Campsite switches to Creative Commons Non-Commercial license | Hacker News Reader

Campsite switches to Creative Commons Non-Commercial license

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Campsite is not open source. From the LICENSE file on the repo [0]:

> Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

[0] https://github.com/campsite/campsite/blob/dae5db8611e8adc057...

Ok, I've attempted to bypass this issue by editing the title above. Submitted title was "Campsite is now open source".

If there's a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.

The title accurately represented what the repository claimed.

From their README.md [0]:

> This is an open source version of the Campsite app.

[0] https://github.com/campsite/campsite/blob/10197238bbbefd9c9a...

Especially since the CC licenses are not recommended for software. Some call it "open-copyright" but I wouldn't use it for my applications.

E.g. https://opensource.stackexchange.com/q/777

Creative Commons isn't a bar to being open source, but the Non-Commercial part certainly is. Definitely not OSS.

If the source code is publicly available, that is open source. What you mean is that it is not FOSS.

It doesn't meet the open source definition point 6, since it discriminates against fields of endeavour https://opensource.org/osd (possibly point 5 as well, if a commercial entity counts as a "group of people")

A typical distinction is „source available“ or „public source“ vs „open source“ (no restrictions on use other than potentially keeping the openness intact and attribution).

It's only "open source" if it's from the OSI region of France. Otherwise, it's just "sparkling available".

The difference here is more important than that.

I'm sure the people who insist on the proper usage of the term "champagne" claim their linguistic crusade is important too!

Imagine a "champagne" you can't use for parties. [1]

Ok, your birthday party and weeding are excluded.

If you are in a dinner at home foe two, is it a party?

Funerals?

Let's buy a real champagne instead.

[1] It has a microphone and a camera and GPS and use AI to detect parties. The data is send to the servers and stored securetely.

I don't drink, so I have no opinion on champagne, and I don't use Campsite, so I don't have any opinion on whether the license is reasonable for what it offers. All I know is that the words "open source" and "source available" would look and sound basically synonymous in pretty much any other context, and the common consensus that one of them apparently means something much more prescriptive will never make sense to me from a linguistic perspective.

You are going to have a difficult life experience if you cling to the idea that things have to make sense from a linguistic perspective where most others seem to have found acceptance in how things are interpreted and used in the real world.

Words are context sensitive. Openness here refers to the user freedoms, which go beyond the permission to read but not reuse.

Source that is merely available could be regarded as dangerous, if you happen to later copy ideas from the proprietary origin in your own implementation without even being aware of it. I could see the point in trying to stay away from it as programmer.

Good thing we’re not debating the term “free software“… ;-)

I can simultaneously understand what's meant when people say "open source" versus "source available" and still think that it's a silly, poorly-named distinction and therefore compare it to "champagne" versus "sparkling cider".

Any of the Creative Commons licenses are not recognised as open source licenses by the Open Source Initiative. [0]

[0] https://opensource.org/

Honestly, I find this whole OSI open-source definition annoying.

I'm pretty sure if this went to court a judge would say it's legally is open source because the source code is open. The fact, FOSS folk want to add a bunch of requirements to open source to make it harder for commercial software just stinks and that is really what it is. "You can't claim you're open source because you limit competitors using your code for free" Pfft.

A judge would rule what "open source" means?

Yes. For example, if I advertised my software as open source and you sued for false advertising.

What do you think they don't rule on what things mean?

> I'm pretty sure if this went to court a judge would say it's legally is open source because the source code is open.

Talk to some lawyers. I'm sure you could bring the first lawsuit to try to get a judge to rule that everyone should agree with you on what "open source" means.

Good luck with that.

> Honestly, I find this whole OSI open-source definition annoying.

Fair enough; I agree that having that one organization be the sole decider of Open Source is weird, so I'll happily accept as open source anything that the FSF or DFSG approve.

> "You can't claim you're open source because you limit competitors using your code for free" Pfft.

Correct. If you're trying to get the marketing advantage and let other people give you free work, then you get to play fair and other people also benefit. That's what those words mean.

> Correct. If you're trying to get the marketing advantage and let other people give you free work, then you get to play fair and other people also benefit. That's what those words mean.

