
The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source - ddevault
https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/22/Commons-clause-will-destroy-open-source.html
======
kup0
Regardless of whether or not it is harmful to open source, I find the choice
to use two words beginning with C (thus CC as an acronym) flawed, as that
abbreviation is typically used to refer to Creative Commons, and Commons
Clause and Creative Commons sound quite similar too since they both use the
word Commons.

I would hope this was not an intentional choice to sow confusion.

Edit: obvious spelling error :)

~~~
rectang
Between the name, the abbreviation, and the suggested usage of "Apache +
Commons Clause" for a proprietary offering, this "Commons Clause" project has
severe problems with deceptive messaging.

If it was unintentional it was incredibly foolish; if it was deliberate....

Either way it should be junked.

~~~
codeflo
The plus sign suggests an additional right, as a dual license would offer,
instead, it _removes_ rights from the Apache license. I don't think that's an
accident because judging from the website, this seems to be a very serious
attempt to put a positive spin on "look but don't touch" style proprietary
licensing schemes. Fuck this.

~~~
AstralStorm
In other words, it is no longer Apache license and it is NOT ALLOWED to use
Apache Software Foundation trademark Apache.

Call it Indian license or what not.

This is unlike GPL which allows the use of the name as long as the clauses are
not restrictive.

~~~
riffraff
how can extra clauses not be restrictive? I mean, if they don't add new
restrictions, what do they do?

~~~
beaner
I guess a clause could specify exemptions to previous clauses.

~~~
codeflo
Exactly. This used to be quite common, see for example
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception)

------
marcinzm
Another problematic aspect of this is that to me the Redis situation seems
like a corporate grab of open source software after the fact.

By that I mean, Redis Labs are not the creators of Redis. They are a
consulting agency that then hired the creator of Redis. In other words, they
only exist because the original Redis was not Commons Clause. Now they want to
build a moat so others can't do what they did.

Not a good precedent.

~~~
fh973
Fake news, according to the man himself:
[http://antirez.com/news/120](http://antirez.com/news/120)

The whole thing is evidently not about Redis, but modules that were developed
by Redis Labs.

~~~
Someone1234
People need to stop using the term "fake news" it is more a meme at this point
than constructive English.

Even reading that statement and assuming the best intentions I can see why
people would be upset/concerned. Redis has gone from Open Source to "Open
Core" with some of the best modules now essentially paid for.

~~~
paganel
> People need to stop using the term "fake news" it is more a meme at this
> point than constructive English.

Just yesterday the most powerful politician from my country (a EU and NATO
member) said during a live interview on prime-time TV that George Soros had
sent 4 men in order to assassinate him last year (spoiler alert: they didn't
succeed, even though they had been checked-in at the local Hilton hotel). His
right-hand man had an interview the day before that saying that the KGB (yes,
the Russian KGB) had tried to recruit him (spoiler alert: apparently the
Russians didn't succeed). All I want to say is that "fake news" is indeed a
live and active concept, just trying to hide it under the rug won't bring back
the former, saner times.

~~~
JackFr
I think you miss the point .

Call a lie a lie, and don't trivialize it with the cute meme of the day.

~~~
paganel
> cute meme of the day.

I don't think I'm missing anything, I'm afraid "fake news" is here to stay, is
what propaganda was back in the 1920s and '30s. Calling it a "lie" means that
the person saying the lie and those "receiving" it would change their views
once the lie is "exposed", but under the current media and political climate
I'm afraid that won't happen anymore, i.e. people will keep believing the
"fake news" no matter if it would get "exposed" or not.

------
XiZhao
Kevin Wang here. Thanks Drew for the thoughtful post.

I can accept that you might not appreciate my work on the Commons Clause, but
I'm glad to see you acknowledge why funding OSS is so difficult.

I think it's okay to fear the world of open source becoming a bit more closed.
I do too. Whether that's a better world or not is up to debate, but I
certainly don't think so.

I think where we might disagree is what the greatest threat to "open-ness" is.
Sometimes people do bad things to open source projects, and force them to go
closed. The license choice will inevitably follow -- and when they do, they
can choose to close the source entirely or choose a licensing scheme that
makes it available.

Licensing follows intent, and I certainly don't think the Clause inspires
people to close their source. But sometimes people need to change their
license -- and I think it's unrealistic to say that this doesn't happen.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Hi Kevin, Drew here. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I appreciate your response, but I find it frustratingly vauge. What kinds of
bad things happen to open source projects that drive them to this? If you are
fearful of open source becoming more closed, why are you promoting that very
approach?

Did you consider promoting alternatives like AGPL first? Before I see an
option violating one of the four essential freedoms I would really like to see
a detailed exposition on why the AGPL or other approaches discussed in my
article are not suitable. I don't think that the brief summary on AGPL on your
website is detailed enough - it doesn't have any specific criticisms of AGPL.

The problem with "needing to change their license" is that it's really just a
few people who "need" to change it. In reality, open source projects are
community works, and even the maintainers don't have the (certainly moral, and
usually legal) right to change the license.

I think your Commons Clause gives vulnerable people (open source maintainers
struggling to make ends meet) an easy but despicable option for their
projects. Especially in cases like Redis, where a company has ulterior motives
and employs the maintainers, they can strongarm maintainers into making
choices which are not in the best interests of the project.

~~~
XiZhao
The Clause was drafted as a reactionary move to solve against specific bad
behavior. I'm not entirely sure it's my place to call out these actors (I'll
leave that to the users of the Clause), but our job was to open up an option
that isn't quite "screw this, let's go full closed source".

