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Comment by nif2ee | Hacker News Reader

It is kinda ironic that most people zealously arguing for the "pure" open source definition and harrassing authors here on HN or even on Github issues are the ones who work for FAANG-tier companies and making 6 figures contributing little to nothing to open source projects or getting paid for their contributions. There must be a way to protect authors and small startups from simply being ripped-off by any lazy for-profit entity. I don't think that 99.99999% of users would mind to use an application that is identical with MIT, Apache, GPL plus a clause that protects the author or company that created it.

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The author has chosen an approach which makes the software available under the Apache 2.0 license after an embargo period. This is quite okay under the "pure" open source definition (at least for those "liberated" releases, if obviously not in the broadest sense), and nobody is harassing him for that. Many crowdfunding models come with this sort of time-limited "exclusivity".

but that's exactly what they do, many people here posted SHOW HN threads for github for-profit projects that use clauses in licenses or licenses like BSL, SSPL and the posts turned into harassment party because of the "hijacking" of pure open source according to them.

A little bit of nuance might help.

I can like the idea of the BSL.

I have no problems seing the justification for that.

What certain people does, that makes me and others react is when they insist on their commons clause licensed applications or libraries being open source.

The problem here is programmers having a fixation on licences as some sort of template that must be followed exactly without having any real experience with how the law actually works. This is convenient for something like an OSS license used extensively because you have some common reference.

However, many contracts don't follow a template and it's normal in other contracts for items to be customized to any extent required. Template licenses are often used to intimidate people who aren't aware of their rights and what is possible. For example, employers may say that they can't modify an employment agreement because it's a standard template to make the potential employee feel like there is some legal rather than policy issue at play. Similar things happen in other places and you have to decide how much you want to fight policy, but parties almost always have the option of agreeing on custom terms.

This is hard today in the OSS ecosystem, but it'll have to evolve to support additional terms.

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