
FSF marks commons clause as non-free, recommends users fork software using it - DannyBee
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/recent-licensing-updates
======
metildaa
This judgement by the FSF is unsurprising, Commond Clause is like the Patriot
Act, a purposeful misnomer by its authors to attempt to gain unearned goodwill
& respect.

~~~
eganist
> Commond [sic] Clause is like the Patriot Act, a purposeful misnomer by its
> authors to attempt to gain unearned goodwill & respect.

The author (not plural) describes in depth the differences between recognized
open source licenses v. the commons clause
([https://commonsclause.com/](https://commonsclause.com/)) and also describes
her intent behind developing the license. Specific emphasis appears to have
been devoted toward distinguishing this license as being distinctly non-open
in the FAQ _printed on the root of the domain._

(To be clear: I have no affiliation with the author or with this license and
any known implementations of it.)

~~~
metildaa
The Commons Clause is added as a restriction to existing open source licensed
projects, to those that aren't clued in that the Commons Clause has been
applied, they can easily be misled by this poorly named restriction.

~~~
kemitchell
Creative Commons offers noncommercial licenses even more restrictive than
Commons Clause.

I'd've picked a different name, too. But the idea that "commons" means only
open source, or only free software, doesn't sit right. Compared to pulling
their software back as fully closed or source-available, all-rights-reserved,
a Commons Clause combo makes a lot more available.

~~~
duskwuff
Creative Commons specifically recommends against the use of any of their
licenses for software. The CC licenses are primarily intended to be applied to
artistic works, and the NC/ND variants make a lot more sense in that context.

~~~
c22
They make an exception for CC0 though [0].

[0]
[https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC...](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC0_to_computer_software.3F_If_so.2C_is_there_a_recommended_implementation.3F)

~~~
cyphar
CC0 is basically a public domain contribution with a very permissive fallback,
and is very unlike any of their other licenses.

But this is getting off-track -- the CC licenses being discussed are the ones
other than CC0.

------
fro0116
Is the controversy here that the Commons Clause piggy backs on top of existing
free software licenses and thus could mislead users to think that software
using it is free software when it's in fact proprietary by their definitions?

As a part-time independent developer of software myself, I personally find the
combination of a free software license + Commons Clause to be very compelling.
I'm willing to grant to the user every right offered by free software licenses
with the exception of rights to commercial use.

If that means my software has to be labeled as proprietary by the FSF, so be
it, but at the same time I'd prefer not to mislead users into thinking my
software is being offered under a vanilla free software license.

Is there a proprietary license I can release my software under, with the
properties of a free software + commons clause license, that doesn't run the
risk of misleading users? If not, I'll likely continue releasing my software
under a free software + commons clause license, along with some kind of
disclaimer above the license section in the project's readme.

~~~
greglindahl
Free only for "non-commercial use" is a license style that failed in the
software ecosystem a long time ago. Feel free to choose that if you think it's
right for you and your goals, but if you were hoping to form a successful
community around your code, that's pretty unlikely.

~~~
kemitchell
I would say that forming a successful community around code is a slim prospect
under any license. The median contributor count on an open project is one or
two, depending on how you count.

Strongly recommend:
[https://youtu.be/vBknF2yUZZ8?t=80](https://youtu.be/vBknF2yUZZ8?t=80)

------
zeckalpha
I’m surprised there’s not a mention of AGPL as an alternative. While not
equivalent de jure, it seems to be equivalent de facto.

~~~
kemitchell
I'm really happy to see someone else emphasize the difference between the
effect AGPL has had, and what it actually says.

If you haven't already, take a look at MongoDB's Server Side Public License.
In particular, here's their submission statement to OSI:

[http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
review_lists.o...](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-
review_lists.opensource.org/2018-October/003603.html)

I've written about the license, and what I think it means politically, here:

[https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/04/Copyleft-Bust-
Up.h...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/04/Copyleft-Bust-Up.html)

------
ru999gol
Thats what killed Redis, good on them for warning about it.

[https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/22/Commons-clause-will-
destr...](https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/22/Commons-clause-will-destroy-open-
source.html)

~~~
cpburns2009
Isn't the "commons clause" only on a few modules? Redis itself is still BSD.

See:
[https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/](https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/)

~~~
jkaplowitz
They failed so badly at the PR around this change that many people overlooked
that fact. They still inflicted damage on their reputation.

It's kind of like how the Internet was left with the incorrect impression that
Google removed "don't be evil" from their Code of Conduct. (It's still there,
now at the end instead of the beginning after a rewording. The new parent
company Alphabet has a different but similar slogan; both apply to Google.
This is separate question, of course, from any more concrete discussion of
Google's current ethics than what their code of conduct says.)

------
chdurjchy
I'm still wrapping my head around the commons clause but I think I really like
it. The FSF licenses are designed to create a parallel open "copyleft"
ecosystem. However, they fall short of identifying capitalism as the system
that creates value in "copyright" and creates scarcity where none exists in
the name of profit. The commons clause has more revolutionary content in that
it prohibits participation in capitalism.

I'm trying to decide if there should be additional limitations or exemptions
for institutions that build a better more democratic and humane society. For
example, perhaps worker coops can use the software, but heirarchical
institutions cannot. Perhaps science and medicine can use it, but stores
cannot.

I recognize the point of the commons clause is a kind of rebellion within
capitalism against exploitation of individuals by business. However, like the
GPL, perhaps it's time to go further than copyleft and advance a real left
agenda by supporting left institutions.