See the commons clause FAQ for answers to your other questions:

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

~~~
DannyBee
No, it's not bad behavior, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of open source
economic models, and a desire to have your cake and eat it too.

I will steal an argument from a friend who has been doing free software/open
source for 30+ years now.

Y'all created a bunch of open source software, it became valuable. Y'all think
that you should get to extract some percentage of that value, and that others
being able to do it instead is "bad behavior".

But this is very very wrong, and if that is your understanding of open source,
you really should say screw it, and take your ball elsewhere. Try it. See if
you can create the same amount of value.

In fact, it is your attempt to "extract your share" that is the bad behavior.
You cannot, in fact, have your cake and eat it too. If you and others all get
to extract your "fair share", that software will cease to exist. This is not
theoretical, this is what has happened every time. That is because the value
exists because you made the software free. If you didn't, people would have
used something else that was free and worked well enough. Also not
theoretical. When i review diligence from companies as part of M&A, the _vast_
majority (90-99%) of software is free software, not commercial software.

This paradox has existed since free/open source/etc software was created. The
solution traditionally is for developers to just be happy creating cool
software and making a living on it. I have rarely, if ever, seen this fail to
work at the scale seen here. It certainly fails in smaller scales, but you are
not solving that problem even a little.

Instead these claims of bad behavior only seem to come up when people see a
billion dollar ecosystem and think they deserve 50% of it.

You are pretty much never going to get anyone worked up over that. Because
they shouldn't be. Of all the injustice in this world, this doesn't even
register.

~~~
XiZhao
Many conditions of a project can change when it goes from being a small
community to a business that supports billions of revenue with its software.

Ultimately, the Clause is not meant to transition an open source project with
the intention of staying open, it's to keep as much openness as possible when
events happen that force a project to close certain things.

I think a lot of the fear is that this will make a lot of open projects close
up. This is not the case. Other things are forcing projects to close, and
ignoring those forces and blaming it on evil investors and business people is
not only disconnected from reality -- it's a really sad an un-empathetic view
towards those that _actually_ develop this software (actually = git commit
history).

~~~
Bartweiss
> _Other things are forcing projects to close, and ignoring those forces and
> blaming it on evil investors and business people is not only disconnected
> from reality -- it 's a really sad an un-empathetic view_

Please, _please_ clarify what those 'other things' are.

Both the Commons Clause FAQ and your comments here repeatedly imply this is
about handling "specific bad behavior", "other things... forcing projects to
close", and "the most predatory of use cases". But nowhere is there any
clarity about what these dark forces _are_. What's 'predatory'? Are we talking
about harassment by contributors? Extortion by lawsuit? Cloud hosting for a
fee? Just contributors undercutting the business offerings?

The only motive explicitly clarified in the FAQ is the need to monetize, which
is what Drew's piece challenged. In response there's this suggestion that the
clause is actually defensive against some sort of attack by contributors and
so it won't affect most people. In the comments here, you've said it's not
your place to call out specific actors, but haven't given any example of what
sort of behavior you mean.

It sounds like there's a real problem here, deeper than "we want to make money
like RedisLabs", but this conversation is hopeless as long as that problem
goes unstated. I don't think it's fair to say people are being un-empathetic
to actual developers when no one can understand what situation we're supposed
to be showing empathy about.

~~~
christefano
> It sounds like there's a real problem here, deeper than "we want to make
> money like RedisLabs", but this conversation is hopeless as long as that
> problem goes unstated. I don't think it's fair to say people are being un-
> empathetic to actual developers when no one can understand what situation
> we're supposed to be showing empathy about.

This.

------
djsumdog
I wish there were more publications on how open source is really funded.
Earlier Linux and BSD kernels were made by a combination of researchers,
people with spare time, volunteers as well as big companies who paid people
full time. We see much more of the latter. Intel has an entire OSS division in
Portland, OR that writes most of the drives, works on Linux kernel patches,
etc. Nintendo and Sony both use big parts of the BSD TCP stack in their
operating systems and have an interest in contributing and keeping it up to
date.

But open source didn't depend on these funding models in the 90s/2000s did it?
I did a whole post on the philosophy of open source a while back:

[https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-
source...](https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-
community-and-enterprise-software/)

..but one of the things I didn't find enough sources on where a lot of funding
came from (And percentage of volunteer contributors).

This recent Redis things reminds me of the Caddy controversy, and maybe even
more recently, how Win/Mac Docker binaries are behind a login wall.

What changed? Do developers no longer have the time to volunteer to work on
this stuff? The desire? Is the demand for tech in The Valley/West Cost
changing the dynamics of how much time people have to contribute. Were the
earlier efforts way less commercial and new efforts moving much faster and
requirement more maintenance/resources?

~~~
DannyBee
"What changed? Do developers no longer have the time to volunteer to work on
this stuff? The desire? Is the demand for tech in The Valley/West Cost
changing the dynamics of how much time people have to contribute. Were the
earlier efforts way less commercial and new efforts moving much faster and
requirement more maintenance/resources?

"

What's changed is that once open source started getting serious VC's, people
believe they've created tons of value, and should be able to extract some of
it (in reality, the model created most of the value, not them).

In the past, people were just relatively happy to be doing okay for themselves
while created cool software.

Once you try to move to "value extraction", things become a lot thornier
because you discover you aren't as important as you thought you were - your
attempts to extract value fail. Usually, because it was not you who created
the value, but the model.

~~~
ehnto
Some are seeing that corporations are the ones making all the money on the
back of open source software. It's hard to want to contribute to something
like open source infrastructure tooling, when it's use case is purely
commercial, for example. I imagine some also feel that it's setting an
unrealistic value on digital products, at least I do. Why would I want to
build a tool for corporate infrastructure if they take it and make millions
while I run support for free? They aren't about to Open Source my rent.

