For programming platforms (like game engines) this is even MORE of an advantage, as with something like terraform you could conceivably rewrite your stuff in a matter of weeks if you have reasonable testing. For a game that is not possible.
Nobody can take away your rights under the MIT license, there's no legal mechanism to do that. You are protected, fully, from shit like this.
Like going from GPLv2 to GPLv3 or straight to AGPL, so now you are stuck with an old version forever? Yeah, that would never happen!
That's a massive overstatement of the current state of OpenTF right now. Plus they're still dependent on Hashicorp's hosting which also changed their license terms in response to the project.
You're right that because it's OSS you can do this kind of thing where it wouldn't be possible at all in a proprietary system but "just fork" requires a community to organize around it. Without a bunch of backing orgs this wouldn't have happened.
_Some_ kinds of Open Source might help there, since _some_ open source licenses are very easy to comply with and very business-friendly. On the other hand, all the game studios now complaining would also howl and whine when forced to be GPL-compliant and release their source code.
And even with business-friendly take-what-you-want-and-never-give-back Open Source licenses, there is always the risk that the project you are using does what Hashicorp did with Terraform and stuff: Change the license for all future releases to something you won't like, cutting you off from your necessary updates and fixes. Maybe there will be a community maintaining a fork, maybe there won't.
How long would it take for someone to take over the project (if ever).
One could even imagine scenarios like an originally MIT-licensed software splitting into a commercial company offering commercial paid licenses, plus a community (or even the company itself) offering a GPL-licensed fork. Of course one could then still maintain an additional MIT-licensed fork, but if the rest of the community is happy with GPL and all the development just happens there, your MIT fork will "starve"...
Given the project itself is still strong, this might not be a problem, but then I see no reason why it has chosen it in the first place if not for that specific option.
The law often makes use of the reasonableness standard. I'm hard pressed to believe that carefully reading the hundreds of TOS and EULA's hoisted upon us is reasonable.
If you're reading my comment you must have read the TOS/EULA for ycombinator, firefox (or chrome), your wireless or ISP, the keyboard app on your phone, odds are you have an email, perhaps a google account, remember the OS licence. Ever listened to a music streaming service, watched youtube? Messaged using an app? Banked online? Have some managed passwords? Like games, how many? For the common people, what about social media?
That's about a dozen "contracts" and that's lowballing it, multiplied by each update to the "agreement" (pray they don't alterate further) multiplied by the requirement to also read and acknowledge the privcy policy. All this for services that have become when not essential ubiquitous and constantly shift under you. You'd need 8 figures to run that by a lawyer, or a part time job to carefully consider. That's not a reasonable arrangement.
So, no, your request is not reasonable.
I'm confused what you mean by saying that the employees of a business don't need to read these legal texts but that the "business" should read them. The "business" is not a physical life form that has the ability to read, only the employees of a business have that ability, since they are humans (unlike the business entity itself, which is not human). Perhaps your idea was that businesses should hire a team of lawyers whose only job should be to read through the various ToS and EULA legal texts that their other employees merely click-through?
If you as a buisness sign up to amazon web services to host your entire backbone on, you better read the contract. If you don't, you are irresponsible.
Someone, somewhere at the buisness should take the time to read a simple little document before using it as the backbone of everything they do at a company, yes. It does not have to be a lawyer...
I'm extremely sympathetic to the idea that there are too many eulas for free products, things like games or whatever where it really doesn't matter for 99.9% of users. But for the 0.1% that make their livelihood from the program, they should take the 25 minutes to read through it at least once.
I'm not saying this because im a big bad lawyer that hates you (I am not a lawyer at all), im saying it because it's a tiny thing you can do to save a whole lot of heartbreak.
You just gotta decide when its important to read contracts and when you don't care. I don't care about the contract when I get new lenses for my glasses, or when I pay for netflix. But if im moving into a new house? I read the bloody contract.
Yes, but there are two sides to "resonableness": The "what" side and the "who" side. "What" is the thing that should be resonable. But the overall resonableness just as much depends on the question: "for whom is this reasonable?". While a consumer cannot possibly be expected to really read all the ToS everywhere, a business maybe can be expected to do so. Especially for things that are very critical and integral to the business, like the license of that one framework you are building all your software upon. So I do think requiring a business to read and understand the Unity ToS is totally resonable.
While TOS are rarely worth the toilet paper they could be printed on, I'm curious about whether arguments could be made about whether existing subscribers from 2019 could now sue for breach of contract and costs associated with (re)development.
The big question is: to what extent to Unity games need to be able to talk to Unity's servers? If they're looking at number of installs (and apparently that includes pirated copies even?), serve ads, and probably provide other services, that sounds like the games need a connection to the server. In which case they may be able to disable your game if you don't pay. And then even if you could sue them, the real damage is already done.
I got burned by Steam, I have a super old laptop with some old games on it, Half Life, so one day I got the laptop out, Steam updates and f** itself, the old system is no longer supported but they had to f** things up s the games won't work.
I agree, open source is not required, but we need to own our software not rent it.
That's just a start but also require freezing your OS and have lots of spare hardware or have rights to emulate it :)
And same with data - buyed songs for example :) Big industry already is killing media you can own - cd, dvd, blueray depends on outdated cpu, pendrives decay before becoming usefull backup media...
In the age of asholess open sources and resources are best. Let's bring more viral licenses then GPL !
I would feel very uneasy if my product was based on a framework, where the provider makes no commitment and reserves the right to change the licensing terms at any time.
The last part I do not agree: a license cannot be changed retroactively if there is no provision in the original license for doing so, and no open source license have that. Even if "revoking" licenses for all prior releases were allowed, it could only work if all copyright holders agreed, which is not practical for most projects.