~~~
bigiain
While I agree with you, and personally I think we're on the brink of (or
perhaps we've shot right past and just haven't noticed yet) a new kind of
software creation - some kind of "company-supported, source-available,
relatively-free-to-use, but with restrictions on uses that compete with or
financially benefit from things the company that mostly funds the software do"
thing. I don't know if it'll work out long term, or if it does whether it'll
be a good thing or a bad thing, but I think it's worth a shot to see what
happens when you pursue those ideas, and will be watching RedisLabs and
MongoDB (and others) with interest over the coming years.

There's a very left leaning socialist part of me who thinks "That's bad.
Apache and MySQL and Perl/Python/PHP and many many other genuinely free
software projects have worked fine for decades now, why change to less free
alternatives if Stallman-style free software can and does work?", but there's
also a pragmatic part of me that thinks "I wonder what new software might come
into existence if companies can afford to hire teams of devs and architects
(and QA people and tech writers and and and) by limiting _some_ of the freedom
to allow themselves to generate revenue more easily, without limiting anything
like as much freedom as, say, Microsoft or Oracle do?" Personally, I don't
think I'll be contributing to any "commons clause" restricted software, but I
_do_ wish the people experimenting with that new model the best of luck and
have some optimism that it _might_ open up new and unexpected opportunities as
it changes the landscape around how software gets written, shared, and
monetised.

------
tannhaeuser
It's not surprising FSF sees the Commons Clause as non-F/OSS according to
their definition.

The question, though, is whether OSI's taxonomy is even relevant today when
there are other, more imminent concerns. Namely, if you want your software
project to contribute to software and information monopolization in "the
cloud" and on very few content aggregation sites such as Fb, github, and
others that themselves don't reciprocally allow eg. indie search crawlers and
untracked linking.

~~~
saagarjha
This is a different issue, as you yourself have mentioned. And it has an easy
solution: you are free to host the code yourself if you don’t like putting it
on a centralized service.

~~~
tannhaeuser
That's exactly the kind of limited perspective I'm questioning. FSF bases
their copyleft concept on ethical beliefs. But what are the ethics of
publishing your project on github such that your user's clicks are tracked,
and you can't even scrape github for building up a search index unless you're
GoogleBot or Bing? What are the ethics of giving your labor to cloud providers
working hard to lock users in to their ecosystem? What is ethical about OSI's
no-purpose-limitation criterion such that your software can be easily
weaponized in one form or another? What is ethical about promoting the idea
that software developers need to give all their work away such that only very
few cloud providers can benefit, to the detriment of financing further
development and maintenance?

~~~
saagarjha
I still don't understand your point. The GPL provides none of the protections
you are asking for, since I am free to post my code wherever I see fit. Are
you asking for protections as to where I am legally allowed to host my code?

------
inasring
"So if anyone tries to convince you that Commons Clause is wrong because it
doesn't meet all the requirements of the Open Source Definition, you should
ask them if proprietary is better."

"Freedom for others to commercialize your software comes with starting an open
source project, and while that freedom is important to uphold, growth and
commercial pressures will inevitably force some projects to close."

[https://commonsclause.com/](https://commonsclause.com/)

~~~
LukeShu
_> "you should ask them if proprietary is better [than Commons Clause]."_

Neither is better, because they are the same. Commons Clause _is_ proprietary.

If a piece of FOSS that I used became proprietary, I would fork (or use a
fork) based on the last FOSS version. Just because the Commons Clause kinda
looks like it's FOSS if you squint, doesn't make it any different.

~~~
int_19h
Commons Clause is clearly neither Free Software nor Open Source, but I don't
see how that makes it proprietary.

~~~
LukeShu
Well, the FSF defines "“proprietary software” as synonymous with nonfree
software."[1] But that's kind of a cop-out answer.

"Proprietary" means that the copyright holder retains certain rights, rather
than granting the rights to the recipient. In the case of the Commons Clause,
the rights that they retain propriety of are the rights to commercial use.

[1]:
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#ProprietarySo...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#ProprietarySoftware)

~~~
int_19h
When someone releases their software under GPL, they still retain certain
rights rather than granting them to the recipient - notably, the right to sell
it commercially without providing the source, and without requiring the buyers
to adhere to the terms of the GPL. This is clearly a valuable right, seeing
how many companies have business models that are built around dual-licensing
GPL'd code for commercial proprietary use.

Strictly speaking, the only license that doesn't have the copyright holder
retaining any rights is the lack of one (i.e. releasing to public domain). If
you're not releasing to PD, that's necessarily because you want to retain
_some_ rights. And then it's just a question of which ones. GPL has one
answer, something like MIT has another, and Commons Clause has another still.
I fail to see what makes some of them proprietary, while others are not.

From my perspective, if I can get the code, hack on it, and release the
changed version to others who can also do all of these things in turn, that's
enough to make it non-proprietary already. Proprietary is when the software is
closed source outright, or the source is provided for "educational use only"
(i.e. no derived works allowed), or when derived works cannot be
redistributed. Licenses that allow redistribution of patches, but not original
code with patches applies, would be the grey territory.

~~~
atq2119
> Strictly speaking, the only license that doesn't have the copyright holder
> retaining any rights is the lack of one (i.e. releasing to public domain).

This is a bit nit-picking, but releasing without a license is pretty much the
opposite of releasing to the public domain.

If you release without anything, the raw unmodified copyright laws apply,
which are rather strict and give the recipient basically no rights - certainly
no right to redistribution.

You have to make some kind of explicit statement if you want to release
something into the public domain. That's why things like CC0 exist.