I would much rather an honest transactional relationship for commercial
software. That also includes consumer commercial software, like phone apps and
websites. If we had honest expectations about the cost of software we wouldn't
see so much aggressive advertising and tracking.

There are fantastic use cases for the generosity of open source. Education
software is something I whole heartedly agree should be driven by open source.
But I feel open source has been taken advantage of in commercial settings.

~~~
DannyBee
"Some are seeing that corporations are the ones making all the money on the
back of open source software. "

That is often true, but i guess i try to be pragmatic. I did not create the
corporation or do all of that work to make that happen. Maybe people think
this is easy, but it's not. it is a _lot_ of work in most cases.

I also get paid plenty. Why should i care that someone else is getting paid
more? None of this was ever about making significant amounts of money, and
open source is almost certainly a bad model to achieve that for real. It tends
to create lots of value and attempts to distribute that value usually destroy
it.

I may be weird about this though. I have plenty of friends who have made
hundreds of millions or billions building those corporations. I chose not to
do that, and instead be happy with what i've got (and i've got plenty) and
value different things.

~~~
ehnto
It's not really an issue to me that someone else is making money, I understand
I could come off as a budding capitalist who's mad they are missing out on
their cut. But that's not the case. I have always felt OSS was an embodiment
of human generosity, and it just seems that it's been commandeered by
commercial interests. Passionate devs are happy to keep working on it anyway,
because it's fun. Their efforts might have been better spent on more
altruistic OSS projects, but that's not my decision to make, and I don't
exactly lead by example.

------
DannyBee
So let me see if i've got the details right:

1\. A group of people go off and, without involving their communities at all,
try to solve a problem they think they have.

2\. They spring it on their communities suddenly and without warning

3\. Negative reaction ensues.

4\. People decry death of open source.

5\. Author of clause bemoans on twitter that the reaction of community should
have been collaborative problem solving (and "starting a conversation"),
despite completely failing to attempt collaborative problem solving with their
community.

Is that about right?

If so, this is a great object lesson in how not to do this.

If you want the reaction to be collaborative problem solving, engage people in
collaborative problem solving.

If you want the reaction to be to your solution, present people a solution.
But expect people to do precisely that!

This is like when people drop completely designed/implemented megabombs of
stuff on OSS projects and then complain when there is pushback.

------
wyldfire
> including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support
> services related to the Software

Wow! That seems like a mistake. This casts too wide a net and catches more
than it should.

> ... product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from
> the functionality of the Software...

Ugh. Instead of unambiguous freedom-granting terms, this leaves it up to a
court to help determine this vague notion of the product or service's "value".

Steer clear of these license terms!

EDIT: deleted request for OSI to clarify

~~~
CocaKoala
Why do you want OSI to weigh in? The license describes itself as not Open
Source, according to [https://commonsclause.com/](https://commonsclause.com/)

> It this “Open Source”? [sic]

> No, at least not by the official definition set forth by the OSD. Applying
> the Clause to an open source project will transition the project to “source-
> available”.

~~~
wyldfire
Good point. I will delete this request.

------
dwheeler
There are several challenges here.

One challenge is the name "Commons" is very misleading. It's not creating a
commons, and it's also confusingly similar to the term "Creative Commons"
which has been around for a really long time.

Also, the Commons website says that the Commons license is not OSS "at least
not by the official definition set forth by the OSD". Yet that _is_ the
official generally-accepted definition.

~~~
dragonwriter
> One challenge is the name "Commons" is very misleading. It's not creating a
> commons

“Commons” isn't the thing the clause creates, it's the problem it aims to
solve. Naming contract or license clauses after the problem they address is
not uncommon.

~~~
binomialxenon
It would be terrible PR to call this the "Anti- Commons Clause", but it would
indeed be accurate.

------
zzzcpan
Maybe open source is just not keeping up with the real world, a few things
could destroy it: lack of open source license choices restrictive enough and
clear enough and enabling openness so much that most businesses can't profit
in any significant way from software under those licenses; lack of
standardized proprietary licenses for dual-licensed open source project; lack
of standardized open source CLAs and CLA integration with popular software
hubs.

Ultimately, though, open source has to incentivize independent creators and
not big corporations. AGPL is somewhat successful here, because big
corporations already ban its use internally, but it's far from addressing the
problem. New restrictive licenses are needed.

~~~
chriswarbo
What do you mean by "restrictive" and "openness" here? In particular, how does
business and profit affect this? Would it maybe help to distinguish between
the goals of Free Software (user freedom) and Open Source (abundance of high
quality, royalty free code)?

> AGPL is somewhat successful here, because big corporations already ban its
> use internally

The word "because" is confusing me here. As far as I'm aware, the goal of AGPL
is the same as that of the GPL: protect the freedoms of users (specifically
the FSF's "four freedoms"); the difference is that GPL considers "users" to be
those who run the software and AGPL also considers those who interact with the
software.

There's nothing about preventing business use; although I believe that in
dual-licensed projects, the extra stipulations of the AGPL may boost the
appeal of the alternative license. Is that what you were getting at?

~~~
quadrangle
I think the AGPL point is to say that there is _not_ a need for an anti-
commercial license if the AGPL _effectively_ stops the things you're aiming to
restrict.

AGPL isn't perfect, but obviously neither is a non-open, non-free anti-
commerce clause.

~~~
dragonwriter
AGPL didn't stop cloud hosting providers from offering hosted serviced with
the Redis modules at issue, though, because either they weren't making
modifications or they weren't deterred by the requirement to share.

RedisLabs wants money, not sharing, from this kind of downstream use, so AGPL
doesn't work.

