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swsieber

Nit: This is not open source - it is source available.(THANK-YOU for being upfront about the license though!)

Still, I might use this, and thanks for releasing

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Yes you are correct. Wrote an extra section about it here in the docs: https://docs.n8n.io/#/faq?id=license

Great to hear!

I think it's disingenuous of you to call it "Open Source" and I think the distinction matters to more people than you think it does.

I think "open source (but not really, there's a small restriction)" sums it up better than "source available", so I can understand framing it that way.

OTOH, this is likely to never make it into distro repos anywhere. I also wonder if the author is driving to make a business out of it.

So I'd make three points:

1) It does affect distribution

2) It otherwise doesn't materially affect how I would use it

3) It seems a little like asking for contributions to a proprietary project.

Source Available is pretty sweet if you have a paid product you'd like to do detailed audits on. Especially in regulated environments (finance, medicine, etc).

Many enterprises prefer a paid service, as such contracts usually come with somebody assuming liability for data on the system and being around to resolve problems you'd otherwise need to distract an in-house team with.

I agree. My point is more of "source available" undersells the freedoms it does give you, while "open source" just barely over-represents them, so I can understand framing it as "basically open source".

> Conversely, Richard Stallman argues the obvious meaning of term "open source" is that the source code is public/accessible for inspection, without necessarily any other rights granted, although the proponents of the term say the conditions in the Open Source Definition must be fulfilled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#%22Open%22_versus_...

I fall into the "...conditions in the Open Source Definition..." camp. I think many "source available" projects ride on the coattails of the goodwill associated with the term "Open Source".

You can fall to whatever side you wish, but calling someone disingenuous for siding otherwise does not show much of, indeed, goodwill, nor is it just.

The capitalization of "Open Source" makes it a proper noun or adjective which means it refers to a specific thing. This is why the Open Source Initiative (OSI) always uses "Open Source". You know they are referring to open source as defined by them. "open source" would be referring to the general concept which depending on interpretation could include shared source.

In my view using the proper vs common version of "open source" places this into a disingenuous attempt to be associated with open source as defined by the OSI.

In my view responding immediately with clear clarification of the degree of the code openness, right under the title of the website, places this into this as something which isn't remotely disingenuous. In my view seeing this as disingenuous is, quit frankly, odd.

It is also goes against the site comment's guideline (as well as general sane rule) of: Assume good faith.

Here's a concrete example of the connotation in action: I wouldn't have clicked thru to the comments or the project's site if the title of this posting was "Source-Available Alternative for Zapier".

I saw "Open Source" and assumed, as I suspect many people did, that it was talking about the Open Source Initiative definition of Open Source. Intended or not, those two words carry a connotation for a lot of people. I'd rather not see that connotation watered-down, either.

Then only click on links that say "Free Software". OSI redefined "Open Source" post-facto, and it has always been somewhat ambiguous. Free Software has always been unambiguously "Free as in Freedom Software".

I wouldn't pay much attention to such statement knowing the historical background. Stallman was and is a proponent of his own terminology, i.e. "free software", and the related definition which actually isn't that different (hence the catch-all "FLOSS").

Anyway, it's stupid to argue over this. The FAQ on the Commons Clause site itself, reflecting the intention and thinking of the drafter and the initiatiors, specifically states the license is "source-available", not "open source". When talking about open source as a form of licensing as opposed to e.g. software development culture/methodology, the distinction here is quite widely accepted and non-contentious.

Open source does not always mean free. No matter the project you still need to adhere to the license terms even if you have access to the source code.

Most companies will require legal approval anyway before you are allowed to use it.

For instance, at a previous company we were forbidden to use React until Facebook changed over to the MIT license. Facebook had a poison pill buried into their original "open source" license.

> So to make it simpler do I hereby grant anybody the right to do consulting/support without prior permission as long as it is less than 30.000 USD per year.

That seems pretty fair - avoids the issues of freelance work being done with the project. I find it hard to care about big corporations not having access to monetize it but that begs the question - doesn't this reduce possible hosting solutions? Especially since there's no official hosting. Does this license imply that there can't be 3rd party commercial hosting?

Hmm, how does this license protect you?

https://commonsclause.com/ says that I can sell n8n.io as a commercial SaaS product. So I can create and sell a new Zapier using n8n?

Under Commons Clause you must bring something of "significant value" in addition to the original product. You can't just spin up a new instance.

I guess who/how defines what “significant value” is. For example: for some having it automatically spun up and maintained is significant to them.

If the only thing being offered is the product, but as part of an automated pipeline, from my reading of the license it could go either way, depending on the judge hearing the case.

That wouldn't be a very comfortable legal position.

It wouldn’t be very comfortable for either party, honestly. So I’d have to wonder if anybody small would ever try to enforce it.

I am not an IP lawyer, but I'm not sure that you can monetize this project either the way it's currently set up? Since you're accepting third-party pull requests without requiring a copyright assignment or more permissive license from the contributors, I believe that you'll only be allowed to use their contributions under the Apache-with-commons-clause license they submitted their work under.

Yeah, that seems like a glaring issue. What's the goal of the license? If not to encourage contributions and building other things on top of it, seems more like a "shared source" license. Might make more sense to make at least part of it fully open source, for everyone to contribute to freely (in both directions) and perhaps keep a smaller part (semi) proprietary.

Is this not a controversial topic? As far as I know there are two camps (as is alluded to further downthread) on whether Open Source is literal, or implies more about the license.

I favour the "open source = source available" definition, because that's how most people will understand it anyway. But regardless of where you stand on this, I think it's fair to say it's at least controversial.

I favor the "source available = source available" and "open source = open source (by the commonly understood open source definition)". It's much clearer that way, and wasn't really a muddy issue until certain big software companies started using "open source = source available"

For the sake of clarity you probably shouldn't define what you mean by 'open source' in terms of the 'commonly understood open source definition'.

Oh, that's true - I was sloppy. OSI definition is what I meant.

Having to define "open source" with that addendum illustrates the issue quite apropriately.

"Open Source ≠ open source" is the essence of the problem. The source is open, yet it isn't open source.

Here's an experiment you can run: hold an informal survey amongst a representative subset of programmers. "What does open source mean?". See what they say. I think I met one who knew what the OSI was.

Ironically, "free software" is a similarly terrible term. It should be called "freedom software". I once e-mailed Stallman to ask about it, and he replied they couldn't use that term because it was already trademarked. Welp...

The term "open source" was afaik invented by the people who would form the "open source consortium".

If you're not going by their definition, I think you're just wrong.

Open Source Initiative?

Commons Clause does not meet OSI's definition of "Open Source" nor the GNU/FSF definition of "Free Software" so it's fair to say it should not be called either.

https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software#Comm...

Yes, I meant the OSI.

Yes, it doesn't fit either definition, so it shouldn't be called either.

The term 'free software' is hard to keep 'pure', because it has an obvious meaning for people who know nothing about software licensing.

But IMO, the terms 'libre software' and 'open source' should not be diluted. It doesn't serve any purpose to mis-use those terms, except confusing everyone.

Prescriptivism is a policy you can choose to follow, but I don't subscribe to it. I'm a descriptivist through and through. And from what I understand, I'm not the only one.

The very language I'm writing this to you in is probably the world's most exemplary instance of this principle in action.

Besides, isn't using things in other ways than they were originally intended the essence of The Hacker? ;)

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