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Comment by bloudermilk | Hacker News Reader

Are there any examples of popular OSS projects using a non-commercial-only license?

No, because excluding commercial users is a field-of-use restriction, and you're not FOSS if you only offer a license which imposes a field-of-use restriction. Which is fine! Just don't call it FOSS.

Furthermore, it's really hard to define what non-commercial actually means. Creative Commons spent something like a decade trying to scope a reasonable definition and eventually ended up essentially punting. With a few exceptions like (arguably) secondary public education use, pretty much any non-trivial use has some commercial component.

> you're not FOSS

> don't call it FOSS

The grandparent comment clearly said OSS.

Their statement is just as true if you insert "OSS" instead of "FOSS".

Playing the semantic game over what is or isn't "open source" is very draining sorry.

If I can look at it, that's open source software to me, you can define that phrase however you want and I'm happy with that too :)

There is no semantic game, open source software is a term of art with a much more specific meaning than the source being available. If you find this draining then you can simply stop trying to misappropriate the term.

Technically, both the original Open Source Definition https://opensource.org/osd and the older Free Software Definition https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en#translations both explicitly require the ability to use programs in a commercial context.

In the case of the Free Software Definition, this makes perfect sense: the FSF wants people to have certain freedoms at work, as well as freedom in their personal lives.

The other challenge is that turning an open source project into a proprietary project isn't as simple as changing the license and asking for money. You need to build an entire business from scratch, and learn to close sales somehow (or sell to consumers). This will take up at least half your time.

The AGPL is not a non-commercial license, but it essentially functions as one, as most companies aren't willing to comply with it. There are some projects that make their code available under the AGPL, and also let users pay to get access under a different license. Grafana is an example.

How is the AGPL not free ?

The AGPL is free. The point was that although companies are able to comply with it, most are not willing to do so.

By definition there aren't any, but MAME used to be distributed under such a license. I think Debian in particular has been pretty successful at exerting pressure to either relicense or replace software with non-commercial restrictions.

Do you have an example of that? That is really interesting.

By definition, there can be no such projects. One of the requirements for a license to be called Open Source is that it does allow commercial use.

We at n8n (https://n8n.io/) have something similar (but not identical) with our Sustainable Use License. Here the blog-post where we talk about it some more: https://blog.n8n.io/announcing-new-sustainable-use-license/

Sounds like an interesting licence, good luck!

Non-commercial OSS projects is a contradiction in terms.

The source can still be open even if you aren’t permitted to run it for commerce.

That's referred to as "source-available" to distinguish it from free/libre software.

No it can't. You're thinking of "visible source" or "source available".

This an early 'open source' - it did not allow for free commercial use!

http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html

> an open source code model ... Individuals can use OpenDOS source for personal use at no cost. Individuals and organizations desiring to commercially redistribute Caldera OpenDOS must acquire a license with an associated small fee.

I'm sympathetic but this is an uphill battle unworthy of fighting, in my opinion. Canonicalization of "open source" (versus "OSI Approved Open Source") is overreach of a an organization suffering from declining relevance. OSI is not helping to move the needle on licensing, and has effectively caused the industry to become frozen in time with the same stagnating licenses we had 10-15+ years ago. There's no innovation here, and I'm just tired of this. Instead we have demonic machinations like the BSL growing in relevance because there's no better alternative. I'm just so sick of it.

If you asked any reasonable person what the opposite of "closed source" is, you're going to get a uniform answer from the vast majority or respondents, and a small, irritating answer from a small, increasingly irrelevant group group of folks. I understand the distinction that "source available" aspires to achieve, but it's such an unappetizing term of art that you may as well call it "I can't believe it's not open source".

Champagne, Chocolate, Open Source... they're all noble but doomed uphill battles in colloquialism. Everyone knows what you mean.

If you want to be correct, be truly pedantic, instead of shifting the ambiguity: French Champagne, Belgian Chocolate, OSI Approved License.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a diehard FOSS supporter, I sponsor and contribute, I encourage my employers to be good global citizens with respect to FOSS and have complied with licenses by releasing modifications under appropriate licenses. I even pay Drew DeVault money. But ultimately he and everyone else arguing to enshrine the term "open source" will couple the fate of their opinions to that of the OSI and at best, it will all be a footnote in the pages of history.

Will we be using the same OSI approved licenses in 10, 50, 100, 1000 years? Will the OSI permit term "open source" to be used to refer to something other than the current licenses?

The reason to defend the definition of "open source" as it currently stands is to prohibit organizations from profiting from the accumulated goodwill of the open source community and movement without actually adhering to the ethical standards of that movement. We've seen in the past that companies will release source under an encumbered license and claim to be "open" as a result -- the FSF and OSI were founded in response to that type of maneuver.

As far as I can tell, it's been a success. The recent batch of nonfree licenses have all had to emphasize that they are not open source in the face of public backlash. Making euphemisms like "source available" unappetizing is exactly the point.

Furthermore, the OSI is just a group, as is the FSF. If the OSI and FSF folded tomorrow the definitions of "open source" and "free software" would not change. It's not necessary for the OSI to approve a license for the software to be open source, so "OSI Approved License" is not sufficient. "Licensed on terms compatible with the Open Source Definition" might be more accurate, but "open source" seems like an adequate shorthand.

> It's not necessary for the OSI to approve a license for the software to be open source

I agree with you, but this is a controversial opinion which is the root of my frustration. OSI tries really hard to own "open source" as a term and while I'm not against the OSD I am against the gate keeping I see.

Why is wanting Open Source to have a single, well-defined meaning a bad thing? If you let everyone who uses words make up their own meanings, isn't https://xkcd.com/1860/ where you end up?

Because it's gatekeeping. If the OSI rules my license doesn't meet the OSD am I going to be socially exiled for labeling my software as open source?

Like any person or institution, the OSI is fallible. It's like saying that only a certain organization can define what Red is, and now look what we have with Pantone.

Should people who sell food get to make up their own definitions of "kosher", "halal", "vegan", etc., without being "socially exiled"? If not, what's the difference between that and this?

And this is nothing like what Adobe and Pantone did.

That's a pretty terrible analogy. Etymologically they bear no resemblance to "open source". A better analogy would be "low fat" or "sugar free".

The more appropriate analogy would be if the Sugar Free Initiative defined "sugar free" and then you correct me by saying "actually that beverage isn't sugar free, it's artificially sweetened".

The world would be a better, more accessible place if we instead focused on what things are or are not, like preferring "OSI Approved License" over "open source" rather than needlessly conflate complex meaning with otherwise simple terminology.

> A better analogy would be "low fat" or "sugar free".

Sure, let's go with "sugar free". Should I be allowed to decide that it only refers to cane sugar, and so sell food full of HFCS that's labeled as sugar free?

This seems like a hypothetical concern. Has anybody actually had a problem with a clearly OSD-compliant license not being approved? Has anybody been "socially exiled" for not using an OSI-approved license?

Ghostscript used to have the most recent version under a non-commercial license (AFPL) and older versions relicensed to GPL, before they switched to AGPL only.

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