Comment by rapnie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rapnie | Hacker News Reader

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> BSL 1.1 license. It converts to a free software license after a few years.

Oof. That's a pity. Otherwise interesting innovative concept.

Btw, in the README:

> This is not an open source or free software license, however, it converts to the AGPL v3.0 license with a linking exception after a few years. Note that the AGPL v3.0 does not typically include a linking exception. We have added a custom linking exception to the AGPL license for SpacetimeDB. Our motivation for choosing a free software license is to ensure that contributions made to SpacetimeDB are propogated back to the community. We are expressly not interested in forcing users of SpacetimeDB to open source their own code if they link with SpacetimeDB, so we needed to include a linking exception.

Is that open source then? I never heard of a linking exception before.

It is, yes. It's more permissive than the AGPL because it allows you to use SpacetimeDB as a library without licensing your own code under the AGPL. We were trying to solve the problem that there is no Lesser AGPL, and linking is the reason by Google doesn't allow AGPL in their codebase at all:

https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...

I wouldn't ordinarily chirp about this because it seems to be such a common typo/mistake but the fact you have a badge for it <https://github.com/clockworklabs/SpacetimeDB/blob/0f1fdf62d0...> as well as typoing it down in the license section <https://github.com/clockworklabs/SpacetimeDB/blob/0f1fdf62d0...> makes it worth pointing out in hopes of correction

The SPDX for BUsiness Source License is BUSL https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html but the SPDX for Boost Source License is BSL https://spdx.org/licenses/BSL-1.0.html

Based on a search <https://shields.io/search?q=license> it seems you're using the custom badge syntax <https://shields.io/badges/static-badge> so you have influence over the correction

Whoops! We'll fix this right away. Good catch, thanks for the heads up!

Isn't that just gpl2?

There is no lesser GPLv2.0, you need a custom linking exception there too.

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