[HN Gopher] Big Time Public License
___________________________________________________________________
Big Time Public License
Author : HexDecOctBin
Score : 90 points
Date : 2022-01-13 18:32 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (writing.kemitchell.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (writing.kemitchell.com)
| ralmidani wrote:
| I really like the concept behind this and the Polyform licenses,
| but wish there could be more modularization to allow, for
| example, permissiveness for small businesses but removing
| allowances for large "non-profit" orgs.
|
| Also, a company offering a source available license might, as it
| grows, want to raise the employee and revenue thresholds (when
| you're making less than a million, a million-dollar company is
| more of a threat to your business's survival than when you're
| making 50 million).
|
| Edit: one more thing that would be really cool is allowing a
| "default alternative free software license in case this software
| is abandoned" clause.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| I like Mr Mitchell, and I am glad that he is _attempting_ to do
| something that so many people shy away from for obvious reasons.
| As a developer of a fairly popular open-source tool (Aether), I
| have an interest in following the software licensing discussion
| in detail, though I am not a lawyer.
|
| My general impression is, if you excuse my flippance, this
| license has holes so big I could drive the fully unfurled James
| Webb telescope through it. I don't mean to be dismissive, so
| here's an example:
|
| > `... indefinitely, if the licensor or their legal successor
| does not offer a _fair_ commercial license for the software
| within 32 days of written request '
|
| This is the escape hatch condition inserted for the safety of big
| companies that stop qualifying for the small-business section of
| the license. Except ... what is fair? More importantly, are you
| willing to spend six years in court arguing what 'fair' means?
| Because that is how you end up arguing what is fair in court for
| six years.
|
| To be fair (ha), the license tries to firm up the term somewhat
| by defining the term later on as:
|
| > A fair price is a fair market price for a fair commercial
| license. If the licensor advertises a price or price structure
| for generally available fair commercial licenses, and more than
| one customer not affiliated with the licensor has paid that price
| in the past year, that is fair.
|
| Great, but what happens if the software has not been purchased
| before? How is _' more than one customer not affiliated with the
| licensor'_ going to be resolved? What does 'affiliated' mean and
| how broad we are talking about here? Unknown, until there is a
| software product that uses this license, gets very popular, and
| _then_ we get to see the answers in court, through the poor
| developer dragged through hell.
| nbadg wrote:
| Kyle's a fried of mine, so I may be a bit biased. But I'm very
| sympathetic to this kind of license, and fairness is really
| hard to define, especially in advance. He's actually written
| separately [1] about exactly how difficult it is.
|
| If you really want to have a concrete definition of fairness,
| you're ultimately going to need to hire a lawyer to make a
| specific license. That could simply be an add-on clause to this
| license that explicitly defines "fair" as a term, and I think
| that's exactly the kind of plug-and-play license language that
| Kyle has done some work on in other projects.
|
| That all being said, Kyle is generally very welcoming of
| (respectful!) feedback, and I think given how much time he's
| spent thinking about how exactly one can define "fairness", he
| might enjoy some fresh thoughts about it.
|
| [1] https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/12/02/Correct-
| Intuitive-...
| jameshart wrote:
| There's some self contradiction right there since by adopting
| this license the licensor is explicitly advertising a generally
| available commercial license for companies making < $1m priced
| at $0.00.
|
| So if you can point to a few businesses who are benefitting
| from those commercial license terms, you might be well within
| your rights to consider any license asking you to pay much more
| than that 'unreasonable'.
| [deleted]
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| > what is fair?
|
| The article mentions FRAND. The wikipedia page on it[0] goes
| into more detail, and links to discussions of how to determine
| a fair price[1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-
| discriminat...
|
| [1] "Formulas for fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory
| royalty determination" https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/8569/
| rolleiflex wrote:
| FRAND defines fair in a very specific way in terms of
| pricing. For example the definition of F (fair) in FRAND is
| exemplified as not requiring purchase of other, unwanted
| licenses as a condition to the purchase of the particular
| license the customer wants to buy. However that does not
| exactly seem to be the use in this license because here it
| seems like fair would also carry the meaning of 'not too
| expensive', as I interpret the author's explanation:
|
| > ' If you need a big-company license, reach out for a big-
| company license, and either don't get a response, or get a
| clearly unfair, unreasonable, or discriminatory proposal,
| this is your fallback.'
