this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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Typically licenses not OSI approved are referred to as "Source available" rather than "Open source". This is one reason FUTO (who make Grayjay) refer to their license as "Source first" and not "Open Source" (though they did call it that for a while before clarifying and switching to the new term).
U hate it when companies start with those mental gymnastics exercises to pretend they're open source so they can get more people that way
You're open source or you're not. In this case, you're not, so stop pretending. It makes me want to try your app even less.
They have talked a bit about what they are trying to do. It's backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Eron Wolf, and he has talked about his frustration with everyone putting their blood, sweat, and tears into the software and then someone like Facebook comes along and makes billions from the work of others.
I get it's frustrating, but personally I think it fails to see that Facebook is part of the ecosystem, but also so are many small companies, and many of these are contributing back to the software. If you remove the companies then you have removed a significant source of help. Eron wants to replace this with an expectation that people pay for their software, he wants to normalise paying for OSS so OSS doesn't have to rely on the companies. You can see this in how FUTO keyboard using language implying you need to pay to get a license, but also it holds no features back from you and doesn't nag if you don't pay.
Personally I welcome new ways of thinking but even if the pay for your OSS thing works I think companies are uniquely placed to contribute in ways that a small team relying on purchases is never going to be able to replicate.
I don't hold any ill will though, I think their heart is in the right place, albeit having missed what makes FOSS special.
My take: OSI needs to include noncommercial licenses. Companies like Mongo and Redis have to end up creating their own licenses with GPL poison pills just to survive commercial use, why not create a system where companies that want to be, and support, an "open source" ecosystem can thrive?
Open Source existed before OSI.
Proprietary source-available software existed before open source software, and that's what these restricted licenses are. The FOSS community does not appreciate businesses co-opting the term open source to promote software that doesn't grant users the right to use the source code for any purpose.
As a member of the FOSS community, and someone who has written an absolute truckload of FOSS software, I stand by what I said.
Open Source was coined before OSI was formed. OSI, and the previous launch of GNU by Stallman, was to combat the new (at the time) practice of only releasing machine code and the commercial vehicles that came along with it.
The original spirit of sharing source code for projects in academia, before software required so much more effort, still exists in licenses like SSPLv1, etc, that are not adopted by OSI.
I, personally, think this is a bad decision.
I, personally, feel that an organization that wishes to make their products source-available, especially those that allow noncommercial modification, should be recognized for that, not punished or gate kept.
I, personally, would love to see OSI adopt an open attitude towards those types of organizations, and create another official tier in the lexicon with it's own set of standard licenses that fit under it.
I understand and accept that other's don't feel that way, but that does not make their opinion about what should count as "open" any better than my own, just more widely accepted at the time.
Nobody has any objection to companies making their source code available, and they are free to call their software "source-available", "source-first", or some other term because their source code is available. But if they restrict what users can do with the software, then it isn't open source. MongoDB, Redis, and even FUTO now all recognize this distinction.
The FOSS community, at large, doesn't tolerate the watering down of recognized terms such as "open source" by bad actors who want to co-opt the term for marketing while denying users the right to use open source software for any purpose. That is known as openwashing. This kind of misappropriation is not welcome in any kind of movement, not just the FOSS movement.
The free software and open source software movements both support rights for users, which include the right to use free software and open source software for all commercial purposes without restriction. These movements support the release of source code as one requirement for ensuring these user rights, but source availability is not the only requirement for a piece of software to be open source.
There's no problem with creating another classification of restricted source-available licenses as long as it isn't called open source, a term rooted in the open source software movement's adoption of the Open Source Definition for over 20 years.
As for myself, I personally prefer source-available software over software with no source available, though I also prefer FOSS over restrictively licensed source-available software.
I 100% agree with all of this. Grayjay should not be considered FOSS or "Open Source". But I, like Stallman of before, don't like the choice of Open Source as representative of Free and Open Source. I am in the minority and will of course live with that.
I just wish that since OSI has a hold of the terms, and those who aren't as knowledgeable as yourself will default to "not OSI = bad" that they would open the doors to another tier. The world is very different now than it was in the 80s.
A good example is Codeberg, an Org I'm a huge fan of, only list OSI licenses in their drop down, and actively focus on adoption of OSI licenses, when I would be happy to see SSPLv1 software there.
It's the reason some of my professional (corporate) projects can't leverage Codeberg and continue to use GitHub, while others I run for the same organization can be since they are MIT.
And by "clarifying" you mean "dunking on Open Source and parading around like the saviors of the human race for inventing Open-Source-except-with-donation-nags-to-fund-their-fully-for-profit-business." Good job, guys, you've solved enshittification (/s).
One of the goals of source first licenses is to stop enshittification since it doesn't allow paid clones
Not saying I agree with their policy, but I would hope more for-profit businesses make their source code available
Copyleft prevents enshittification much better than anything in their license. If someone makes a paid clone of some, for instance, AGPL 3.0 program, one person can buy it and release the source code of the paid version and then all of the improvements can be incorporated back into the version from which it was forked.
