I'd argue the definition of what is open source is up for debate, but I had some reasons for this and thought about it for weeks.
I hope people know my history and how I've run projects in the past.
But what this does for me is keep me from releasing anything open core. With ansible, ansible was open source but the GUI was not, and we had to hold something back.
The traditional alternatives to OSS are to make a support business, which somewhat encourages making buggy or hard to install software, or a consulting business (IMHO, same) and all of those detract from building a product, collectively, with some of your favorite people on the internet.
So basically Vespene is going to be like a pseudo-foundation.
The structure for this is described here - http://docs.vespene.io/partnership.html - which keeps consulting and support totally free for small shops, and encouraging larger ones that could potentially make millions form Vespene to give back a very small amount.
What normally happens is large companies close six figure contracts supporting open source, and they don't give back a dime, and my goal here is to essentially make a developer's salary off of this project by having those who make more give back a very small amount.
This seems pretty fair to me, but I also recognize that some people don't agree with it.
That all being said, it's not a "no-commercial" clause in any way, and still free for small consultancies, so I'm not anticipating any major problems.
Most of the time, software gets installed in a place of business for that business.
It's not something I've considered lightly, but this keeps MORE software open, and for a small one-person shop, I think that's more noble than trying to hold some code back and not release it at all.
Some people just want 100% free, gimme gimme, etc - and fine - you're entitled to pick one of those things. That's ok.
I personally view this a little more pragmatically, under the view of fairness, and also have taken steps (in the CLA, etc), to guarantee that trust is never going to be abused.
For instance, the license reverts to pure Apache if Vespene were ever to change hands.
On the downside, I can't get screwed over by IBM or Amazon while I'm trying to crank out free software for everyone. That seems fair too, seeing the time investment running an open source community and working on the code takes.
"Open Source" has always had a strong definition. I respect your work and your reasons for choosing a non-open source license. I actually read about the partnership program on your site. I think it is an interesting business model.
If you are interested, there are two big reasons why my organization would not consider adopting it:
1) We are culturally and organizationally aligned with the open source movement.
2) (More widely applicable and practical) Risk Management. If IBM takes Ansible in a direction that is not aligned with our needs, we can fork it. More importantly- we can pay some one else to fork it, or sponsor a community of developers who want to fork it. Those developers would be under no obligation back to IBM to ask for a Partnership agreement to be able to support the fork.
You stated that "the license reverts to pure Apache if Vespene were ever to change hands". I did not see those terms, and that is definitely something to consider, but even with that, your organization may still make decisions that aren't aligned with a subset of the communities interests.
As an aside, thank you very much for creating Ansible, it is a fine product! Good luck with Vespene, I hope you find great success with it.
You have a lot to say here, but I'd like to respond to just this:
I'd argue the definition of what is open source is up for debate
It's not up for debate. It hasn't been up for debate for years. There are two generally accepted definitions of FOSS (each addressing the F and OS respectively):
No one disagrees with these who isn't trying to sow discontent in the open source community. Disagreeing with the OSD or FSD is akin to denying climate change.
No one disagrees with these who isn't trying to sow discontent in the open source community.
No. Everybody who disagrees with these has been driven from your ideological bubble. "Open source" has become a general term that is part of the natural language; nobody has the right to demand everybody use their preferred definition. Many people who use the term will never have visited gnu.org or opensource.org. Many others will have, but will have concluded that the strictness of those definitions is silly. It seems quite reasonable to disagree with a definition of "open source" that makes it practically impossible to make a living off of your work. If you want to have a debate on the merits, fine, but running around telling people they're using English wrong because they disagree with you is just foolish.
No, it hasn't. This is a lie which serves the interests of those who would harm open source. This language is important. You can't take the argument of "every word means what I want it to". The burden is on you to be understood, and by misusing terminology like "open source" you are either ignorant or deceitful. I wouldn't expand the definition of decongestant to include adderall because the former sells better and I'm a pharmacy that needs to get rid of my stock.
You might disagree with the principles of the definition, or think that the definition isn't useful. But that doesn't make it any less of the definition. If you want to do something different, you need to call it something else or you are lying to people.
You might disagree with the principles of the definition, or think that the definition isn't useful. But that doesn't make it any less of the definition. If you want to do something different, you need to call it something else or you are lying to people.
This argument can be applied to your definition just as well as it can to my definition. Which underlines the pointlessness of arguing over the definition of "open source", and therefore the pointlessness of telling somebody that their thing is "not open source".
Not so. I'm just saying that it's valid to disagree on the definition of a thing, and that when that happens you need to have debate about the real underlying disagreement, rather than making a pointless and foolish declaration of your correctness by your definition.
Although I'm not sure why I bothered typing that, given the current readings I'm getting on my troll detector.
Thanks so much. I've had this conversation with a lot of founders and we all feel we are in a race to the bottom of sorts where the power dynamic is all with the big corps.
We don't like open core but proprietary software is the best way to make money, so I'm trying to push that just a tiny amount.
Comments
I'd argue the definition of what is open source is up for debate, but I had some reasons for this and thought about it for weeks.
I hope people know my history and how I've run projects in the past.