|
| 'Too expensive' far as I know is not a part of FRAND, the
| _fair_ in FRAND means something that is subtly different --
| though I am not knowledgeable enough to conclusively say
| FRAND includes this author 's particular meaning of fair. To
| my best reading, it seems like it does not.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| The second link I gave is explicitly about fair royalties,
| though.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| Ah, my apologies, it wasn't obvious from the second site
| how to get to the actual paper. I think this is fair to
| say there are ways that attempt to be objective in
| defining what is fair licensing cost, but I'd have liked
| to see one of these methods explicitly mentioned in the
| license so as to not have this question left open as a
| landmine.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I can't imagine that this would hold up in court. You might as
| well exclude blondes or people with a brother named "Mike." Just
| make it explicitly proprietary and give out free licenses to the
| people who meet your criteria. Or equivalently to this, include a
| promise in the licensing that you won't pursue license violations
| against people who meet X, Y, and Z criteria.
|
| This license isn't about restrictions on usage, it's about
| restrictions on _identity._ It 's deeply weird. Even stranger,
| despite the insistence that "fair" is a meaningful term in this
| license, the definition "A fair price is a fair market price for
| a fair commercial license." tells on itself. The clarification
| that it means "more than one customer not affiliated with the
| licensor has paid that price in the past year" at first glance
| seems unsatisfiable (under the license), because somebody has to
| be the first to pay that price, and at that point it wouldn't be
| "fair."
|
| edit: In trying to ape FOSS licensing, it has confused itself.
| You don't have to ape FOSS.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Why would it be legally invalid to exclude blondes or people
| with a brother named "Mike"? (Obviously it would be immoral and
| stupid, but that doesn't make such an exclusion legally
| unenforceable.)
| lupire wrote:
| It violates civil rights laws in the US, likely.
| Hjfrf wrote:
| In the case of name/appearance, those things can be strongly
| correlated with protected categories like race and gender.
|
| E.g. Consider a similar legal exclusion to only people called
| Nguyen or Mohammed or Singh.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| California has the Unruh Civil Rights Act that applies to all
| commercial public accommodations which basically says
| "categorical discrimination of any kind is illegal". Saying
| "I won't do business with anyone named Mike" or putting up a
| "No blondes" sign is categorical discrimination.
|
| I have no idea how that law would apply to this license
| though.
| CalChris wrote:
| But I don't think people with a brother named Mike are a
| _protected class_ according to the Unruh Civil Rights Act.
| Those are sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national
| origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information,
| marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship, primary
| language, or immigration status.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| The text of the law reads:
|
| > All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are
| free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race,
| color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability,
| medical condition, genetic information, marital status,
| sexual orientation, citizenship, primary language, or
| immigration status are entitled to the full and equal
| accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or
| services in all business establishments of every kind
| whatsoever.
|
| The important part is "All persons ... are free and equal
| ... and are entitled to ... equal accommodations".
|
| When you read it this way (which is how the courts read
| the law), the list is just illustrating some classes that
| might be discriminated against. It does not limit the
| classes merely to those listed.
| humanistbot wrote:
| Unruh protected classes are: sex, race, color, religion,
| ancestry, national origin, age, disability, medical
| condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual
| orientation, citizenship, primary language, or immigration
| status [1]
|
| Corporate status is not one of these.
|
| [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.
| xhtml...
| henryfjordan wrote:
| Those classes are illustrative, not exhaustive
| jcranmer wrote:
| I don't see a single word in the operative part that
| suggests that the list is an inclusive list:
|
| > (b) All persons within the jurisdiction of this state
| are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race,
| color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability,
| medical condition, genetic information, marital status,
| sexual orientation, citizenship, primary language, or
| immigration status are entitled to the full and equal
| accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or
| services in all business establishments of every kind
| whatsoever.