~~~
servilio
No license can work where it isn't used, AGPL included. Redis has been
licensed under BSD 3-clause since at least version 2.2[1].

[1]
[https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/2.2/COPYING](https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/2.2/COPYING)

~~~
quadrangle
I think the point is that there had been separate _modules_ that were AGPL but
still being used…?

~~~
chriswarbo
Looks like it, according to [https://redislabs.com/blog/why-redis-labs-
modules-are-agpl](https://redislabs.com/blog/why-redis-labs-modules-are-agpl)

> We wanted to keep our modules open source, so that everyone can freely use
> them, enhance them and fix issues. On the other hand, we are a commercial
> entity that invests a lot of time, effort and money developing these modules
> and verifying they can work under extreme deployment conditions. Therefore,
> we wanted to make sure no one else can resell them for commercial purposes.

That last sentence is key: it shows the preamble to be a smokescreen, since
they're explicitly stating that they're against the literal number 1 criterion
of open source (as per
[https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd) ):

> 1\. Free Redistribution

> The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the
> software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing
> programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a
> royalty or other fee for such sale.

This condition appears _before_ any related to source code. In other words,
RedisLabs are pulling the classic "we want our software to be proprietary, but
we also want other people to fix our bugs for free" (see also "Shared Source"
and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-
available_software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software)
).

They thought releasing under the AGPL would strike that balance, but it turns
out it didn't so they've now gone to a proprietary license like they always
wanted.

------
stephenr
Relevant:
[https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032180321834467330](https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032180321834467330)

@Antirez has confirmed the core project is remaining BSD. The "Common Clause"
stuff applies to the modules that RedisLabs create.

Additional modules @Antirez creates himself, are also not under Common Clause,
they're AGPL.

------
kazinator
It's just a "free-with-source for non-commercial use" distribution of certain
modules that would otherwise be proprietary.

There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial use"
has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free trial"
or "freemium" with source code.

It's a good thing for customers and would-be customers. Customers can track
down bugs and security flaws if they have access to the code. Would-be
customers can evaluate the product based not only performance of the
executables but code quality.

It is a "better proprietary", in other words.

~~~
mindcrime
_There is nothing to see here, folks; "free-with-source for non-commercial
use" has been a thing in the proprietary world for decades. It's like "free
trial" or "freemium" with source code._

Right. And if they would just call it that and not try to make it sound like
it's "sorta / kinda Apache licensed" then I wouldn't really care. But it's
like people using this clause want to benefit from the general perception of
open-ness and the wide acceptance of the ALv2, while not _actually_ being Open
Source. It's just dishonest.

~~~
kazinator
You are right; if you're going to radically change a license by adding a free-
for-noncommercial-use type clause, you should change the name, and don't
maintain even the slightest insinuations that it's related to the original
license. Textually it may be, but legally it's a completely different beast.

------
DannyBee
All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

The guidelines/definitions/blah blah blah exist precisely because of attempts
to do this in the past.

If people want to try again, great, let them. Experimentation is good. (I
personally wish they'd stop experimenting with repeatedly proven-to-fail
models, but c'est la vie)

In the end, it's the developers who are going to decide whether it's the right
way for the world to be.

That is, it's not going to destroy open source or anything else unless the
people using/developing open source want it to.

Past that, _Kevin_ 's refrain is kind of tired, at least to me. Open source
has always been a community that basically eats its own over time (nothing is
ever good enough, free enough, open enough, etc). Solving that seems more
important than solving this.

Saying "The OSS project we tried to build as a business sinks tons of money
into open source and gets no help" as if it was a new problem is just silly.
This is not a new problem at all. The fact that they believe doing _literally
the same thing that hasn 't worked in the past_ will suddenly work to solve
this problem in any meaningful way is disappointing.

For a person whose twitter bio likes to tell me how impressive they are, this
is not impressive at all. I would have hoped for something better.

Because if this is all they've got, then yeah, that model of open source is
likely screwed.

I will paraphrase a colleague:

The underlying issue they are trying to solve is that developers believe they
should be able to extract some of the wealth they feel they created. In open
source, that wealth is often only created because the software was free.
Otherwise, people would have used something else that was free but worked well
enough. Developers like to often argue this isn't true, but history shows it
to be true basically always :) So saying you should be able to extract this
wealth is probably wrong. Saying you should be able to get paid a reasonable
amount of money is not.

------
relaunched
Let them do what they want; the open source community does not suffer fools.

It's a dirty practice to build something open source and after a certain
point, try to close it off. But, it's not unheard of. Any project can change
their license, I believe Google did this with Android. Older versions will get
forked and others will do with those forks what they choose.

I'm hoping doing this would cause so much backlash that it'll force projects
to revert back to OSS. But, it could just push people out of contributing to
OSS -- then again, there might be some people more likely to contribute if
they knew no one was going to make money off their work.

Let the market sort it out.

~~~
djsumdog
Google and Android is weirder. The base OS is still totally open source and
based on a Linux kernel. But in order to distribute Android with Play/Gapps,
you have to join the Open Handset Alliance. You're heavily restricted on what
apps you can bundle and you CANNOT manufacture any Amazon Fire devices (or any
Android devices that do not contain the Google base services).

The base is open, but what makes it useful is licensed, essentially making the
free still crippled. I did a post about Android a while back:

[https://penguindreams.org/blog/android-
fragmentation/](https://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/)

~~~
relaunched
Thanks for the clarification. The more I think about it, the less my
comparison applies.