This free work everyone talks about is not free. They need to maintain it, they need to review it, they need to baby-step new contributors, etc. That costs money.

Not to mention, most aren't doing it to get free work. They're giving stuff away and folk are crying because they can't use someone else's work as free work.

Look at any major open source product and you'll see nearly all the commits are done by paid employees. Open source is built on free work is a lie. Open Source is largely paid for.

Very similarly, the access to the community and marketing benefits of open source are not free. The community give these projects their consideration and valuable time, in exchange for the freedoms they get. Projects can obviously choose not do this.

It's a 2-way street on value and time.

> The community give these projects their consideration and valuable time, in exchange for the freedoms they get. Projects can obviously choose not do this.

No, the community does it to get to use the software for free. That's enough. The right to make a competing company that just uses the software is not in the minds of most community members.

I'm convinced the other people who care about this freedom don't contribute to anything.

> That's enough

It's opt-in. No one forces a project to pick open source. They don't get to decide what's enough.

You clearly want open source to mean something other that what it by default means. A better place to put your efforts would be like folks over at fair.io, perhaps. It's not faring well IMO, but it's an honest take in the "no competing company" direction.

So Campsite got acqui-hired by Notion, tells their customers in a blog [1] something along the lines: "Thanks for all the fish, you've got 2 months to migrate to something else.".

They could have open sourced it in a way which would have allowed customers to atleast maintain their own install. But instead they release it under a license which says "non-commercial". So even if you were to export your own data you can't even self-host it.

It seems to me rug pulls such as these are bad for the entire industry. Why would you invest in these kind of products if there is real chance you'll get rug-pulled?

[1] https://www.campsite.com/blog/campsite-winding-down

Which is why strongly favoring products that are already real open source is the best business decision.

Is there an 'open source Slack' type thing anywhere?

This is the closest I've found- https://mattermost.com/

If you are willing to explore a hybrid model of chat, there is Zulip: https://github.com/zulip/zulip

I'm really happy with Matrix chat. But it's more of a protocol than a sole implementation. The good people at Element are pretty neat too.

Zulip is another one, mentioned in a sibling comment. Matrix/Element is used by some companies. Nextcloud Chat exists, but I don't know much about it.

I think the Nextcloud offering is called "Nextcloud Talk", for anyone wanting to check that out.

Oh yeah, you are right... my bad :)

IRC probably. It doesn’t have every feature slack has though.

Tale as old as time.

How exactly do you use what looks like work-planning software non-commerically?

As for the license, it's their code and they can release it under whatever license they want, but they obviously shouldn't call it open source. Usually companies do this sort of thing to take advantage FOSS's reputation, but in this case it just looks like ignorance to me.

> Usually companies do this sort of thing to take advantage FOSS's reputation

I would say they do it because it conveys to the average person that they can get the source code and modify if they want to. This whole source-available, etc nonsense is just confusing for everyone.

> because it conveys to the average person that they can get the source code and modify if they want to.

But not use it for its intended purpose, which is kinda important.

Without having a deeper look into it - could be a replacement for any non-profit or bigger sports club or whatever org that uses Slack or Zulip or whatever now.

But that's about everything that comes to my mind...

Even that's a minefield, a non-profit that sells things (like a sports club selling merch) is still potentially engaging in commercial activity.

Good point. I suppose many people, like me, would not think about that.. but.. IANAL but at least in Germany I think there's often some correlation of "not profit-oriented" and "no commercial purpose" - I mean, every time you let someone pay for membership in your club, it can be seen as commercial, but mostly not.

Germany is one of the countries I've heard this is an issue in https://www.techdirt.com/2014/03/27/german-court-says-creati...

You use it at work knowing that they'll never know and you'll never get sued.

The Non-Commercial provision of the license is towards the app/code, not what the app is used for by end users.

You would not be able to install it and sell users right to use it, but you would be able to install it in-house for your own employees.

It says "for NonCommercial purposes only"

None of us gets to say that there are some commercial purposes that are ok and some that are not. You have to go by what it says. Or put it this way, some day someone what wants to use it against you, can and will go by what it says, and they will be right and win that argument.