|
| In interpreting statute, a list of things is generally
| assumed to be exclusive unless there are specific words
| that indicate it is to be treated as nonexclusive--and
| those words are missing here.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| > The California Supreme Court has repeatedly
| "interpreted the [law] as protecting classes other than
| those listed on its face".[6] For example, even prior to
| the 2005 addition of sexual orientation to the law's list
| of covered classes, the Unruh Act had been "construed as
| protecting gays and lesbians from arbitrary
| discrimination",[6] such as in the case of Rolon v.
| Kulwitzky.[7]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act
| kadoban wrote:
| Are you a lawyer or have specific knowledge in this area?
|
| This thing is weird enough to me that I'm not sure I'd have any
| idea, myself, and I've spent a good deal of time understanding
| and reading about copyright and licenses.
| samatman wrote:
| Both of those are bad analogies for different reasons. I will
| limit myself to US law out of familiarity.
|
| Excluding blondes is prohibited due to the 'protected
| category', which is sweeping, covering most personal
| characteristics which are inherent. For a role, and this
| broadly includes things like waitressing, these limits can be
| imposed, but not in this sort of general contract.
|
| The problem with _some_ "brother named Mike" contracts is that
| they're trying to get around some requirement to be general
| while targeting someone in particular. For most contracts you
| can in fact say, "anyone can use this except Anish Kapoor,
| because screw that guy" and that's going to hold up since
| refusing service or commerce outright to an individual is
| completely legal.
| tptacek wrote:
| Is this definition of "protected category" in the license?
| Because hair color isn't generally protected in US law.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > You might as well exclude blondes or people with a brother
| named "Mike."
|
| AFAIU that would be perfectly legal in the USA.
| lmkg wrote:
| You can't discriminate based on membership of protected
| classes, and the doctrine of "disparate impact" means you
| can't have an imbalanced impact against a protected class
| (even if unintentional!), unless there's a reasonable
| business case.
|
| Excluding blondes has a disparate impact against race.
|
| Excluding people with a brother named Mike can be argued to
| have a disparate impact based on ethnicity or national
| origin. Excluding people with a brother named Mike but with
| no restrictions on the names of their sisters might be
| discriminating based on sex. The condition is also more
| likely to exclude people with larger number of siblings,
| which could be argued to have a disparate impact based on
| religion.
| simmons wrote:
| I'm a bit uneasy about some things in this license (including
| the "fair" bit), but I doubt there's any legal problem with
| discriminating licensees based on revenue or head count.
| (Disclaimer: IANAL, etc.) Microsoft already does this with
| Visual Studio licensing -- the free "community" license
| explicitly restricts on both critiera:
|
| https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/mlt031819/
| camgunz wrote:
| All kinds of regulations have carveouts for small or family
| businesses. It's not legally discriminatory in the slightest.
| tyingq wrote:
| The author is a lawyer, and appears to have experience in the
| space.
|
| https://work.kemitchell.com/
| nbadg wrote:
| I'm a friend of the author, as well as friends with (former)
| employees at some of his clients. I can vouch not just that
| he's a lawyer, but also that he has experience in the space.
| _A lot_ of experience in the space.
| benatkin wrote:
| With these not-very-open-source licenses I'm glad when they give
| them names that are easy to filter out. "Shared" and "Business"
| are good terms to filter on, but it seems "Public License" is one
| as well. If it says "Public License" I know I'm not going to like
| it, whether it's an OSI-approved ones like the GPL, EPL, MPL,
| LGPL, AGPL, or this one which isn't OSI-approved and doesn't meet
| the OSD.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why don't you like the GPL?
| cogburnd02 wrote:
| Oh Holy God, not another one!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_proliferation
| HexDecOctBin wrote:
| I shared this one since it was actually drafted by a lawyer,
| and they explain the various parts of the license and the
| though-process behind it which I found interesting.
| masukomi wrote:
| to be clear, this isn't "yet another open source license"
|
| I'm pretty sure this doesn't qualify as an "open source"
| license. This is a commercial license that allows free usage
| for certain people / companies.
