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In May this year, users of popular open source project FUSE for macOS noticed the source code for the latest update was missing. The project had become closed source and was no longer free for commercial use. But as The Reg discovered when we had a talk with its maintainer, there was a very good reason for that – and it's not a good look for the many companies that used it.
[...]FUSE for macOS 3.9 can still be freely bundled with commercial software. Then in July of 2019, I released FUSE for macOS 3.10 with support for macOS Catalina under the new, less permissive licence, that requires specific written permission to bundle FUSE with commercial software," he told The Reg.
[...] How is this possible? "Most of the FUSE for macOS source code is released under the BSD licence. However, libfuse, for example, is released under the LGPL. I did what other developers of closed source FUSE forks have been doing for some time. The BSD licence has no copyleft, which means that no one is required to push changes upstream or make them available. As libfuse is covered under the LGPL, changes to it need to be made available, while changes to the kernel code can be kept closed," Fleischer explains.
The outcome? "After the licence change I have been contacted by several companies and negotiated some licence agreements. In this very regard closing the source code of FUSE was a success. In the very least it helped to raise awareness to the difficulties of sustainable open source software development," he said.
Fleischer added that: "I do not like continuing working on FUSE as a closed source project. It has been a hard decision and I have been thinking about it for a very long time, but I stand by it and it seemed to be the only option left to raise awareness and ensure the project's future."
He acknowledges though that: "I have not been very transparent about the licence change."
Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/16/fuse_macos_closed_source/
(Score: 5, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday December 17 2019, @01:15PM (10 children)
It could be dual-licensed under GPL and a paid license. The fact that commercial projects were freeloading to make money themselves on closed-source extensions is exactly what GPL exists to prevent. The dual-license model works well enough to sacrifice developer community for a single maintainer's ability to devote all their time to the project.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 17 2019, @03:14PM (9 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday December 17 2019, @04:32PM
If the only free license is GPL, commercial users can't use it without making their product GPL also. They would need to pay if they want to sell their derivative closed-source product.
To be fair, that's only true here because FUSE has linking requirements that trigger the GPL. If the product could be isolated in such a way that commercial users could avoid that, you could switch to AGPL to cover API usage as well.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @08:17PM
This is why I switched from being a free software advocate to a plain socialist. As long as there are literally hundreds of billions of dollars to be made by charging licensing fees, Digital Rights Management, data tracking for the purposes of advertising, and planned obsolescence the free software community will never reach a useful level of market penetration.
A lot of free software developers and users are fine with that. They run their own Linux or *BSD installation and don't care what the rest of the world does.
I disagree. I think user freedom only has value if it's commonplace or universal. I run my own mail server but everyone I correspond with uses a hosted service, so all of my email is still read and mined for advertising purposes. The number of websites one can usefully access with NoScript is getting smaller each month. I can't bank, shop for groceries, or watch a movie without having the data recorded and sold unless I pay cash at a farmer's market. Even if I turn off my phone's location services, my wireless carrier can use cell tower signal strength triangulation to collect that information and sell it.
We're not going to earn these freedoms back working on software and gadgets in our spare time, even if there are hundreds of thousands of us. There's too much profit in attacking freedom and no business model for protecting it. The core problem is simply capitalism.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:11AM (6 children)
If one of the two licenses is viral like the GPL there's a strong incentive for companies to pay. This is how the Sleepycat license works, you either use it fairly under the GPL or you pay the necessary sin tax to avoid the GPL. It's quite a nice business model, everyone who wants to play fair gets it under the GPL, anyone who doesn't agree with the GPL can still use it, but they have to pay for that right.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:40AM (5 children)
Dual licensing means that companies that don't change the code won't have to pay to use it. What good is that to a developer who can't afford to work for free any more?
The guy sold some licenses - good for him. The buyers didn't need to make any changes to the source, so they would have been free to use it if it had been gpl. Now, they have to pay and it's obviously worth it to them or they wouldn't have bothered.
The gpl gives businesses a free ride. I would like to see more developers take a stand on the value of their work. It's not like a car company will let you use their car for free and "make it up in support" when other garages can compete with them without the overhead of actually making cars.
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(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday December 19 2019, @02:25AM (4 children)
Uh, no it doesn't, that's why I mentioned viral licenses, if you use any of the code you either have to GPL your own code (which commercial companies won't do) or pay for it. It works quite well, thus the Sleepycat license, which I also mentioned in my post.
No it doesn't. You either don't understand how the GPL works or you're thinking of some different license.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 19 2019, @02:37AM
Read the LGPL. It doesn't have the effect you think it does for libraries. Also, even GPL code, you don't have to release your code if you don't link to GPL code.
There's no reason you can't have proprietary code shell out to GPL code and use the return values. No linkage required, no need to release the proprietary source.
Also, there's absolutely no need to distribute the code if you don't redistribute. Or distribute your binary separately and either provide a link to download gpl code or whatever that is used but not linked to. No license violation.
Same as if you use it to run software as a service. No distribution == no gpl violation.
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 19 2019, @06:47PM (1 child)
The GPL is only triggered when you redistribute code. Any business is free to use GPL code for whatever reason they want as long as they don't redistribute the resulting program.
That's one reason why you can use GPL code in software-as-a-service without triggering the GPL.
And if you don't modify the code, who cares? It's not like you're depriving anyone of any changes.
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(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday December 20 2019, @01:35AM
That's not how corporate lawyers interpret it. What's made the news is the small number of companies who have flouted the GPL, not the large number of companies who have looked at the GPL and paid for the alternative because the GPL adds too much uncertainty. In rare cases where they've dug in their heels, having a lawyer point out that one interpretation of the GPL is that if the company gives the software to their employees, which they must in order to have them work on it, then the employees have the right to redistribute it to anyone else because providing it to their employees triggers the redistribution clause. The company decided to pay rather than have that tested in court.
Companies pay to get legal certainty, not because of a particular interpretation of the Gnu ideology.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 19 2019, @06:49PM
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