------
Skunkleton
Say I made a sizable contribution to an OSS project, one that qualified me as
an expert. For projects that have this clause, I wouldn't not be able to make
money directly with the source that _I wrote_. I would certainly not lend my
expertise to a project that put me in this position, and I would guess that
others would feel the same. Imagine if the Linux kernel had this clause. All
this "commons clause" will do is remove the community from an open source
project, and probably kill open source adoption as a result.

------
CogitoCogito
The example clause at [https://commonsclause.com/](https://commonsclause.com/)
does not really make any sense. It first says you can't sell the software and
then provides example text below like this:

Software: [name software]

License: [i.e. Apache 2.0]

Licensor: [ABC company]

If they actually used the Apache 2.0 license anyone would have the right to
sell the software. Hence putting that clause and then putting "Apache 2.0" as
the license makes no sense. The licensing terms would be contradictory.

~~~
jahewson
Yes, exactly. You can't use an unmodified Apache 2.0 license and then try and
tack on some extra clause which is incompatible with the underlying license
and end up with an intelligible end result. You certainly can't call it
"Apache 2.0" and direct people to apache.org. It looks like a legal nightmare.

Even if you like this license, please never use it!

------
paulsutter
Preposterous logic. Therefore WHAT?

> If the Commons clause were to be adopted by all open source projects, they
> would cease to be open source, and therefore the Commons clause is trying to
> destroy open source

~~~
njharman
Exactly. If everyone used a gun to kill one person, people would cease to
exist, and therefore guns are trying to genocide the human race!

Make an absurd assumption, link it back to your pet point, conclude something
dramatic, link-baity, and utterly preposterous. For bonus points, attribute a
motive to inanimate objects.

------
dgreensp
Does a software license actually have the power to prevent you from selling
consulting services? All a license can do is grant you rights you wouldn’t
otherwise have because of copyright law, right?

I’m new to the matter, but I do see in the Commons Clause an intent to
manipulate and mislead. If the goal is to provide an option for companies who
would otherwise take their software closed-source, why does that option have
to sound super-duper open sourcy while not having terms recognizable as open
source? I’m not even a rabid free software guy or anything, but just compare
the name to the terms. There is no possible way that “Commons Clause” is not
intended to be confused with, or somehow gain a positive spin that has nothing
to do with its content from, CC or Apache Commons.

People who care about things like Creative Commons or about open source as
anything more than “source available” will label this as “evil” or at best a
marketing ploy.

~~~
marshray
Services+software is older than software licensing itself.

DFSG #6 is written to address this specifically: "No discrimination against
fields of endeavor, like commercial use."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guideline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines)

------
jondubois
I think that the Commons Clause is good for Open Source. There aren't many
alternatives at the moment; it seems better than allowing external corporate
sponsors to dictate the direction of the project.

In the case of Redis, I think that it's a really deserving project and I fully
trust the integrity of the people behind it.

As someone who created a popular OSS project outside of Silicon Valley, I can
relate to how difficult it is to be an outsider in this industry and I
understand why Redis Labs would feel entitled to capture a tiny fraction of
the enormous value that they created.

I think that if the Commons Clause is just related to optional things like
plugins or addons then I honestly don't see any harm; at least the
plugins/addons are still available for small companies to use for free so it's
still a step up from the typical OSS freemium model where they sell the
plugins.

~~~
sipos
> at least the plugins/addons are still available for small companies to use
> for free so it's still a step up from the typical OSS freemium model where
> they sell the plugins.

This doesn't allow any companies (except not for profits) to use the plugins
without buying them.

------
pvg
_An alarmist title, I know, but it’s true. If the Commons clause were to be
adopted by all open source projects, they would cease to be open source1, and
therefore the Commons clause is trying to destroy open source._

But it's not true, it's complete, self-admitted clickbait. An asteroid will
destroy most life on Earth tomorrow. If a sufficiently large asteroid strikes
Earth tomorrow. It's an overwrought premise leading to predictably overwrought
handwringing.

------
pc86
> _Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under
> the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the
> right to Sell the Software._

> _For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means...fees for hosting or
> consulting / support services related to the Software..._

Why anyone would ever use this license is beyond me. No paid hosted version.
No paid consulting. No paid support.

I mean this is great for folks who have already made their money but for those
of us with bills to pay, it's not exactly realistic.

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

~~~
njharman
> for those of us with bills to pay

Do you think the authors of the software you want to resell don't have bills
to pay?

------
dragonwriter
I actually think open source will destroy the “Commons Clause”, which is just
a name for a model that keeps being tried (shared source with limited free use
but pay us for the use we think we'd like to monetize) that keeps getting
killed by open source again and again and again.

------
monster2control
After reading your post, your comments here, the Redislabs post and the entire
Commons Clause and FAQ, I feel like you didn’t read either of them completely
yourself before getting all doomsday about it.

Redislabs made a good point, cloud providers are making huge amounts of money
off these products and often contribute little back. Take Linode and their
Block Storage service for example. They use Ceph, but contribute nothing to
the Ceph open source. Or QEMU, the entire basis of their business, and not a
single commit from anyone there.

The Commons Clause addressed the AGPL question you ask in your comment.

Redislabs states the goal is not to close source redis core, that will remain
free forever, and that the use of the priority modules will be free for most
use cases, but when companies makes money from packaging it all up as a
service, they should have to pay a license fee, which seems completely fair.

I’ve worked for a large cloud providers and some small ones, it’s pretty
common at these places to not care what the License is because as long as it’s
running on a server, it doesn’t matter. And selling service based off them,
just means profits without giving back in most cases.

The final point of the Commons Clause says very clearly that this was not
meant to be slapped on every OSS license and that it’s not a final solution
but meant to spark conversation.

In that way, it’s working exactly as intended.

------
vinceguidry
This argument is theological in that it's arguing against an idea, labeling it
heresy. His ideal 'solution' is to just fold it all up and try to forget it
ever happened. But you can't fight ideas, ideas provide solutions to problems
that people have and if you want people to stop rolling their own solutions,
then the orthodoxy needs to make their solutions actually work for actual
people, not just the faithful.

Not every business can be Red Hat.