| cpach wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| In the early aughts, Microsoft used to call this concept
| "shared source" - not open source.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Initiative
| dmitrygr wrote:
| "If you need a big-company license, reach out for a big-company
| license, and either don't get a response, or get a clearly
| unfair, unreasonable, or discriminatory proposal, this is your
| fallback."
|
| So, what defines "unreasonable"? Maybe to Amazon, you wanting $1
| is unreasonable
| dnissley wrote:
| I'm curious what projects this license would be useful for? It
| kind of seems like it's just a way to grind a particular
| political axe?
| tptacek wrote:
| If "recouping revenue from companies that can easily afford
| commercial license" is a political axe, sure.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| That's a really cool idea in a lot of ways, thanks for sharing
| it.
|
| I do wonder if it could be parameterized for customization, kind
| of like CC-etc-etc licensing, but a bit more detailed. IOW, let's
| say you cross the barrier from small to big, could the resulting
| license effects be more gradual in that transitional zone? Just
| curious.
| HexDecOctBin wrote:
| Kyle E. Mitchell (the author of this license) was also part of
| another team of lawyers who created the Polyform Licenses[1]
| which AFAIK is supposed to be the modular alternative[2].
|
| [1] https://polyformproject.org/
|
| [2] https://commercial.polyformproject.org/
| themodelplumber wrote:
| That's interesting to see, thanks for the links.
| jefftk wrote:
| The pairing of 100 people and $1M revenue seems off by a factor
| of 10, unless the author intends that the latter limit will
| almost always be hit first? For example, in the US, a company
| with 100 people would be ~$2M in payroll+taxes alone if it paid
| federal minimum wage.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I always interpret new licenses through the lens of Debian's Free
| Software Guidelines.[0] I don't think this would be accepted as
| it limits usage.
|
| Besides that, the definition of a "small business" is terrible. A
| company is only eligible to use the software if they meet _all_
| of these conditions:
|
| - had fewer than 100 total individuals working as employees and
| independent contractors at all times during the last tax year
|
| - earned less than 1,000,000 USD (2019) total revenue in the last
| tax year
|
| - received less than 1,000,000 USD (2019) total debt, equity, and
| other investment in the last five tax years, counting investment
| in predecessor companies that reorganized into, merged with, or
| spun out your company
|
| 1M USD _in revenue_ is shockingly easy to cross. It also means
| that businesses in high cost of living areas will be excluded
| before ones in cheaper areas, even if they 're otherwise
| identical.
|
| It's an interesting idea, but I think it's a non-starter.
|
| [0] https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html
| echelon wrote:
| I really like this license, but this stuck out to me too. The
| thresholds are wide apart, and like you say, easy to cross when
| still "poor".
|
| 100 total individuals is huge (you have HR and lawyers), but
| you can do $1M revenue (imagine it sans profit!) with a team of
| one or two.
|
| This doesn't allow for YoY inflation. $1M today won't be the
| same tomorrow. The license should expect to issue new versions
| frequently to keep up with the economic landscape.
|
| It'd also be nice if authors could customize their thresholds,
| but I suppose that gets into the complexity of Creative
| Commons. (Remember that? Where the heck did that disappear to?
| - you never hear about it anymore.)
| JeffRosenberg wrote:
| > This doesn't allow for YoY inflation. $1M today won't be
| the same tomorrow. The license should expect to issue new
| versions frequently to keep up with the economic landscape.
|
| That's addressed at the bottom of the definition of a small
| business:
|
| > Adjust these dollar figures for inflation according to the
| United States Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price
| index for all urban consumers, United States city average,
| for all items, not seasonally adjusted, with 1982-1984=100
| reference base.
| bombcar wrote:
| I take that to mean that today it's $2,683,368.62 - which
| is about double and also confusingly worded.
| kemitche wrote:
| The license seems to refer to $1m in 2019 dollars:
| "earned less than 1,000,000 USD (2019)"
| kstrauser wrote:
| It does actually account for inflation, at least for US
| users:
|
| > Adjust these dollar figures for inflation according to the
| United States Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price
| index for all urban consumers, United States city average,
| for all items, not seasonally adjusted, with 1982-1984=100
| reference base.