This license is really pretty bad because while they try to allow educational use, educational use is itself usually also commercial use. If you use it in a class that you charge for, if a school that charges tuition uses it, if a youtuber even so much as uses it in a video that has either ads or a sponsor... those are all conmmercial use of the software.

Relying on the the rights-holder to just not persue it, ever, including next year when the rights-holder is some new owner, is just gambling.

Trying to carve out non-commercial is just misguided and ultimately self-defeating in my opinion. It is better than purely traditionally closed software, but ultimately really not by much.

The primary value is, if you happen to rely on this software and can't avoid it, then having any form of access to the source is better than being helpless to the usual black box. At least you can fully document mysteries that aren't fully documented, let alone maybe being able to debug or customize.

If that's what the license says, fair enough, but that's not how I parsed it. This is not a software-specific license so it's not as clear as say the GPL, where there's very explicit language for source code, object code, compilation, execution, distribution, ...

Here's an excerpt from the license:

    - 1. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Public
         License, the Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide,
         royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable
         license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed
         Material to:
      - A. reproduce and Share the Licensed Material, in whole
        or in part, for NonCommercial purposes only; and
      - B. produce, reproduce, and Share Adapted Material for
        NonCommercial purposes only.

I don't understand what I'm reading in the slightest, I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole.

I can "produce", "reproduce" and "share" the licensed material. I'm definitely not sharing it, so if "running the code" is allowed at all, it must fall under the "produce" or "reproduce" categories. The text is pretty clear that you can only "produce" and "reproduce" it for NonCommercial purposes as well, so what does that leave me with?

Yeah, I'm with you. CC is not well suited for something that can be run - unlike an image or music where its pretty clear what's happening when you use it.

That's not what non-commercial means.

Disagree.

That's exactly an n-th example of why this non-commercial clause is bogus since the very beginning of CC, and particularly unadapted for software code: no one is able to define clearly what commercial means, and what perimeter it applies to.

Selling the code? (you're a software editor) You could say it's covered/forbidden by the license.

Selling the service the code gives when it is running? (you're a PaaS) You could say too.

Selling anything unrelated to the code and the running app (say, oranges), but using the app to organise privately within a corporation? (you could be a shop owner installing the software for yourself and your team within your own building) 1/ the license says nothing about it, 2/ if it were covered and forbidden, how would it be even enforceable?

> That's exactly an n-th example of why this non-commercial clause is bogus since the very beginning of CC, and particularly unadapted for software code: no one is able to define clearly what commercial means, and what perimeter it applies to.

Agree with you on this one and I'd go step further: CC licences in general are poor fit for software.

> Selling anything unrelated to the code and the running app (say, oranges), but using the app to organise privately within a corporation? (you could be a shop owner installing the software for yourself and your team within your own building)

CC disagree with that interpretation: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpre... (also https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Defining_Noncommercial).

Excerpt (that I think is most relevant, but it's definitely a nuanced issue):

> uses by for-profit companies are typically considered more commercial [...] one exception to this pattern is in relation to uses by individuals that are personal or private in nature

Based on this, I think the common agreement would be that this is commercial use.

> how would it be even enforceable?

That's not a point for ignoring the license. If you download pirated movies, games, or other software, it's very unlikely you'll get caught, but you're still committing a crime.

However in this case, it actually can be enforcable. If the organization is eg. a startup that raises venture funding or is getting acquired, legal due dilligence will involve examination of all licences for software used.

> CC disagree with that interpretation: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpre... (also https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Defining_Noncommercial).

That's not what I understand from these pages (that only reinforces that even to CC, NonCommercial is not a clear criteria).

They also note NonCommercial as “not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation.” which perfectly matches my 3rd case above.

For instance, you perfectly can print and display an NC image as a poster in your professional office, it's not "commercial".

> That's not a point for ignoring the license.

It's definitely an argument to ignore this part of the license: an unenforceable item is effectively void.

> If you download pirated movies, games, or other software, it's very unlikely you'll get caught, but you're still committing a crime.