~~~
nathan_long
> This argument is theological in that it's arguing against an idea, labeling
> it heresy.

I find this use of "theological" insulting and not fitting to the situation.
"Ideological" or "partisan" would be better IMO.

~~~
vinceguidry
Au contraire, I find religion to be _extremely_ fitting to the free software -
open source debate. Richard Stallman himself is very sympathetic to
theological analogies for technology debates, calling himself Saint IGNUcius.

[https://stallman.org/saint.html](https://stallman.org/saint.html)

~~~
_hyn3
Invoking an atheist like RMS doesn't help matters, even if he may have a lot
of wisdom and experience in the licensing wars. Conflating an argument over a
particular licensing debate in 2018 with deeply-held religious beliefs that
may have existed for thousands of years and even inspired actual religious
wars (where thousands of people, or even millions -- might as well loop
Godwin's law into this debate -- actually died in horrific ways) would
certainly appear to be insulting to those who are religious (and many who are
not) and might take your irreverence more seriously than it was intended.

~~~
vinceguidry
I think you're overblowing the potential for offense and committing the sin of
assuming it's other people and not you that will get offended. If some
religious person is offended by the characterization, I welcome them to
articulate why. I'm highly spiritual myself and have interacted with many very
religious people, and I can say that most of them relish the opportunity to
think about worldly things using religious framing.

~~~
antidesitter
> I'm highly spiritual myself and have interacted with many very religious
> people, and I can say that most of them relish the opportunity to think
> about worldly things using religious framing.

Would they “relish” your using the term “theological” in the way you did in
your original comment? Be honest.

~~~
vinceguidry
Well, they certainly wouldn't take offense to it like a atheist / materialist
would at the idea that a debate they care a lot about might be framed that
way.

------
mslipper
I'm genuinely confused why there is so much backlash against the Commons
Clause. Ignoring for a second the confusion around RedisLabs and its
relationship with Redis core, the Commons Clause is setting out to solve the
following problem with open source:

    
    
      - A person or company creates an open-source library, at great cost of time and effort.
      - A big company adds that library to their cloud offerings, at arguably far lesser cost, and monetizes it.
      - The library author receives no compensation.
    

This article seems to argue against the Commons Clause because it's not 'true
open source,' but this seems like a purely ideological argument that sidesteps
the true problem that CC is trying to solve: open source creators not getting
a cut of the profit they are generating for big companies. Am I missing
something here?

~~~
int_19h
Affero GPL is the license that purports to solve this problem. It's been
around for a while, and it's getting some use, but I wouldn't call it popular.

------
phkahler
GPL does not allow the addition of this clause, anyone who did so would be in
violation of the GPL. For license that would allow it, it's not fair to say
License+CommonCrap - not to the license, and not to the users.

------
platform
CC should really be renamed to 'Corporate Continuation' (or abbreviation
changed entirely).

Commons Clause is misleading in the context of Open source licenses.

On a separate note, it is important to address volunteer open source
contribution and development. I think as a community we are missing a model
that guides how :

a) developers,

b) their hosting organizations

c) financial contributors / donors

can all benefit from their activities.

Right now, there are different models and experimentation are being used.

