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| -rw-r--r-- | _posts/2020-08-13-post-open-source.md | 4 |
1 files changed, 3 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/_posts/2020-08-13-post-open-source.md b/_posts/2020-08-13-post-open-source.md index 18cf403..707d128 100644 --- a/_posts/2020-08-13-post-open-source.md +++ b/_posts/2020-08-13-post-open-source.md @@ -223,7 +223,7 @@ now it is unambiguous in its intent, and also, it says fuck in the title. as such, it is the only good software license. on a more sincere note, some licenses are trying to solve the problem of corporate exploitation by bringing back into fashion the idea of public-private licenses, where the default license is principled and corporations can simply pay for an exception and be covered by a different license instead. -the most interesting of these projects, at least as of August 2020, is [license zero](https://licensezero.com/), which offers two different public licenses, one standard private license template, and infrastructure for automatically selling exceptions. +the most interesting of these projects, at least as of August 2020, is [license zero](https://licensezero.com/), run by actual lawyer Kyle E. Mitchell, which offers two different public licenses, one standard private license template, and infrastructure for automatically selling exceptions. their Parity license is a share-alike license that allows any use that is also published under an open license. their Prosperity license allows any use as long as it is not commercial in nature; as such, it technically doesn't satisfy the Open Source Definition and is thus in a very concrete sense a post-open source license. their Patreon license, which isn't linked on their homepage at all, grants an automatic license exception for certain financial supporters. @@ -241,6 +241,8 @@ as such, the approach Villa describes is to tell the law to mind its own damn bu norms are tough to start from scratch, but sociologically they can fill a similar role in principle to laws while maintaining flexibility. i'm not quite sure what a normative approach to post-open source software would look like - i'm not aware of anyone attempting to implement it, and i'm not sure i'm ready to be the first - but most likely it'd combine the WTFPL (or, more plausibly, zero-clause BSD) with an ecosystem of standard sets of norms similar to the current varieties in codes of conduct. +*update 2020-08-15*: actual lawyer Kyle E. Mitchell proposed an implementation of this approach in early 2019 and i think everyone should go read [that proposal](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/03/15/Ethical-Subcommons.html) right now and then come back to this blog post. + and since i've been quoting him the whole time, i should probably also give a shout out to actual lawyer Luis Villa's current project, [Tidelift](https://tidelift.com/), which is trying to address open source funding at both ends. for corporate clients, (it looks like) tidelift is selling known-good, actively maintained, secure dependency subscriptions, and for open source maintainers, they're (i think) offering not just a proportional cut of the subscription revenue but also resources for keeping projects good, maintained, and secure. i haven't used it on either end, i'm just paraphrasing their marketing copy, but they do exist. |