But what this does for me is keep me from releasing anything open core. With ansible, ansible was open source but the GUI was not, and we had to hold something back.
The traditional alternatives to OSS are to make a support business, which somewhat encourages making buggy or hard to install software, or a consulting business (IMHO, same) and all of those detract from building a product, collectively, with some of your favorite people on the internet.
So basically Vespene is going to be like a pseudo-foundation.
The structure for this is described here - http://docs.vespene.io/partnership.html - which keeps consulting and support totally free for small shops, and encouraging larger ones that could potentially make millions form Vespene to give back a very small amount.
What normally happens is large companies close six figure contracts supporting open source, and they don't give back a dime, and my goal here is to essentially make a developer's salary off of this project by having those who make more give back a very small amount.
This seems pretty fair to me, but I also recognize that some people don't agree with it.
That all being said, it's not a "no-commercial" clause in any way, and still free for small consultancies, so I'm not anticipating any major problems.
Most of the time, software gets installed in a place of business for that business.
For some of my previous thoughts on this, I'd refer folks to https://medium.com/@michaeldehaan/why-open-source-needs-new-... and later my current thinking https://medium.com/@michaeldehaan/going-with-the-commons-cla...
It's not something I've considered lightly, but this keeps MORE software open, and for a small one-person shop, I think that's more noble than trying to hold some code back and not release it at all.
Some people just want 100% free, gimme gimme, etc - and fine - you're entitled to pick one of those things. That's ok.
I personally view this a little more pragmatically, under the view of fairness, and also have taken steps (in the CLA, etc), to guarantee that trust is never going to be abused.
For instance, the license reverts to pure Apache if Vespene were ever to change hands.
On the downside, I can't get screwed over by IBM or Amazon while I'm trying to crank out free software for everyone. That seems fair too, seeing the time investment running an open source community and working on the code takes.
"Open Source" has always had a strong definition. I respect your work and your reasons for choosing a non-open source license. I actually read about the partnership program on your site. I think it is an interesting business model.
If you are interested, there are two big reasons why my organization would not consider adopting it:
1) We are culturally and organizationally aligned with the open source movement.
2) (More widely applicable and practical) Risk Management. If IBM takes Ansible in a direction that is not aligned with our needs, we can fork it. More importantly- we can pay some one else to fork it, or sponsor a community of developers who want to fork it. Those developers would be under no obligation back to IBM to ask for a Partnership agreement to be able to support the fork.
You stated that "the license reverts to pure Apache if Vespene were ever to change hands". I did not see those terms, and that is definitely something to consider, but even with that, your organization may still make decisions that aren't aligned with a subset of the communities interests.
As an aside, thank you very much for creating Ansible, it is a fine product! Good luck with Vespene, I hope you find great success with it.
You have a lot to say here, but I'd like to respond to just this:
It's not up for debate. It hasn't been up for debate for years. There are two generally accepted definitions of FOSS (each addressing the F and OS respectively):
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
https://opensource.org/osd
No one disagrees with these who isn't trying to sow discontent in the open source community. Disagreeing with the OSD or FSD is akin to denying climate change.
See https://medium.com/@michaeldehaan/going-with-the-commons-cla...
No discontent. Quite the opposite - providing some options for less things being open core while trying to earn a small amount on my work.
If people want to call that not meeting some definition, I'm ok with that, but ascribing malice to it seems a little harsh.
Publishing software with the Anti-Commons Clause is not malice. Claiming it's open source is.
No. Everybody who disagrees with these has been driven from your ideological bubble. "Open source" has become a general term that is part of the natural language; nobody has the right to demand everybody use their preferred definition. Many people who use the term will never have visited gnu.org or opensource.org. Many others will have, but will have concluded that the strictness of those definitions is silly. It seems quite reasonable to disagree with a definition of "open source" that makes it practically impossible to make a living off of your work. If you want to have a debate on the merits, fine, but running around telling people they're using English wrong because they disagree with you is just foolish.
No, it hasn't. This is a lie which serves the interests of those who would harm open source. This language is important. You can't take the argument of "every word means what I want it to". The burden is on you to be understood, and by misusing terminology like "open source" you are either ignorant or deceitful. I wouldn't expand the definition of decongestant to include adderall because the former sells better and I'm a pharmacy that needs to get rid of my stock.
You might disagree with the principles of the definition, or think that the definition isn't useful. But that doesn't make it any less of the definition. If you want to do something different, you need to call it something else or you are lying to people.
This argument can be applied to your definition just as well as it can to my definition. Which underlines the pointlessness of arguing over the definition of "open source", and therefore the pointlessness of telling somebody that their thing is "not open source".
If you follow your logic everything becomes void.
Not so. I'm just saying that it's valid to disagree on the definition of a thing, and that when that happens you need to have debate about the real underlying disagreement, rather than making a pointless and foolish declaration of your correctness by your definition.
Although I'm not sure why I bothered typing that, given the current readings I'm getting on my troll detector.
Thanks so much. I've had this conversation with a lot of founders and we all feel we are in a race to the bottom of sorts where the power dynamic is all with the big corps.
We don't like open core but proprietary software is the best way to make money, so I'm trying to push that just a tiny amount.