But I think we, as a community, could come up with 3-4 models that make it
worthwile to the above groups.

~~~
geephroh
> CC should really be renamed to 'Corporate Continuation' (or abbreviation
> changed entirely).

'Corporate Co-option' or 'Cash Capture' might also be appropriate...

------
hw_penfold
Near as I can tell, there’s nothing in this agreement that prevents me from
choosing another license model.

If I can choose to apply whichever license I want, then it would seem that The
Commons Clause could only possibly harm those that choose it.

Anyway, there are plenty of unprofitable licenses out there, and the reality
is, for all of them, if you’ve already given something away for free, once the
cat’s out of the bag, you probably won’t make any money, even if your license
doesn’t say you’re a bad person for even thinking about trying.

That said, The Commons Clause is probably fine for foundations, where lots of
people are sharing an array of technologies, and not really asking for money.
Meanwhile, it’s been several decades of HTTP over TCP/IP, and last time I
checked, there isn’t a whole lot to lock down, and the real money is in adding
reach to flip switches from the other side of a network connection. JSON isn’t
going away, so, there really isn’t much to apply licenses to, in this area,
without being silly.

But hey, databases, operating systems, desktop applications, peripheral
drivers, all these things still happen, so I guess there’s stuff to license.
But really all the fringe licenses mostly get applied to JavaScript
frameworks, and by the time you actually read a JS library’s license, three
other projects have replaced it, so why bother.

------
WalterBright
The D programming language uses the Boost license, the least restrictive
license we could find. We aren't going to switch to a more restrictive one.

[https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/LICENSE.txt](https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/LICENSE.txt)

------
jakobegger
A common fear with Open Source software is "What if someone takes my work and
profits from it?". But in my opinion, that's the point of Open Source! If you
don't want others to profit from your code, make it proprietary!

But any attempt to make software open source, but still make sure that I get
licensing fees or whatnot if someone makes a profit from it, is in my opinion
seriously misguided.

With Open Source, our business model should be that lots of people work
together to build an ecosystem; no-one profits directly from selling the code,
but everyone profits from using the code. Some people contribute to the
project because they offer consulting services, some people profit because
they use it for their job, etc.

------
throw2016
Antirez discovered github was using redis by accident on a non related thread
here sometime ago, and there was very little outrage.

Open source should be just about taking, if million dollar companies, forget
supporting projects they rely on, can't even tell the authors something has
gone wrong.

Ideally those who can afford it should throw some support to the projects they
use. But clearly this is not happening, if the project becomes too important
then they simply acquire the project with downsides for everyone.

There has to be a middle way that has upsides for all parties and untill that
is figured out this can work in the interim.

------
api
I understand the objection but in general I support the Commons Clause-- as
long as developers can easily opt out for projects where it isn't desired or
doesn't make sense.

Open source developers are building software for free that is then used by
extremely large corporations to make vast amounts of money without
compensation to the original author. Even worse much of this revenue comes
from business practices that the original authors may find highly
objectionable including mass surveillance, "surveillance capitalism," and
data-driven propaganda, con artistry, and manipulation.

If you create open source today you have no choice but to indirectly offer
free labor toward the construction of a global surveillance state. The commons
clause offers a way out while still encouraging people to use your software
for personal, private, academic, and other purposes and retaining the openness
of open source.

The "free as in beer" part of OSS is a relic of the 1990s when the prevailing
enemy was "embrace-extend-extinguish" at the hands of (mostly) Microsoft. It
was sort of a growth hack to enable open source software to gain critical mass
and challenge closed source proprietary platforms.

Times have changed. Today the big threat is SAAS walled gardens, surveillance
capitalism, and other business models that in many cases run on and depend
upon open source. In some cases SAAS can verge on piracy-- not necessarily in
the legal sense since nothing is being done to violate any license but in the
moral sense of profiting handsomely from the work of others without
compensating them.

Edit: I will provide a concrete example of the last point: RethinkDB.

RethinkDB was probably the best NoSQL database, at least before Mongo was
improved enough to challenge it on robustness and versatility. It still has
features Mongo and others lack.

Unfortunately RethinkDB the company failed because... well... nobody paid
them. Instead they paid services like compose.io to run RethinkDb for them in
the cloud. Cloud SAAS database services were making more money off RethinkDB
than the database's own developers were. In the end they failed and the
project is now almost abandoned.

There are numerous similar examples. AFIAK the Commons Clause would have
prevented this, allowing either RethinkDB to capture their own SAAS market or
charge compose.io something for making money off their software.

------
arminiusreturns
It drives me nuts how much people talk about OSS when they need to at least
mention the difference between FOSS and OSS. One more reason to stick to FOSS
instead, as OSS proponents seem increasingly disingenuous.

~~~
paulddraper
Help me understand. Which of the following are FOSS licenses and which are OSS
licenses?

\- Apache

\- Apache + Common Clause

\- BSD

\- MIT

\- GPLv2

\- GPLv3

~~~
arminiusreturns
The FSF can explain it better than I can.

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-
list.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html)

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html)

~~~
paulddraper
> It drives me nuts how much people talk about OSS when they need to at least
> mention the difference between FOSS and OSS.

Maybe because like you they find it hard to explain?

According to your linked resources, it appears that everything except the
Common Clause is FOSS.

So, basically everything I've ever seen is FOSS.

~~~
orangeshark
> According to your linked resources, it appears that everything except the
> Common Clause is FOSS.

> So, basically everything I've ever seen is FOSS.

Correct. Free Software just puts more attention to the freedom part of
software.

GNU has a nice diagram and some category definitions for software at
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html)

------
sqs
There are 2 separate issues here:

1\. The existence of the Commons Clause. 2\. The application of the Commons
Clause to software that previously was not subject to it.

To the original author: How would your view be different if a company released
a _new_ product or module that was Commons Clause-licensed from day 1? Would
that still be a threat to open source? (What if the alternative to it being
Commons Clause-licensed was that it wouldn't exist at all?)

------
floatboth
As a non-commercial user, I'm okay with using stuff that's for non-commercial
use only.

The problem is when I want to, say, copy a few functions into my own project
which I'm publishing under completely unrestricted terms (say, Unlicense). Or
use as a dependency, etc.

So, I'd say it's okay-ish for "product-like" stuff, for user-facing
applications. But please NEVER publish libraries everyone depends upon under
these terms.

------
snarfy
I can see their side. GPL was called copyleft for a reason, a nod to
copyright. It's a copyright restriction which limits redistribution to certain
terms.

Cloud providers do redistribute. It runs on their servers. They do not have to
honor copyright restrictions. They can make proprietary modifications and keep
them, and they do. They might be honoring the letter of the license, but
certainly not the spirit of it.

~~~
TimothyBJacobs
Don't we have the AGPL for this purpose to require them to contribute back
their proprietary changes. As others have pointed out, if this was only about
the modifications they would have used AGPL. Instead, and giving the clauses
about consulting, it seems more like they are concerned about money than the
health of the ecosystem.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Don't we have the AGPL for this purpose to require them to contribute back
> their proprietary changes.

That doesn't help upstream monetize; this is entirely about money, not
reciprocal contributions of code.

~~~
TimothyBJacobs
That was the point I was trying to make. Guess I didn't word it well :)

------
skymer
Here's a possible way around this clause: An AWS-like hosting service prepares
images of every clause-bound instance users might want (e.g. Linux + Redis +
Redis Add-ons), and provides them completely free for download. They also rent
users a virtual machine and the ability to quickly load one of these free
images.

------
tunesmith
What's the difference between the Commons Clause and the GPL?

What's the difference between the Commons Clause and the creative commons "nc"
(non-commercial) license?

I'm having trouble seeing how the Commons Clause is a threat to open source,
while the GPL and Creative Commons are not.

