Karl FogelMar 3

I'm trying to better understand the non-FOSS source-available licenses, and who uses them and why. If you have opinions and feel like sharing them, I'm all ears!

I'm aware of:

  • Commons Clause
  • Business Source License (BUSL)
  • Functional Source License
  • Server Side Public License (SSPL) (arguably in some ways a kind of super-strict free software license, but that's just my opinion and I know most of you don't agree with me it's okay we can be friends)
  • Fair Core License (see fcl.dev)
  • Microsoft's three:
    • Limited Public License
    • Limited Reciprocal License
    • Reference Source License
  • Elastic License (did anyone other than Elastic use it? Does even Elastic still use it?)
  • There are a few others listed here but I think I've hit the major ones above.

Did I miss anything big? And does anyone know of any notable uses of any of these (other than the uses listed on the Wikipedia page above)? Especially, if there's some flourishing software project that gets incoming contributions using one of them, that would be interesting to know about.

FCL - Fair Core License

The Fair Core License, or FCL, is a mostly-permissive non-compete Fair Source license that eventually transitions to Open Source after 2 years.

Show threadGiacomo Tesio
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non-FOSS source-available licenses, and who uses them and why
You seems only interested in licenses designed to protect corporate interests. They exist to... protect some corporate interests.

Of those you listed, #SSPL was rejected by #OSI for a single reasons: #Amazon money as a premium sponsor, but was otherwise just a slightly tweaked #AGPLv3.

Anyway, if you only care about #opensource (thus commercial) stuff, you basically listed all relevan ones.

Yet not all "non #FOSS" licenses exist to please corporate greed.

Many other licenses don't give a shit about business or "susteinability" but try a better balance between #freedom and other political values.

A well known example is #HESSLA
https://web.archive.org/web/20120204033625/http://www.hacktivismo.com/about/hessla.php

Another less known example of a license used by #hacktivists is the #HackingLicense: https://monitora-pa.it/LICENSE.txt

I use this license in all my side projects: feel free to ask me anything.

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OSI Corporate Sponsors & Support | Open Source Initiative

Mar 3 at 9:51pmWeb
Show threadKarl FogelMar 4
@giacomo @alcinnz Thanks for the pointers. I found one or two more (now mentioned elsewhere in this thread). You're basically right that I'm trying to analyze the effects of source-availability in the context of corporate software distribution.