Comment by michaelt

Comment by michaelt 4 hours ago

8 replies

To me, this seems kinda reasonable.

The reality is licenses are all nonsense and none of it makes any sense. There could be secret patents nobody knows about. That precise wording written by American lawyers might not hold up in Chinese courts. There might be two compatible licenses, but one is 20x the length of the other; obviously some legal expert thought those extra words were needed - but are they? What's going on with linking and derivative works? Do you need to copy-and-paste the full legal blurb into every single file, or not? Why are some sections written in all caps, and does the reason for doing that apply globally? What if someone claimed to have the right to contribute code to an open project but actually had an employment contract meaning the code wasn't theirs to transfer? What's the copyright status of three-line stackoverflow answers?

The truth is nobody knows, and nobody cares. You and I won't get sued, probably, and if we do it's not like we'd have avoided it by reading the license. Might as well ignore it, like people ignore website terms of use and software click-through licenses and other legal mumbo-jumbo.

On the other hand, if you're the kind of gigantic enterprise that has policies on software licenses and a team of in-house lawyers and you can't use this software without greater license clarity? Well, you can get that licensing clarity with the enterprise version of the software.

throwaway150 4 hours ago

I have used many open source tools and I have convinced my company to buy the commercial license of the said tools to get the enterprise version and support. Win-win for both parties. I use and improve my skills on the open source version of the tools I love. Our company uses great tools. The project maintainers get paid.

But I don't think I'll ever buy an enterprise version of the software which can't get the simple matter of open source licensing right. It isn't that hard. Thousands of developers are doing it.

If the tool was totally enterprise version only, I'd probably have less qualms about it. But to advertise a tool as open source license but then violate the open source licensing method both in spirit and the letter of the law is just too unprofessional for me that I'd steer clear of them in future and discourage anyone I know from spending their money on them.

bogwog 4 hours ago

The AGPL accomplishes the same thing, except there is no ambiguity and you never have to wonder "could I be sued for using this software?"

ethin 4 hours ago

It isn't really reasonable though. The word "may" implies possibility, not absolutism. So reading the sentence logically, at least to me, saying that I "may be" able to license it under the AGPL means that I might or might not be able to do that... And I have no way of knowing if I can or can't unless I... What, contact them?

  • leoedin 3 hours ago

    I think in this case it implies choice for the user. There’s an implied “if you want to”. You may use this software if you want to in one of two ways:

    That’s pretty clear to me (a native speaker from the UK) - i can’t really see how else it could be interpreted. As another poster said, it’s the same “may” as “you may go to the washroom” or “you may enter now” - which implies consent from the speaker.

SpicyLemonZest 4 hours ago

Restrictions like this, where your code is only available for use for certain purposes by certain kinds of users, are explicitly rejected by both the open source and free software movements. If a developer wants to license their code this way, they should admit that what they're building is not an open source platform. Then they can simply use one of the licenses like CC NC or SSPL that are designed for that purpose, instead of trying to stitch together an unfree license out of a bunch of free ones.

thisislife2 4 hours ago

> But nobody will get sued, and that's the only thing that matters.

Do you really want to bet your business on that? Vizio thought the same when using GPL code, and now they are in court. Software Freedom Conservancy sues Vizio for GPL violations - https://www.zdnet.com/article/software-freedom-conservancy-s...

  • wmf 4 hours ago

    Vizio (and every other embedded vendor) knows they're breaking the GPL and they just don't care. It's not an analogous situation.

  • razingeden 4 hours ago

    I don’t think they’re worried about “my business.”

    Open source is notorious for being implemented in $$$ COTS and commerce and then contributing $0 in money and then even less in contribs bug fixes or sharing in house tweaks,isn’t this what Wordpress has been melting down over for a year or two now?

    And I’m sure many more projects are pissed off or resenting their chains but not making an ugly scene about it.

    Something has to give here.

    I don’t have a dog in this fight other than to say that what mattermost went with here “is a choice” , and I have “a choice” whether to accept these terms.

    I’m interested in watching how it plays out though. They cast their die. Problems have solutions. We could all get into whether this solution is viable or not — doesn’t matter this is what they went with and they made it clear they’re not taking user input on it. I’m not even a user so I expect them to care even less about my thoughts.

    Im supportive of anyone trying to find an equitable balance but maybe that’s a situation where they could roll their own license with these clauses and exclusions.

    Its not like Microsoft or iTunes user agreements aren’t complete bullshit, yet people click okay and use all that.