~~~
erik_seaberg
Apparently you can no longer do business as a Redis consultant or offer
hosting. If it were GPL'd, you could, as long as you don't sell binaries
without source.

------
t0mbstone
"This Clause is not intended to be applied against at-scale existing open
source projects, but incrementally on top of commercial counterparts that need
to be transitioned to source-availability to satisfy urgent business or legal
requirements."

------
forrestthewoods
What is the difference between Commons Clause and non-commercial use? Is there
one?

------
throwaway182706
The answer to this dilemma is something like
[https://tidelift.com/](https://tidelift.com/).

This Commons Clause is pure blarney and Drew is exactly right.

------
brians
I don't think the Commons Clause is going to go anywhere: it's not DFSG-free,
so Debian and core Ubuntu won't distribute it.

------
dustingetz
Cloud infrastructure (like DynamoDB) is already closed source and nobody seems
to care, so this might not even matter

~~~
erik_seaberg
AWS doesn't want a monopoly on DynamoDB consulting. At most they encourage
certification, probably to motivate people to notice their endless roster of
new services.

------
acjohnson55
For the Redis example, how does this apply to past versions of Redis? Are we
going to see a MariaDB-like fork?

~~~
aequitas
As explained by antirez[1] Redis itself wil remain BSD and his own modules
will remain open source licensed. Only the modules developed by Redis Labs
will have this clause. So no change for future or past versions of Redis.

[1] [http://antirez.com/news/120](http://antirez.com/news/120)

~~~
jwilk
On HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818647)

------
cryptonector
Software is hard to monetize, whether it be open source or not.

The best open source monetization case I've seen yet may be SQLite3, which is
in the public domain. SQLite3 has a consortium, has some proprietary products
(e.g., the more extensive test suite) not available to the public at large (in
source form or otherwise), and is so ubiquitous that there are a number of
large companies that are so utterly dependent on it that they are practically
obligated to be members of the consortium. I've no idea just how profitable
SQLite3 has been for D.R. Hipp and friends, and I don't want to know, but I
assume it's been good enough that they are happy to continue working on it.
SQLite consortium members probably (I imagine anyways) get to influence
SQLite3's development, and that's one generic way to monetize source code
regardless of license: get paid to do further (specific) development / bug
fixes / support, but SQLite3's proprietary test suite makes it very difficult
for third parties to be able to have contributions welcomed by the core, which
tends to limit third party commercial support.

Choice of license doesn't seem to have that much to do with whether something
can be monetized. Consider the Linux kernel, which is GPL'ed: prolific
contributors profit mostly by being well-employed to continue being prolific
contributors, but almost certainly no one is making a dime from commercial
Linux kernel usage without source code distribution. There might be some GPL
licensed codebases where the copyright owners are making a few bucks from
commercial usage by third parties who don't want to distribute their changes,
but probably not a lot. There are almost certainly _no_ BSD/MIT licensed
codebases where the owners are making any money from commercial usage by third
parties -- the license simply allows third parties to use such code outright
with absolutely minimal obligations on the third parties.

You can have open source and monetization for some value of "open source", but
not one that most people would really consider "open" \-- getting to see the
source code != open source.

Getting paid to support open source (e.g., add features, fix bugs) can be very
difficult when it is easy for anyone to do that. SQLite3 has a mechanism for
limiting third party contributions (a proprietary test suite) which limits
third-party commercial support though in general that would also increase the
risk of forks (but SQLite3 is so widely used that forks are extremely
unlikely). The SQLite3 approach won't work generically for very many open
source projects as it depends on SQLite3's popularity and very widespread use.

The fact is that for many of us open source is just a way to build and
maintain a reputation, and we then monetize the reputation.

I myself have been offered payment for development on open source codebases
that I maintain, and I always reject such offers, mostly because accepting
them would interfere with my main responsibilities, and in some cases also
because it's not my right (e.g., I don't think it would be fair to take money
to work on jq without giving @stedolan the right of first refusal). If I were
to lose clients/employment, I might reconsider this.

~~~
runningmike
The real value is not and never the code, but the product that is enabled by
software. Software is not and never an end product that gives real value.
software creates value by making valuable products possible.

------
wemdyjreichert
Please, somebody fork redis.

------
eahman06
No it won't. You know what will destroy open source? Lack of money to develop
it.

~~~
jessaustin
I've seen this prediction on a regular basis since the mid-1990s. Usually the
prediction hasn't included the qualifier "sometime after 2018". Would you like
to add a qualifier to your statement?

~~~
kmmbvnr_
This is already happens with rethinkdb.

Even after community "acquisition" the development process mostly dead
[https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/graphs/commit-
activit...](https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/graphs/commit-activity)

~~~
jessaustin
This thread is about the health of open source in general. A specific project
slowing down doesn't tell us anything about that. Especially since the project
you're talking about was created by a business and abandoned by that business
when the business situation changed. It seems perverse to infer anything about
open source from that.

------
phobosdeimos
Childhood is believing in free software, adulthood is knowing Microsoft was
right.

What kills open source software is greed, and very few people are immune from
that.

~~~
umanwizard
What in the world are you talking about? We’re living in the golden age of
free software. It’s doing better than it ever has before, and even Microsoft
and Apple are enthusiastically contributing to it.

