Fair-code is not a software license. It describes a software model where software:
- is generally free to use and can be distributed by anybody
- has its source code openly available
- can be extended by anybody in public and private communities
- is commercially restricted by its authors
Damn this community is getting really toxic. Instead of addressing the huge elephant in the room (people getting jack shit for building great things and their labor being stolen by profit seeking entities), lets jump on the people who are trying to do something about it.
I think the idea of maintainers getting a kickback from downstream profits is a great thing and hugely better than normal foss.
P.S.: a system where you can just relicense the work of contributors with a CLA and profit off of them is not an inch better than this.
You’re upset that a community called “open source” is pushing back against an attempt to co-opt the open source label? In my view this attempt is highly insidious and far worse than one corporate actor “stealing” (i.e. using) an open source project. These projects were all true free software before pulling the rug on the community and switching to a fauxpen source license, which makes it even worse - if these were proprietary from the beginning no one would have cared, but also fewer people would have contributed, because it doesn’t feel as good doing volunteer work for a proprietary product.
I agree there needs to be a mechanism in place for free software developers to be financially compensated but if you’re changing the license so that it’s no longer free software then it’s just proprietary software under some faux “open” label, at which point you might just drop the pretense of being “open” at all - just admit you’re a proprietary software company that puts your financial interest ahead of the community’s.
Long text for a really short topic: ideology
Software can be free and open while not allowing megacorps to profit without kicking back.
Being in this community regularly feels like coming to some backwater town where people gasp if you take the lords name in vain.
Wake up. There is no „we make free software and everyone loves each other“. People helping get shut down because they „arent submitting PRs“ but open issues because the maintainers barely have the time to look into issues. If you ask people in this community what they do to help, they respond with i cant code as if that was the only way to help.
The companies sucking in the profits made off of honest people‘s work is kneecapping open source development.
The absolute best joke in it all is that „free and open source software“ isnt at all free. I‘m not free to have individuals use it for free and companies pay because tHaTs nOt fReE. It is thinly veiled corporate exploitation and both corpos and the people with open eyes know it.
There’s a certain irony, I think - the original free software movement was based on ensuring the users’ freedom to use, modify, and share software. “Open source” came about as a “business friendly” rebranding of Stallman’s movement (see Open source misses the point). Naturally, being friendly to business doesn’t mean business will be friendly back. That is to say, I acknowledge the unhealthy relationship between “business friendly open source” and the proprietary software industry.
That said, it should be extremely obvious that most hardline free software supporters like Richard Stallman and Drew DeVault (https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/20/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your-monopoly.html) are far from “corporate bootlickers” the latter of which even runs an (actual) free software company (and yet also started this community fork of Redis).
If you can’t make money from free software then feel free to sell proprietary software instead. What we take issue with is the attempt to co-opt the open source label, the attacks on real free software/open source, and (especially in this thread) the incessant name calling and accusations of bootlickery (while also characterizing anyone who pushes back as being “toxic”). Maybe we’re not just simping for Amazon here, maybe we actually see the forest for the trees and recognize the dangers of normalizing fauxpen source licenses.
I acknowledge that you take the time and - in stark opposition to many other members of this community over many posts and months - keep a professional stance.
The reason you‘re seeing namecalling is that you‘re nearly alone in communicating in a normal and constructive matter so the the fronts here are hardened a lot.
That said, most hardline folks are either highly privileged (have enough money so they dont have to make money in their time) or plain acting in bad faith (not being developers/contributors/maintainers but having an opinion in the matter).
So, stripping these away, you have a very heterogeneous group which could come to an agreement how to make both sides happy that is not „then use proprietary license“ because thats not fair to people making software you and I can use, change and fix if we so wish.
Besides ideological reasons („if I cant do everything with it its not free“ and „maintainers dont deserve more than one-line-contributors“) there is very little reason to go hard line on this.