|
| If you're in a country with hyperinflation, sucks to be you.
| And that still doesn't account for the massive COL
| differences between, say, Mississippi and Hawaii (which is
| about 2.2x, according to https://usabynumbers.com/states-
| ranked-by-cost-of-living/).
| derobert wrote:
| The amounts are in US dollars, so any local hyperinflation
| won't matter. Your local currency will be worth far fewer
| dollars.
|
| I didn't see if it says how to convert, as there are often
| multiple exchange rates, e.g., an official one that can't
| actually be used, a underground/black market one, and
| purchasing-power parity (PPP). I don't think use outside
| the rich, developed nations has really been considered.
| jabl wrote:
| > I always interpret new licenses through the lens of Debian's
| Free Software Guidelines.[0] I don't think this would be
| accepted as it limits usage.
|
| This license doesn't claim it's an open source license. Apples
| and oranges.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Perhaps, but what's the point of discussing non-open source
| licenses here? Yet Another Commercial License isn't
| interesting, even one that basically works out to be
| shareware.
| jabl wrote:
| > Perhaps, but what's the point of discussing non-open
| source licenses here?
|
| I guess that's up to discussion participants and moderators
| to decide, not you (or me) individually. If you're not
| interested, nobody is forcing you to participate in the
| discussion.
| lupire wrote:
| This is a software business website, not an open source
| website.
| tptacek wrote:
| Because lots of people here run commercial software
| businesses (our original name was "Startup News"). We
| discuss this for the same reason we discuss pricing pages
| and user metrics.
|
| Interesting articles about yet another commercial license
| are per se on topic for HN.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| Given that this is a website run by a startup
| accelerator, articles about commercial licenses are
| arguably _more_ on topic than ones about open source
| licenses. Successful commercial products with GPLed code
| are few and far in between.
| kstrauser wrote:
| It's not that I thought it was off-topic, just that it
| seemed unusual to me. What's more common is when an
| existing product changes its license, and then HN is all
| over discussing the implications.
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| Although I know of many small businesses that would be very
| happy with $1M pa, there does seem to be an imbalance with the
| number of employees. You simply can't pay 100 people a salary
| and stay under $1M. Maybe 12 people, or $10M would be a better
| balance.
| kstrauser wrote:
| You're right. And even then, that $10M goes a lot further in
| Afghanistan than Switzerland.
| ralmidani wrote:
| Someone could hire an army of programmers in a lower COL
| area/country.
| HexDecOctBin wrote:
| > You simply can't pay 100 people a salary and stay under
| $1M. Maybe 12 people, or $10M would be a better balance.
|
| As someone from a third-world country, I don't know whether
| to laugh or cry. I suspect that other than the hyper-inflated
| salaries in silicon valley, these metrics will be more than
| fair everywhere else.
| LukeShu wrote:
| $1M is $10k per employee, which is (in the USA) below the
| federal poverty line (i.e. not inflated SV numbers) of
| $12,880. Just working full time (>=35 hours a week) at the
| federal minimum wage ($7.25/hour) puts you over $13k.
| messe wrote:
| You couldn't pay 100 people minimum wage many places in
| Europe on that amount.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Employees cost more than just their salaries. I doubt
| there's any software-based business anywhere in the US with
| more than ~6-8 employees on $1m revenue.
| d3ckard wrote:
| Nope, one million is 10k a year per employee. That's low
| even in Poland and definitely well, well below Polish IT,
| and Europe in general makes a fraction of SV salaries.
|
| Those numbers are a bad match.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Poland is not a third world country though.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Poland is poor by standards of Western Europe (or USA).
|
| It is not so poor by global standards.
| d3ckard wrote:
| Sure, but parent suggested SV bias here, which is not the
| case.
