Comment by sfRattan

> Authors using Fair want to share their code while getting protections for themselves. Strong copyleft doesn't care about authors and is all about protecting the end users.

This is a one-sided assertion of fairness, and therefore an abuse of the concept. Free software offers the same rights to both authors and users. That is fairness.

If you want to reserve rights to yourself that are withheld from end-users, that's fine. Arguably even still within a broader conceptual realm of fairness. But naming your personally preferred arrangement of rights "fair" and in so doing implying most or all other arrangements are unfair is just plain arrogant.

Strong copyleft cares equally about authors and end-users. It doesn't disregard authors. Some authors just want to co-opt the general notion of fairness to mean their own licensing preferences.

Call it a non-compete license and be forthright.

Allow me to try a analogy.

You and sfRattan rightfully pointing to a disease (large cloud providers using true free software to make money without contributing back). But "fair source" cure is a new, unproven drug with serious side effects, all while ignoring the established, effective vaccine (strong copyleft GPL/AGPL and dual-licensing), that has been available for decades. The rise of "fair source" is both as sign of "market panic" and just "marketing". It does not seem to be necessary or good evolution for software freedom.

That was HIGHLY abstract... So much so that I am not sure it maps onto reality, but I at least think this is a valid concern.

> Git clone, problem solved.

What a myopic assumption. Availability of source code doesn't solve the legal problems that can arise in the wake corporate restructuring, as new owners work to impede forking and continuing a project outside their control.

Continuing a project in the wake of total organizational failure or capture means setting up legal entities to replace the broken/subverted ones. That's a problem separate from "is the code out there on the Internet for me to download?"

In comparison to the GPL and AGPL, "fair" source licenses are at best hastily drawn. They certainly do not have decades of accrued favorable legal precedent. They are often short and ambiguous because their authors have not imagined half the use cases they might potentially forbid in the name of "fairness". All these qualities are miasmal to long term project stability.

You're welcome! :)

> It's silly to be angry at a firm for wanting to be closed source, but if they start out pretending to be fully open source and community-motivated, while receiving lots of coding contributions, then suddenly do a rug-pull by removing features from the community edition and paywalling all important features, that is something a lot of us are going to be annoyed by.

Indeed, and that is why assessing the long term viability of an open-source or free software project means looking at multiple variables. This thread has mostly been about licenses, but there's also literal distribution of ownership... Both ownership of copyright and of corporation.

Is the code's copyright owned by the company and does the company only accept contributions with a contributor license agreement that transfers copyright to itself? Potential red flag. They're keeping the door open for an attempt to rug-pull, but they also might just be trying to do business via dual licensing.

Is the code's copyright owned by too many people to ever feasibly relicense? Green flag, as long as a healthy foundation exists to keep things on track (e.g. Blender Foundation or The Document Foundation).

Is the company publicly traded or has it accepted large amounts of investment? Red flag. Those investors will demand a rug-pull the moment the lines on their sacred monthly and quarterly graphs stop going up.

Is the company closely held by a few people? Potential green flag, depending on the people.