Unless the paid clone makers go so far as to break the terms of the license. But that's not a problem that the Grayjay license solves any better than the AGPL 3.0.
Grayjay's license is itself a textbook example of enshittification.
I'm not pissed at FUTO for releasing their source code under a non-FOSS license. I'm pissed at them for doing everything in their power to sabotage Open Source specifically to serve their bottom line while also pretending they're some champion of consumer rights in tech. And it's really shitty to use a
.orgaddress to further drive home the lie that they're anything but a for-profit company fucking over consumers to make a profit.The original clone keeps making money from people who don't know any better, even if it's an exact replica. Just look at the windows app store
Why is that a problem?
Because that's how unsuspecting people get spyware and viruses. Sure, the clones must publish their source code, but that doesn't stop them from profiting from open source software while contributing nothing
Can you name any real-world examples of this happening?
Actually, I can. I know before Minetest (a FOSS Minecraft clone (they'd bristle at being called that, but anyway) that has since renamed itself to "Luanti" - I reccommend it, actually) officially supported Android, somebody ported it to Android (I don't remember what they called the clone) and put it on the play store for money. Now, Minetest wasn't under a copyleft license, so the clone wasn't even FOSS (nor was it legally required to be.) I don't remember any malware being involved. The Minetest community did all heave a collective groan when a wave of clueless people who didn't realize it was FOSS started joining Minetest servers. People in the Minetest community definitely resented the clone. But beyond that, no real harm came to the game or its players. Some folks paid for an Android Minetest client that didn't afford them the freedoms guaranteed by the Free Software Definition or Open Source Definition, but at the time the official Minetest client didn't support Android. Aside from that, I don't know of any harm that came from any of that. And had Minetest been under a copyleft license, even less harm would have come of that.
Also, in practice, anyone who's only out to get a quick buck is going to either avoid copylefted code like the plague or just blatantly violate the terms of the license. They're unlikely to actually put forth the effort to compose a proper GPL compliance plan. (In fact, the ongoing U.S. court case "SFC v. Visio" is very apropos. Visio is named as a defendnt in that suit specifically for blatantly violating the terms of the GPL. Specifically the copyleft portions.)
And if someone who does just want to make a quick buck clones some GPLd code and sells it in compliance with the license, I'm still not convinced that does anyone any harm. The GPL was also designed with non-programmer empowerment in mind, specifically allowing the use case where if a non-coder wants a feature added to a piece of GPL'd code, they can commission a coder to add it. But I'm not sure the Grayjay license would allow that even if it would allow one to make changes themselves noncommercially.
I dunno. You seem to be really hung up on "contrubuting nothing". And mind you, I don't think that's uncommon. That's a big part of the whole "post-open-source" thing Parens is involved with these days. If FOSS as a whole was floundering right now in a way that money could solve, I maybe could get on board with the idea that there might be improvements that could be made to the existing FOSS paradigm. (Though something like legally-preserved nag screens in source-available software seems at best a clueless and ham-handed approach to that problem.)
Much more concerning to me is that software respect users' rights. I mostly won't use software I don't feel I can trust (either legally or security-wise.) And FOSS is software I can virtually always trust. When I'm publishing software, I do so under the AGPL v3 because I kinda don't care if anyone sells it. (Though they can always get a free version from my GitLab (yeah, I switched to GitLab before Codeberg was a thing).) I do care if someone distributes (for money or gratis) my code in a way that doesn't afford the end user the four freedoms. Which is why I use AGPL v3 over other options like non-copyleft FOSS licenses or noncommercial licenses.
And, just to repeat this, again, I'm not angry at FUTO for releasing their code under non-FOSS licenses. That's enough to make me not want to use their software. But not enough to make me resent them the way I do. The anger is at the way they've been sabotaging Open Source to the best of their ability while misrepresenting themselves as consumer rights advocates.
This is basically Proprietary Licencing in a way
But they do provide a good alternative for watching videos on multiple platforms without ads, without subscriptions or anything. And the app works if you don't pay as well. Just because they ask money for their hard work while at the same time allowing the community to work with it sounds all good to me. It's just not completely open source and completely free. But feel free to make a non-profit true open source counterpart if you like :)
I don't mind them asking for money. As I said just a moment ago in another comment, "I’m pissed at them for doing everything in their power to sabotage Open Source specifically to serve their bottom line while also pretending they’re some champion of consumer rights in tech." I wouldn't honestly be as pissed at them if they a) had just admitted from the get-go that they were a for-profit company with no actual interest in improving/solving enshittification and b) had never coopted the term "Open Source" or dunked on Open Source.
I don't need to.
Haha yeah I do find the licence a bit weird. Kind of a non-commercial licence but there are definitely some parts that I don't quite get.
I have seen Eron Wolf talking a bit about what he is trying to do. I get his frustrations, but am not convinced their licence helps with those at all. You can't really take open source, take away some freedoms that are sometimes taken advantage of, and pretend that removing those freedoms didn't remove the benefits that are the reason those freedoms existed in the first place.