
Enterpriseification - feross
https://blog.licensezero.com/2019/04/24/enterpriseification.html
======
filesystemdude
To be absolutely clear, neither of these "License Zero" licenses are open
source or open source compatible in any way whatsoever.

Both explicitly violate the first principle of the Open Source Definition
([https://opensource.org/osd-annotated](https://opensource.org/osd-
annotated)), free redistribution.

We have the open source licenses we do for a reason. They've been vetted. They
work. They meet established criteria. It's okay to consider new ones, but the
process for that isn't just to make something up and hope it works.

Amateurs have no more business playing lawyer and writing general-purpose
software licenses than they do playing doctor and handing out surgical advice.
It's not thought-provoking, it's dangerous and harmful to people who don't
understand why licenses like this could cause them huge unmitigated legal
headaches down the road.

~~~
kemitchell
I’d agree that Prosperity is not an open source license, but I still
emphatically maintain that Parity is.

Moreover, the arguments against them I’ve heard haven’t been based in lack of
free distribution or OSD 1. Anyone is free to redistribute Prosperity- and
Parity-licensed code.

Amateur is ad hominem, and also simply incorrect. I won’t pretend my views are
consensus, but I have spent a lot of time with OSD, and the result has been
disappointment, not reverence. See:

[https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/05/OSD-Copyleft-
Regul...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/05/OSD-Copyleft-
Regulation.html)

[https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/04/23/OSD-
wontfix.html](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/04/23/OSD-wontfix.html)

~~~
dragonwriter
> I’d agree that Prosperity is not an open source license, but I still
> emphatically maintain that Parity is.

It's very clearly not.

> Moreover, the arguments against them I’ve heard haven’t been based in lack
> of free distribution or OSD 1.

While I see arguments on OSD 1, I’d agree that's not the _clearest_ problem.
Clause 3 of Parity runs directly contrary to OSD 9. (Oddly enough, Parity
_might_ just be the odd license that manages to be a Free Software license
without being an Open Source license, though, as the Free Software Definition
doesn't have anything equivalent to OSD 9, even though the two definitions
usually either both fit or both don't fit licenses.)

~~~
kemitchell
> It's very clearly not.

You're not the only one who's said it's not, and I'm not the only one who's
said it clearly is.

> Clause 3 of Parity runs directly contrary to OSD 9.

There is nothing clear about OSD 9, or at least nothing to do with the reach
of copyleft:

[https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/05/OSD-Copyleft-
Regul...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/05/OSD-Copyleft-
Regulation.html#osd9)

------
nathanaldensr
Holy cow, what a rambling mess this blog article is. Perhaps I'm just tired
after a long, arduous day negotiating corporate life. Does anyone know what
the author is trying to say?

~~~
kemitchell
The author does!

------
sciurus
This post makes more sense if you know what license zero is.

> License Zero is a new way to support open software developers.

Contributors can choose from two new licenses, Parity and Prosperity, that
make their work free for not-for-profit or open-source users, then sell
private licenses to other devs who want to use for profit or in closed source.
Everything happens through a simple, dev-friendly interface.

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

~~~
nickpsecurity
I'll add a blog post that describes his thinking and main licenses pretty
well:

[https://blog.licensezero.com/2018/10/26/no-other-
terms.html](https://blog.licensezero.com/2018/10/26/no-other-terms.html)

------
vortico
The name "license zero" might be a bit too close to the CC0 license. Maybe a
rename might be a good idea? It also doesn't describe the license accurately.

~~~
kemitchell
The project’s been going for a while now, and I haven’t heard of anyone
confusing License Zero, or one of the public licenses it stewards, for CC0.

I called the project “License Zero” to reference its impossible goal: reduce
the marginal cost of dual licensing, over simply receiving a public license,
to zero.

------
jacques_chester
I work for an OSS enterprise software vendor which competes with other OSS
enterprise software vendors.

The characterisation that license indemnity is the bulk of our value added is,
putting it mildly, an incomplete one.

~~~
kemitchell
If I implied as much, could you mention where in the post?

The table under scope specifically addresses differences in _licensing_
expectations, rather than related services like maintenance, support,
training, and integration. The string of questions under Scope mention the
call for a broader, vendor relationship behind the code. I mention that
Tidelift layers on maintenance assurances, aside from the license.

This post is inside baseball, and I’m surprised to see it on the front page of
HN. But I’d like to make it clearer if I can.

~~~
Terretta
Commenting unofficially as an open source fan inside a globally giant
enterprise, your post (a) made sense, (b) was circulated to folks much less
familiar with these concerns.

The table was particularly helpful, and at least this global enterprise is
well aware of all the other nonsense it didn’t cover. I would have found
adding those to the table to lessen your focused point about license openness
and pitfalls vs. need of the ecosystem to be sustainable.

~~~
kemitchell
I suppose I might have listed "form a company to commercialize" as one of the
approaches, and tagged it as the one with greatest flexibility to add more
offerings on top of license rights. I think License Zero, Tidelift, and other
"sustainability as a service" offerings exist largely because the overhead of
company-based commercialization is so high, and it doesn't scale well down to
very small open source projects.

------
Aeolun
Did anyone elseo reado that as a blogo posto?

~~~
Aeolun
I guess not then. The arrow icons after every link make it really hard
(funky?) to read.

