
Ask HN: Which OSS licence? I don't want one specific company to touch it? - whizzkid
I do not want a company to directly or indirectly to use my open source project. This includes everything. Forking, using it as a service from others and etc.<p>And the rest of the people and entities can use it with MIT licence.<p>Is there any way to achieve this?
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FBT
You can license your project however _you_ would like to. You absolutely can
have a license with text that is similar to the MIT license, except with a
clause saying that company X can't use it. However, as other commentators here
point out, you could not, in good faith, call that "open source" under the
standard, accepted definitions of that term.

So the answer to "is there any way to achieve this?" is twofold. If the
question is "can I achieve this and still legitimately use the term 'Open
source software'?", the answer is a flat-out "no". If the question is "can I
set it up legally in this way, without regards to the terminology", the answer
is yes.

A license is a pretty free-form thing. You can write whatever text there you
want. You may wish to consult with a lawyer, in order to get some legal
assurance that what you wrote makes legal sense and will hold up in court.
This is especially true if you want to be very sure that you didn't
accidentally leave some loophole in your wording that will allow the company
you dislike to use your project against your will.

You are going to have to write the text of this license yourself (or pay a
lawyer to do it for you): you're not going to find much of this kind of
"almost-OSS" license out there for you to base yours off of, because in
general, those who want to license their software as OSS actually do want a
fully OSS license. But there are a few examples, although not _quite_
identical in spirit to your "use case" (excluding a particular company) but
instead different variations of not-quite open source. For instance, you can
take a look at MongoDB's SSPL ([https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-
public-license](https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-
license)), and Redis Lab's RSAL ([https://live-redislabs.pantheonsite.io/wp-
content/uploads/20...](https://live-redislabs.pantheonsite.io/wp-
content/uploads/2019/02/Redis-Source-Available-License-PDF.pdf)).

~~~
whizzkid
Thanks a lot for going into details. Since then I learned a lot about
copyleft, GNU GPLv3, and much more. Maybe mentioning a company name in a
licence is not really what I need after all.

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WoodenChair
There is certainly a way to do this, but by definition such a license would
not be “open source.” See clause 5 of the open source definition:
[https://opensource.org/osd-annotated](https://opensource.org/osd-annotated)

~~~
whizzkid
I understand and thanks for your reply.

> "must not discriminate against any person or group of persons"

Do you think "group of persons" is same as mentioning of a company name?

I am just trying to find a proper/correct solution to achieve this problem.

~~~
WoodenChair
Yes it is the same.

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Nuzzerino
A good compromise that would keep things equal for everyone would be to use a
strong copyleft license (GPL). Normally when I think of specific scenarios
involving companies using it (a real issue that has come up for me before),
GPL was strongly considered as an option. Not to prevent them from using it,
but rather to ensure that they don't use the free software to gain a further
advantage without giving their own improvements to that same software back to
the community.

~~~
cimmanom
GPL only requires them to contribute their changes if they distribute a
version of the software with those changes. The AGPL defines distribution to
include hosting SaaS, but that may not be applicable to whatever the OP has
written.

~~~
Nuzzerino
True, I have been trying to steer clear of the "centralize everything on our
servers" trend in tech lately so I keep forgetting about that one...

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lincpa
Your property, you have the right to do disposal, it is not important to
comply with the open source definition.

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Spooky23
What’s your objective for the project?

You can do anything, but a weird license restriction is going to turn off many
potential users. I don’t know or care about who you dislike, and my counsel
will not sign off on deploying something that cannot be used by some random
people.

~~~
whizzkid
Idea was to prevent licence violation. It is hard to do anything as an
individual against companies that violates OSS licences. But since then I
learned much more about licensing, and I think I changed my mind. I won't be
mentioning any specific entity.

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hacknat
Instead of targeting a specific company why not prohibit the use case you
don’t like? Otherwise I have to agree with others that this seems retributive
and childish.

~~~
whizzkid
Really good point about use case specifications. I sure will be researching my
options. Thanks!

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caymanjim
This is antithetical to the entire notion of open source. It also sounds like
a childish tantrum.

~~~
whizzkid
Things are not always black and white as you are stating it to be. I just want
to know if there is anything like this done before or is it possible/right to
do it.

I am also open to listening why i shouldn't go this route, but not the way you
are trying to do it.

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gtirloni
Why?

