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Is there a License that requires the user to donate if they make revenue? (lemmy.giftedmc.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I tried a couple license finders and I even looked into the OSI database but I could not find a license that works pretty much like agpl but requiring payment (combined 1% of revenue per month, spread evenly over all FOSS software, if applicable) if one of these is true:

the downstream user makes revenue (as in "is a company" or gets donations)
the downstream distributor is connected to a commercial user (e.g. to exclude google from making a non profit to circumvent this license)

I ask this because of the backdoor in xz and the obviously rotten situation in billion dollar companies not kicking their fair share back to the people providing this stuff.

So, if something similar exists, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for reading and have a good one.

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[–] x1gma 35 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (6 children)

It doesn't matter how hard you want to call it FOSS, but with this licensing terms you describe it is not FOSS, period. And to be honest, you calling out various people for not getting what FOSS is, while you fully ignore the agreed on definition by people who are actually doing FOSS is you discrediting yourself.

You haven't found a license like this, because your model is flawed: A licensing like this will disqualify you from any kind of usage in an actual FOSS licensed environment. Personal users, which will not be providing revenue, will not be really affected by this, and are irrelevant for your point. Corporate users, which you will mostly target by this new license probably won't be able to use your funky new license because they will need to check with legal, and your software will need to have a lot of USPs for someone to bother with that. A 1% corpo-richness-tax will not be approved by any kind of bigger company, because it's a ridiculous amount from the perspective of your potential customers.

You're taking yourself way to important. Open source software is not replaceable as a whole, but individual projects are. If you want to earn money with your project, that's good on you, license it accordingly, but do not try to upsell it as FOSS.

And I fully get your point, and I'm currently working on the same problem in my in-development project, and I'm not sure yet whether to dual-license it, for similar reasons you stated, and live with the consequences of providing OSS, but non-FOSS software, or do FOSS and provide it for actually free.

Edit: Also, the xz backdoor has nothing to do with funding. Any long time maintainer (as in not just a random person contributing pull requests) going rogue can happen in funded scenarios as well.

[+] [email protected] -9 points 7 months ago (5 children)

it is not FOSS

If you take the OSI or FSF definition, sure. Not all of us take that definition.

For many people, the appeal of open source has nothing to do with how easy it is for corporations. It is about transparency, the ability to contribute, and the community driven product as a result. It is about the ability to pick up the project if the original developer stops using it, even decades later. It's about the ease of interfacing with said software.

Again, you may quote the FSF, but there are too many users of open source, as well as developers, who got into it for the reasons I stated. I can assure you that they are not doing it so that corporations can profit off their software without giving back.

[–] x1gma 13 points 7 months ago

Again, you may quote the FSF, but there are too many users of open source, as well as developers, who got into it for the reasons I stated. I can assure you that they are not doing it so that corporations can profit off their software without giving back.

If you are developing open source, you are not necessarily developing FOSS. If you are developing FOSS, you are also developing open source.

FOSS is well defined by the FSF, and it has been for ages, and to be frank, therefore no one cares for anyone's personal definition of it.

What I am against is having the cake and eating it, as it's being proposed with this licensing. Either you do FOSS, or you don't. Either you do open source, or you don't. Either you do proprietary software, or you don't. It's really that simple, because depending on your project, you take the terms that you see fitting and live with the consequences. The whole goal of this proposal was to be taken more serious as open source developers and projects, and to ensure funding for further development. Cherry picking the best parts of every model, and making irrational demands does not achieve that.

As I said, I'm absolutely on board that open source licensing and open source development being taken for profit by corpos absolutely sucks, and the usual licensing models have not aged well with the much wider adoption and usage of open source, and there is a need for change - as it's being done e.g. by elastic, redis and others with their dual licensing.

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