Beware, that's different here. Downloading/uploading pirated items is illegal. Here, the NonCommercial clause is so ambiguous that even CC doesn't know how to put it. So its enforcement is even further delicate and open to interpretation.

> You perfectly can print and display an NC image as a poster in your professional office, it's not "commercial".

Right, but this discussion is in context of software for planning work, not someone decorating an office.

How is that different?

Planning work is not the work, it's something around the work, similar to a poster (that could very well present information valuable to the work, but still not be the work you're selling in the end).

Campsite team, if you happen to be reading this: consider whether a more permissive license still meeting the FOSS definition, like GPL or AGPL, would better fit your needs. GPL means that anyone who modifies the source code, or integrates it into a larger work, has to release the modified version.

So this would ensure that everyone’s contributions continue to help the wider community. As a side effect, it would also prevent anyone from using your work without releasing the source code for their project or product, benefitting open source as a whole.

The choice is obviously ultimately yours. I personally didn’t realize the benefits of GPL until recently.

You may also want to consider the EUPL, which is OSI approved and despite the name not limited to the EU.

https://eupl.eu/

https://discourse.writefreesoftware.org/t/eupl-a-better-choi...

> GPL means that anyone who modifies the source code, or integrates it into a larger work, has to release the modified version.

Is this accurate? I thought GPL only required distributing the source alongside binaries. If you're running GPL code as a web service, I don't think there's a requirement to release the source to your users.

In this case, you would want the Affero General Public License (AGPL) which specifically has a carve-out (in?) for web servers. Section 13, "Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License." [0]

[0] "[...] your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (...) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version"

I would prefer a more permissive license, such as MIT or Apache. Zulip is similar software, produced by a commercial company, and it is MIT licensed. The primary reason for this is that it isn't always clear with copyleft licenses where the boundary is between being a new separate work that uses the GPL software API, or when it is a derivative work of the GPL software. Also, as they are shutting down, there isn't really any reason for them to worry about some one else using the code in a permissive way.

(That being said, a copyleft license is miles ahead of the CC NC license for software!)

Campsite Is Winding Down (2 points, 23 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42480734

Welcoming Campsite's Founders to the Notion Team (2 points, 24 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42475934

Realizing the dream of good workplace software (33 points, 3 months ago, 28 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41805009

Show HN: Campsite – Posts, calls, docs, and chat in one app (6 points, 5 months ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182414

Every README should explain what the software actually is. "an open source version of the Campsite app" tells me absolute nothing — what IS the Campsite app? I would have submitted a PR with a fix, but the README also states they wouldn't accept such a PR anyway.

People complaining about the license are missing this - https://www.notion.com/blog/welcoming-campsites-founders-to-...

Notion bought the company. They have no reason to want the product to actually be open source, because they'd just be helping a potential competitor.

The license can be discussed here

https://github.com/campsite/campsite/issues/15

Hah, more license confusion! It is a good learning resource for those wanting to see how such a codebase works. I do think they should have opened the repository as read-only and that may align more with the educational intent.

"We will only consider pull requests and issues regarding self-hosting or critical fixes. "

Having this makes the messaging a bit confusing. You will accept improvements and bug fixes which we can use commercially but you can't - Did I read that right?

So the license makes it more like a tombstone of the source. It can't be used except for non-commerical use, whatever that means.

I understand the concern with calling something licensed with CC BY-NC “open source”, but I’m very interested in reading the complete source of a modern comercial app.

It’s rare that we get to see the complete picture of something that has many paying customers like this, and I’m thankful for the Campsite team for sharing it.

do we need a KilledByNotion list /hj?

notion bought skiff and that burnt me

I just read the Skiff announcement and they give you a very tight deadline for email forwarding.

Good thing I'm too bitter and jaded to get in to any new saas offering, especially new and hip ones. This can't burn me. Anymore.

Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.

Yeah I'm pretty over the building cool things solely to sell it off pipeline

What's Campsite? Nothing here describes it.

A creatively named basecamp.com competitor

Basecamp looks like some sort of project management workflow thing? Okay.

So neither one is related to the outdoors at all.