And the „coopt open source label“ is also a populist argument because hard lining is coopting the whole thing in its own way. Nobody has the right to choose what a certain chain of words actually is. Language is developing and changes over time.
Mark my words: Being „no negotioation“ on this topic is going to break the whole idea of FOSS and helps corpos and nobody else
So far, I haven’t seen a realistic proposition for OSI opensource projects to get fairly compensated or protected from leechers like mega-corps. If you’re some widely used project without marketing like xz, then nobody cares about financing you until something big happens. I’ll just make a post asking what people realistically expect should be done, because it does pique my interest now.
Anti Commercial-AI license
I know mate. You know I pretty much stand behind 99% of your posts and comments. I feel the same way about this. But I’m taking real issue with the treatment the members of this sub give to people who are asking uncomfortable questions.
Unless you’re a single developer, how are you supposed to profit off your own work without making contributors sign a CLA with these licenses? You only “own” the code you write personally, so AFAIU with these licenses making money off of your code becomes harder the more contributors you have (regardless of the amount they contributed).
I personally dont care if only the maintainers get money for maintaining the stuff while I contribute.
People really have to understand that 10 lines of code arent what makes a project cool. Its a person (or multiple) working on issues day in day out and those are the ones profiting.
Sometimes this issue feels like the low income folks voting pro billionaires because they could profit from that. Its like they have been lobotomized.
If you want to get paid, maintain, imo.
I agree with you, but as long as many developers don’t the situation stays the same (since the law is technically on their side without a CLA or similar).
Or I just use a faircode license and be done with that crap. :)
You missed my point - a fair code license doesn’t change copyright law, so if you’re not the sole developer you can’t easily commercialize your own code, by design.
This is in contrast to free software licenses, which allow anyone to commercialize the code.
Ok, maybe I missed your point. Pretty sure the licenses mentioned on the fair code website are legal and allow you to do just that. If I need to have people sign a cla then I‘ll do it. I‘m not getting robbed so a person submitting 1 line can say they get the same as the maintainer (nothing).
The licenses are legal and allow you to monetize code - but they place restrictions on how it can be done, by design.
A restriction common to all those licenses is that you must own the code to monetize it.
If you create a project with a license like this and require a CLA for contributions, why would I not look for a different to project to contribute to? You’re literally telling me only you are allowed to profit from the code I write. Some people will be okay with this, but many won’t (note that current FOSS licenses allow you to monetize the code even if you did sign a CLA).
OTOH, a company trying to get free cotributions while hampering their competition will greatly benefit from such a license.
So these licenses benefit scummy companies, and make the lives of independent maintainers harder, while lowering the potential for contribution. They are objectively worse than what we have now, and are clearly not free licenses
I accept your argument, it is the same that others have made 100 times. It still does in no way address the issue that the people making these licenses try to address. Instead of actively trying to work together to form something that changes this rotten situation, people poke holes in the efforts of others. But alas.
Yes and no. In this fictional situation where you write noteworthy amounts of code for the software I maintain alone, which already gets used by revenue-producing entities and earns some money, you would rightfully ask to be taken on as maintainer and become part of the group profiting from the software, no?
This would obviously also raise the amount of malicious effort to be taken on as maintainer just to leech on code and that issue would be needed to be addressed. But I dont see how your point is more valid than mine.
I feel like most people arguing against this stuff dont really play these scenarios through and always have the big scummy company in mind that coopts this honest idea. But in the meantime they throw every developer and maintainer under the bus that only wants to write code for everyone and keeps getting exploited by his employer (because foss software doesnt pay, duh), who gets chewed on by his users all while someone takes their product and sells it for profit.
„Why not sell it yourself?“ is always a bad faith argument imo. I believe nobody who says they actually make money with foss and also are decent indipendent programmers. As seen in recent events, only the shiny projects get any amount of donations and even that is laughable. The lemmy devs would be millionaires already if they were a company.
Feel free to counter my point.