
Why Open Source Needs New Licenses - aleksi
https://medium.com/@michaeldehaan/why-open-source-needs-new-licenses-d2d9d819a10
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mindcrime
_Unfortunately, that ship has sailed._

Yes, it has. And the accepted definition of "Open Source" is the OSI Open
Source Definition.

 _I will now prepare for the negative feedback by those who have a vested
commercial interest in me being wrong :)_

Nice rhetorical trick... set up a strawman of sorts by pre-assuming that
anybody who disagrees with you _must_ have "a vested commercial interest in
... being wrong". That really makes it seem like the author of TFA isn't
interested in any kind of reasonable / rational discussion on this topic.

Oh well, I'll just add this:

1\. Open Source is _not_ a business model. And if you make code Open Source,
nothing guarantees that you will be able to make money from it. There are lots
of reasons to think that you might, but you're not entitled to any particular
profit from your work (this would also be true if it were proprietary / closed
source).

2\. If somebody else makes money off your project, that doesn't necessarily
mean that _you_ can't also make money off of it, and it's not necessarily even
the case that your competing with the other player. There are many different
bases for competition and different market segments and you may well find that
the customers you're selling to are a different segment with different buying
criteria. So it's not even guaranteed that this is a zero-sum game.

3\. If you don't want to release your code under an Open Source license (as
defined by the OSD) then don't. That's fine. Stallman and the FSF hard-liners
aside, most of us are OK with the existence of proprietary software (even if
we prefer to use/develop F/OSS). But _don 't call your project Open Source if
it isn't_. Is that so much to ask?

4\. There are plenty of licenses out there that are "source available",
"shared source", "shareware", "proprietary", or "almost-but-not-quite-OSS". If
one of those licenses matches your goals better than an OSI certified OSS
license, then USE IT. Or, make your own new license, with whatever terms you
prefer. But, again, if those terms don't conform to the OSD, don't try to
pretend you're doing something you're not, by referring to the thing as "Open
Source". Just be honest, for crying out loud.