It’s cool to see a recent Rails codebase in the wild. This’ll be helpful as a guide for me this year while I’m ramping up.

> We welcome forks of this repository for use in non-commercial projects.

This should be reconsidered to something a little more permissive

I disagree

Why?

I provided on purpose exactly as much motivation as the comment I responded to.

They went from Show HN to bust in 5 months: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182414

I really wonder how that happened. Was there like no traction whatsoever? 5 months doesn't seem like an awfully long amount of time to give a product a chance.

I read it as an acquihire-of-sorts - https://www.notion.com/blog/welcoming-campsites-founders-to-...

Some people want to be founders, others want to solve a specific problem. There are definitely ideas I have that if I was offered a salary to solve them from a company I would take it rather than found to solve the problem.

Seems like an aqcui-hire from Notion is the answer here: https://www.notion.com/blog/welcoming-campsites-founders-to-...

They've been going for years

5/12 years?

I hadn't come across this yet, interesting idea, and something I had wished for in the past. Ultimately I realized google groups already is something you can easily use - the bigger (social) problem is that not everyone is comfortable with text communication.

Thanks Campfire team for doing this. It’s great to be able to see the thinking around how something like this was built.

> Thanks Campfire team for doing this.

Now that's an interesting comment. This product is called Campsite not Campfire but I was confused by that myself.

I'd not heard of Campsite before but it sounds like it might have been in the same problem space as 37 Signal's old Campfire product.

Does anyone have any more background and if the two are related?

lol, I meant Campsite. I did love the original Campfire from 37 Signals though. Freudian slip on my part.

I'm glad the founders have found a way out. This is key when launching a product that never really took off. However, I never understood why this product existed in the first place. I'll probably get downvoted to oblivion, but to me, it represents exactly the type of software people from Silicon Valley would release: products disconnected from the needs of real companies, not the fancy unicorns. This is represented by this sentence on the marketing website: "The new standard for...". For future companies: before claiming to be the new standard, please be the new standard in the first place.

That being said, for educational purposes, making the code publicly available is a nice gesture and I see a lot of values. I wish more companies would do that so the industry as a whole learn from the talents of others - because yes, these people are incredibly talented.

Too many services to pay for just to try it.

With so many "critical" dependencies, it probably cost more to operate. No wonder it got "acquired" by Notion.

> This codebase is available as-is and is not actively maintained by the Campsite team

sounds like there won't be a team to maintain it.

I don't understand why they wouldn't license it under an open-source software (OSS) license if they are closing the business anyway. This would be a great opportunity to foster a community around the project. Without an OSS license, it's unlikely that anyone will invest time and submit pull requests (PRs) to a non-OSS project.

Most probably as part of the agreement of being bought by Notion, to prevent competition.

I don't like lawyers so I use public domain.

Also code is like math which is public domain.

Which doesn't exist in some jurisdictions.

Or at least the right to put something into the public domain.

Same with moral rights of the creator.

Code is explicitly not like math. There's been half a century of case law about it.

MIT or BSD are pretty close and they don't have the problems of public domain that is not recognized in some countries.

Toilet paper for laptop?

Nooo I can't make money off of other people's work! This is an affront to FOSS!

It is a 100% not open-source. It won't be maintained besides pull-requests AND if another company or individual develops this further, it can not be used commercially by anybody else but the company who released this. It this fair? Open source goes both ways.

They have given us a gift with the code being availabile as it is.

It would be fair for them to have released nothing.

I do think its a shame that it can't legally be combined with GPL'd free software

That part is fair but they should have said something like "shared source", or "source available".

"Open source" means something specific to a lot of people. You may have issues with how OSI operates (I do too!) but let's not muddy things further.

It's a nice sentiment, but irrelevant. The code is not open source, they should not say that it is. Open source code can be used commercially.

You misunderstood me. I am grateful they are sharing the source code for review. My problem is with the wording. Open source means something different by definition. If they leave this project in the dust and someone else continues to maintain it, because he depends on it, this would be illegal and they could sue if they want years later. With open source this can not happen to you. It is a huge difference.

Would an EPEL package constitute a violation?

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