I’ve seen FSL making the rounds in the news. I think this opinion article gives a good abstract and I agree with the general consensus that the license is crap.
I’ve seen FSL making the rounds in the news. I think this opinion article gives a good abstract and I agree with the general consensus that the license is crap.
While I’d prefer just using the MIT license if at all possible, I do see a case for this when the alternative is a worse license/not open source at all.
If I’m running a software company that needs to make money to pay myself and/or employees, I need to preserve my revenue stream. No income = not eating, so the main option is it keep the software closed source.
But what if I don’t like being closed? Maybe my software would be useful to hobbyists as well as my clients. But I’ve got commercial competitors who, if they had my software without restriction, would profit off of my work and actively eat into my earnings. Maybe they undercut my rates for providing support, so we’d be racing to the bottom. Maybe they integrate it directly into their competing product, so clients go to them and not me because they can get my solution and whatever else the (closed) competitor offers.
So this license offers a middle ground. If someone uses it in a way that doesn’t impact my income, that’s fine! I wasn’t doing it anyway. Maybe it’s a good idea though - if I start doing the same thing, the competitor is allowed to continue using versions of the software released up to the date that I begin competing with them. From there on, they are free to modify the software themselves, but no longer use updates to the software - they will need to further develop it themselves, the same way I do. We’re on equal footing now. They will be able to take any updates to the software 2 years after I release them, so they’re not entirely stuck. If my software moves slowly, this may not even be a big deal. It gives me incentive to develop and maintain my software better than the competitors, rather than resting on my laurels.
Basically, it’s a protection against the greed of other companies who could use your work in competition with you without contributing back, while still (eventually) making the code open source. If your project grows to be primarily community driven, I don’t think it’s a good license at all, as you’d be benefiting from other people’s work, and it isn’t fair to them to claim business rights. But if a company pays for the vast majority of the work on the software (like, 90%+), I feel like it’s a decent option.
Thank you for such a thoughtful response. I see where you’re going with this, but have to disagree. I guess it’s a purely ideological stance in my case.
If a company wants to establish itself - stay closed source. Source can always be made open later on, when the competition stage is established. I feel like these half-measure devices are trying to pull in the good will by saying “look at me, I’m open source!”, while trying to be full-on profit driven.
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t have an issue with a company trying to make a living. My issue is with pretentiousness.
That’s fair - I’d much prefer a standard license anyway, and it does come across as a bit of a PR stunt in this case.
It depends a great deal on what type of software it is I suppose. If your product is not useful to anyone but corporate entities (e.g. online auction platform), or if you’re the dominant player in a market (e.g. Linux), the license has minimal benefit - either be open source or don’t. If you’re in a space with both personal and corporate use, and your product is disruptive, maybe it makes more sense then. But it starts to get kinda niche.