| shiryel wrote:
| 10k USD a year is a reasonable salary in some third-world
| countries, on Brazil the minimum wage is about 2600 USD a
| year
| not2b wrote:
| But the business will have other expenses besides salary
| (rent on a building, providing developers with machines,
| etc), so you would be down to 7k USD per year or lower
| for an 100-employee company to break even with only
| $1M/year revenue.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| ok now try India
| Spartan-S63 wrote:
| You certainly can if you're taking VC money hand-over-fist
| (though that's captured in the $1MM investment clause). I see
| that provision in the license as preventing VC-backed
| startups from ducking paying for software while they're still
| achieving product-market fit.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| I think we need to be much more willing to consider software
| that's released with source available, but under a license that
| doesn't comply with the DFSG. (And yes, such software should be
| called something other than "open source".) Those guidelines
| aren't sacred, and neither is Stallman's definition of free
| software.
|
| Ever since I read _Hackers_ by Steven Levy a few years ago,
| I've been much less sympathetic toward Stallman, and the MIT AI
| Lab hackers in general. If you've read _Hackers_, recall that
| Stallman also strenuously opposed passwords. Well, it's
| absolutely clear now that restricting access to computers with
| passwords (or something equivalent) is absolutely necessary to
| defend against bad actors. So we should be open to the
| possibility that, while widespread sharing of source code is
| good, some kind of restriction on the usage of that code is
| necessary to protect the developers from freeloaders. I'm sure
| we haven't arrived at the best way to do this yet, but we won't
| get there if we immediately reject all attempts because they
| don't meet a definition of freedom that's perhaps too absolute
| for the real world.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| " _I think we need to be much more willing to consider
| software that 's released with source available_"
|
| I agree. The label 'source only' is considered a dirty word
| among _some_ open source advocates. But if you are building a
| B2B (Business-to-Business) software product, 'source only'
| is a perfectly viable option to succesfully make a living
| from your product - one that isn't completely closed source
| (but one that clearly isn't open source). The source code of
| the product cannot be shared, but it can be modified by the
| customer to suit their needs.
|
| The idea of 'source only' is not new at all. Back in the late
| 90s when Delphi was popular, many developers created and sold
| components to other developers (e.g. UI widgets). These
| components came with full source code of the components but
| they were not open source.
|
| Fast forward to today, what are examples of 'source only'
| products doing well? Two examples: 'Kirby CMS' and 'Craft
| CMS' (Content Management Systems). Both are popular and
| profitable. Their source code is even published publicly on
| GitHub. The product creators trust customers will pay for the
| product (presumably some do not, but enough customers do pay
| so it doesn't matter).
|
| Other developers are happy to contribute to the eco-system of
| plugins. So, yes, it's perfectly possible to build a
| community of enthusiastic followers for a 'source only'
| product that isn't open source.
|
| WordPress is another example. Although WordPress is open
| source, the plugin market is full of 'source only' plugins
| for sale that are successful and profitable.
| ralmidani wrote:
| The problem with absolutism: it ignores how trivial it is to
| copy and deploy a lot of modern programs. Condemning licenses
| which protect against juggernauts like Amazon leaves no
| middle ground between free software and proprietary software.
| kemitchell wrote:
| Like most definitions in legal terms, the definition of "small
| business" in the license is functional and context-specific. It
| needn't be a good dictionary definition of "small business" for
| use elsewhere.
|
| Functionally, each of the prongs of Big Time's definition works
| as an independent tripwire. Cross one, the license no longer
| covers your business and you need to reach out for a deal. This
| approach, based on revenue, headcount, and capital, isn't
| unique to Big Time. It comes up in laws and regulations, as
| well.
|
| With all that in mind, I don't think it's important for the
| figures, read together, to add up to a single, consistent
| picture of any one hypothetical business. I don't think they
| need to be convincingly proportional. Rather, each needs to
| prevent "end runs" around the others. If you're running
| accounting losses but paying lots of people, you need to make a
| deal. If you're three founders in a garage who haven't even
| tried to charge any customers yet, but just raised $3m in
| venture capital, you need to do a deal.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Not to mention in companies that just acquire other companies,
| the parent company has a lot of revenue, but the sub-companies
| can be chronically cash-strapped. In big companies (and
| conglomerates) any given product does not draw from the total
| financial resources of the entire organization and its various
| revenue streams. A single megacorp product can have a 250K
| budget and generate 500K revenue, but they're not gonna get any
| more money for their product development just because the
| megacorp makes more money outside that product. And that
| revenue is probably just gonna get stolen by the megacorp to
| use somewhere else, the money doesn't go back into improving
| the first product.
