Ask HN: Best non-commercial source-available license?

6 points by michaelpjones 3 years ago | 8 comments

I created a moderately successful documentation tooling project in my 20s when I had more time and enthusiasm. It has been 13 years and the code base needs some love.

I don't have the enthusiasm that I used to and additionally some large (multi-million dollar) companies are using it and I don't know how to go about getting it properly funded. I'm only interested in doing the hard work to improve the code base and execution performance if it is funded.

I have created an Open Collective but lack the understanding of how to go about getting companies to contribute to it.

My current thought it to fork off and do the work in a non-commercial, source-available licensed code base with an optional paid commercial usage approach but I feel like that isn't generally a well recognised option and I'm not sure why.

I love and respect open source in many ways but my attitudes to it have changed and I wish it was much more standard for maintainers to be funded but I struggle to know the best way forward.

Does anyone have recommendations on the non-commercial, source-available approach?

janober 3 years ago |

We at n8n created the Sustainable Use License (https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/packages/cli/LICEN...) and started https://faircode.io/ which could be interesting for you to look at. It is based on the amazing Elastic License 2.0 (https://www.elastic.co/licensing/elastic-license) which you should also check out. Apart from that are there multiple great licenses here: https://polyformproject.org/licenses/

All are obviously not OSI approved.

Hope that is helpful!

michaelpjones 3 years ago | |

Thank you for the links. I have come across PolyForm when googling but hadn't heard of it previously and I haven't seen Faircode.io before. I'll check them out.

Interesting that you're using one in practice. N8n looks really cool too!

janober 3 years ago | | |

Glad to hear that it was helpful and that n8n looks interesting. All the best!

gtirloni 3 years ago |

"source-available" usually means you don't want contributions and forks, is that the case?

Are you getting anything by making the source available? Maybe you should make it proprietary.

There are some licenses like the LGPL which will forbid some companies to bundling your software in some ways. This license is forbidden at Google, as an example.

Which brings me to the topic of open source licenses and corporations. If you're hoping some big company will use and sponsor your project, they usually have strict license requirements (anything "custom" or outside the OSI-approved list will need extra approvals internally).

michaelpjones 3 years ago | |

Good questions. I don't mind contributions if they don't mind the model being used. I guess I would be looking to prevent profit making forks of the code base.

I guess I like the idea of open source projects still being able to use it for free and possibly non-profits (though that might complicate things) so I don't mind those users having a near-open-source experience and source availability seems to be close to that.

Perhaps I should have more faith in the area and try to productise it but I guess I don't have the confidence in that. Though I guess that raises questions about the whole venture. Still, I think the kind of "this is available, just not to million dollar companies" isn't a crazy middle ground to aim for.

I don't think that LGPL would be a good fit for preventing use inside companies though I guess technically it might work. Though the companies are shipping the generated docs and not the project code specifically so I'm not sure that LGPL would be the way forward.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

brudgers 3 years ago |

Talk to your lawyer.

If you don't have a lawyer, your choice of license doesn't make any practical difference in terms of whether or not a bad actor will violate the license terms.

I mean there's no GNU enforcement agency, if you license something GNU you can take a violation to court but nobody else will. And if someone else does, it will probably be thrown out for lack of standing.

Or to put it another way, the best license is the one you are interested in enforcing. If you are not interested in enforcing any license, then CC0. Otherwise, talk to your lawyer.

michaelpjones 3 years ago | |

You make a good point. I'm not sure I'd be in a position to enforce anything myself. I would be relying on larger companies to be too risk adverse to violate the license, hoping that they would pay for a commercial option instead.

brudgers 3 years ago | | |

If you are going to sell a commercial license, having only a commercial license is the simplest thing that might work.

If someone wants the source. Sell them a source code license developer by your attorney who can be paid with the proceeds of commercial license sales.

And charge for source code access so you make money off it.