “proprietary” or any other variant.
Amanda BrookeCEO of the UK Open Source Advocacy Association Open UKShe said that while it was “great to see people being honest that[their software]is not open source,” she Proposed This new category of licenses may only complicate matters – especially since there are already well-established names for this type of software.
“We need to change our thinking to look at three categories of software, not two; OpenUK has been calling for this for some time,” Brock told TechCrunch. “In the context of open source software, we call the category that is proprietary with public source ‘open source’ or ‘public source’. It’s any code that makes the source (code) available, and is distributed under a license that does not meet the definition of open source.”
Jet Commitment
Scott ChiconGitButler founder Steve Bloom, who claims to be one of GitHub’s four founders and served as its CIO before stepping down in 2016, launched a new Git-focused startup called GitButler in early 2023. He went through a whole host of licensing considerations, including full ownership, before settling on FSL and Public announcement His support for the Fair Source movement.
“We’re still a little unsure what our ultimate business model will be, and we want to keep our options open,” Chacon told TechCrunch. “We know that if a company issues under an OSS license and then needs to relicense under a more restrictive license in order to make their business successful, there’s an understandable outcry from the community.”
Which brings us to the heart of the problem for many companies today. Sure, everyone loves open source software, but with all the pushback, today’s startups are reluctant to take the plunge and risk the wrath of the global community by having to change course.
“We liked the fact that the license (similar to the BUSL/FSL license) is finally open source, under the MIT license, but gives us some protection while we invest heavily in it,” Chacon said. “We want to be able to protect our employees and investors while giving our users as much access and freedom as possible.”
GitHub is actually a good starting point for discussing the fair source movement. Owned by Microsoft A code hosting platform is essential for open source software, and GitHub is now open source Several of Its own internal tools Over the years. However, GitHub is not open source. Former GitHub CEO Tom Preston Werner I wrote about this very topic. In 2011, he spoke about the virtues of open source software and described what should be blocked. He wrote: “Don’t make anything that has essential business value open source.”
This is the approach Chacon takes in his latest project.
“My philosophy is to make available anything that you wouldn’t mind or even prefer your competitors to use,” he said. “I think if the fair source principle had existed 15 years ago, we might have made GitHub’s source public under a license like this.”
Other companies joining the early-stage expo enthusiasm include YC-alum Code makers; Power Sync; Ptah.Sh; and Key Generator Keyits founder Zeke Gabrielsi Whiteacre is partnering with Wetacre to address governance related to new fair sourcing applications.
“Our governance at this point is proportionate to the scale of the initiative, so it’s up to me and Zeke, and our decision-making is public on GitHub, and anyone is free to weigh in,” Whitaker said, adding that there may be scope for creating independent oversight in the future — though it’s not a priority at the moment.
“We’re really planting the seed and seeing where it goes,” Whitaker said. “It’s a long play, so we’ll develop the structure along the way.”