|
| And what's the purpose of this license? Is it to generate
| revenue for the developer? If so, you want your terms to invite
| more liberal use by larger companies, as they may start using
| your project in more and more of their products which will net
| you more and more revenue. If it's too expensive for one of
| their products, it's too expensive for all of them.
|
| The best way to get a large company "hooked" on your project is
| to provide an initial term of free use, like 6 or 16 months,
| and to track use remotely via metrics gathering ("checking for
| upgradeable versions on start-up"). Once they've used it for
| free long enough, you go and ask (politely) for your money. If
| you price right, it'll be cheaper for them to pay you than to
| remove your project.
| Closi wrote:
| I think someone wanting to use this licence may take a view
| of "megacorps should pay for my work regardless of their sub-
| company internal wooden-dollars accounting, so they shouldn't
| get out of using my open source efforts to make their rich
| stakeholders richer, although I don't mind helping some small
| indie team kickstart their business (and if they end up
| growing big, they will pay me anyway!)."
|
| Also the need for these style of licenses is shown by what
| happens when, for instance, AWS decides to just copy an open
| source project (that was put on a permissive open source
| license with the best of intentions) and then AWS just
| directly compete with the original maintainers/authors
| company.
| post-it wrote:
| You could have 100 part-time employees and contractors and be
| under $1M total revenue. Not common, but some kind of tutoring
| agency maybe.
|
| It doesn't hurt to cover all bases. The author thought of three
| qualities that would define a large business and AND'ed their
| negations to define a small business. It doesn't really matter
| if #2 almost always implies #1.
| jgeada wrote:
| How's that my problem? I don't owe you a profit! More, we
| don't owe you _anything_ , the obligation at best runs the
| other direction.
|
| Users of open software are making use of work of others
| frequently without payment or any similar contribution to
| that work. At a certain scale, and that point can be defined
| in arbitrarily, your ability to free ride on the work of
| others ends. I don't how that is a controversial point.
| post-it wrote:
| Did you reply to the wrong comment? I don't understand your
| response.
| jalonso510 wrote:
| seems like the springing requirement to negotiate a paid license
| after $1m in revenue is just destined to be forgotten. it will
| come up two rounds later in diligence and be a minor pain to deal
| with. I'd probably avoid using something licensed under this just
| to avoid the headache later. or would prefer to pay for a
| commercial license upfront even.
| lupire wrote:
| > I will probably never be happy with this paragraph [describing
| the purpose] for more than five minutes at a time.
|
| So why should anyone use it, if the author doesn't like it?
| computronus wrote:
| One suggestion I have is to update the "How to Request" section,
| which lays out a procedure for asking for a commercial license.
| It'd be simpler if the license terms require the _licensor_ to
| provide contact information for commercial licenses in a defined
| location. That would help "guarantee[] ... paid licenses for big
| business are available on fair terms"; there's some consideration
| in this license for the rights of the big business here.
|
| If the licensor can't be bothered to provide contact information,
| then they aren't upholding their side of the deal, considering
| the purpose of the license. The licensor could always use a
| different license, then.
|
| ETA: It also makes the process for getting the license cut and
| dry. It's easy to determine if enough work was done by the big
| business to contact the licensor: did they use the contact
| information required to be present or not?
| stickfigure wrote:
| This is an interesting concept, but I'm not sure I would use
| software like this in my small business unless the software owner
| made some sort of price commitment up front. Otherwise, several
| years down the road, I'm hit with the bill - and the owner could
| charge me _anything_ they want. I 'm already dependent on the
| software.
| gspr wrote:
| Just another non-free crayon license.
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