Hacker News Reader

Comment by nqzero | Hacker News Reader

I've taken a cut at a license that attempts to address monetization while preserving what I see as the underlying strengths of Open Source - reducing the risks of collaboration and adoption:

https://github.com/db4j/PUPL

It requires paying for usage above a level, but is symmetric and permissive and makes future costs predictable, ie prevents the copyright owner from pulling the rug out from underneath you after you've adopted it. The software that I intended this license for never gained traction (so completely that no-one ever told me "i'd try it out if it was open source") so it's untested.

But if a popular software used this license, would you be willing to use it or contribute to it ?

View on HN

The gist of that license seems to be:

- you can use this software for free at home for personal use

- if you use it at work, you can try it out for free but you have to pay to really use it

- we welcome your code submissions, which will hopefully grow our license revenue

I feel like there are already licenses out there that hit these major points. If I ran across software that used this license, I would recommend they use one of the other popular licenses or just dual-license.

In general, I want licenses to be written and vetted by lawyers.

> In general, I want licenses to be written and vetted by lawyers.

I want them to be so standardized that I don't have to read them. If the license doesn't match something I already know, I'd be reluctant to include the code in any of my projects.

yes, i totally agree - as much as i like the terms of my license, if i came across an interesting software that used the license, i probably wouldn't try it out just because the cost of understanding any new license is too high.

i've more or less given up on the software that I intended the license for, but i mention license here in the hopes that one of these open-core companies will create, vet and popularize a license with similar assurances

thanks for taking a look. yes, having to pay for use at scale is one of the key features (though perhaps the scale should be 1000 cores instead of 10). for your 3rd bullet, one key feature is that the code submission can likewise include a cost, ie it's symmetric

i'm not familiar with any commercial licenses that are close, but i'm interested. do you have any links or suggestions ?

The way I wrote it, it should be more obvious that this isn't an open-source license per se.

What you want a commercial software where you offer exceptions to certain classes of users. Sometimes, this is called dual-licensing. But overall, the controlling license for use of the software is necessarily a proprietary license of some kind.

i chose the name "Paid Use Permissive License" thinking that that would make it clear that it's not Open Source. but i'll see if there's any way that i can make it more obvious

which class of users do you see as receiving exceptions ? one of my goals in writing it was to limit (via the assurances) the degree to which an owner could segment a market, eg it requires published prices, and if they provide low-cost licenses to one user, that user can resell them

I'm not sure who your audience is. If I'm shipping software under a commercial license of some kind (like your license), I want my attorney to vet the license for my jurisdiction(s) before I use it. My attorney would likely not choose this license (because it's not written by an attorney, and does not have features attorneys would expect to see in a software license).

If I'm selling software, I would generally expect it to be licensed under a bespoke license. This doesn't fit that need.

I don’t make many contributions to OSS projects directly, but I wouldn’t make contributions to commercially licensed projects without payment.

How would you manage to compensate contributors?

I am perfectly happy to contribute to open source licenses because I’m trying to improve the community around the project and help users (including billionaires) use it for free. When a commercial entity tries to profit off of software I am not very motivated to contribute.

when contributing code, the contributor can specify a strike price. if the upstream chooses to integrate it, then they're responsible for forwarding appropriate payment. this is one of the key motivations, ie to facilitate two developers to collaborate without prior discussions of financial details

and by the same token, the downstream is able to distribute directly (with or without source), and forward payment to the upstream, ie it's symmetric

if something like this license became widely used, it would make sense to adopt or build infrastructure to facilitate distribution of payments (perhaps licensezero ?)

So coding is a work for hire rather than a royalty stream that seems like a good deal for the company to get lots of cheap labor. This is what’s funny is that I’d rather work for free as long as no one is getting exploited than get a pittance and then let someone profit from my work.

I guess I just like abstractions.

Good luck with your attempt, I think it’s just as likely to be successful as other commercial licenses. I think it’s cool you’ve at least thought of some way to get token payments to external devs.

it's a royalty stream (per core, per year), not a work for hire. the upstream is required to collect that additional price for every license sold and transfer it to the contributor

whether that was a pittance or significant would depend on the price you chose and the popularity of the project

thank you (and the other commenters as well) for taking the time to look at the license and have this conversation with me. it's now obvious to me that several things need to be clarified - people still may not like the license, but at least then they'd be not liking it for the right reasons

Have you seen License Zero? https://writing.kemitchell.com/2017/09/12/The-License-Zero-M...

i have. "Parity" is an AGPL on steroids and "Prosperity" is trialware. both appear to be intended to force users to seek commercial licenses (and the L0 software facilitates this)

for a user that chooses to go beyond the free terms, neither guarantees any limits on what terms the owner can dictate. my license was intended to address that uncertainty, eg max prices and right of resale.

thanks for taking a look - your comment sparked some thinking, to the effect that my terms might be useful as a fall-back for an AGPL (or Parity) base license which had never occurred to me before

No, I would not use or contribute to such software. To my eyes this is basically commercial software.

it is a commercial license, though it differs from any other commercial license that i'm aware of in that it offers limits on the terms that the owner can dictate, eg price limits and right of resale

are you opposed to using non-open-source software in general, or do you see the assurances that PUPL offers as too weak to be useful ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com