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from the stepping-stones-to-sofware-freedom dept.
Bruce Perens is working on licensing for a new, post-Open Source era to take open source licensing past the apparent stalling point it has reached on its way towards software freedom. As he noted earlier, current licenses are not meeting that goal and businesses have either found loophole or just plain been allowed to ignore the licensing. A move more towards a contract is needed.
At the link below is the first draft of the Post-Open License. This is not yet the product of a qualified attorney, and you shouldn't apply it to your own work yet. There isn't context for this license yet, so some things won't make sense: for example the license is administered by an entity called the "POST-OPEN ADMINISTRATION" and I haven't figured out how to structure that organization so that people can trust it. There are probably also terms I can't get away with legally, this awaits work with a lawyer.
Because the license attempts to handle very many problems that have arisen with Open Source licensing, it's big. It's approaching the size of AGPL3, which I guess is a metric for a relatively modern license, since AGPL3 is now 17 years old
The draft license is quite long since it covers quite a few scenarios.
Previously:
(2023) What Comes After Open Source? Bruce Perens is Working on It
(2018) The Next 20 Years of Open Source Software Begins Today
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stormreaver on Saturday March 09 2024, @10:10PM (2 children)
And what's going to stop these same companies from ignoring whatever Bruce and co. come up with next? The problem isn't the existing licenses, but rather the ability and will to prosecute violators. It won't matter one bit if the new approach is contract based, as the same lack of prosecution will persist.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 09 2024, @10:25PM
>the same lack of prosecution will persist.
Last I had any dealings with them, 10+ years ago now, the FFmpeg crew had a jolly time exposing unpermitted use of their software and threatening various legal actions against the perpetrators... did they ever make any significant headway beyond getting a few cable companies to acknowledge the use of FFmpeg in their set-top boxes?
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Saturday March 09 2024, @11:55PM
There's an arbitration clause.
Copyrights doesn't cover AI training and generative output so if you train a model on non-permissive code and then prompt the model to produce a competing product, that product isn't be considered a derivative work by current laws as there's no human authorship. So, it's possible to "AI-wash" anything and make a few manual tweaks to the output to effectively gain authorship over just about anything out there if your AI is good enough. Worse still, the TRIPS agreement includes that "human authorship" wording so even if your own country extends its copyright protections to cover it, other countries will be able to disregard it entirely.
compiling...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by rpnx on Saturday March 09 2024, @10:15PM (3 children)
Post-Open sounds like an attempt to defeat the core values of open source and replace them with the progatzi values. (progatzi = progressive nazi)
The core of open source does not need to be better than proprietary software to be successful, it simply needs to continue getting better. The Post-Open license is very clearly non-free.
The reason why open source isn't working in some sense, is because of permissive (instead of copyleft) open source licenses allowing proprietary software to incorporate them. No corporation would use a post open license, just as they do not like using AGPLv3 licensed software.
I see no reason to support a "post-open" world. Open source is the goal, and permissive open source is a compromise between corporations and the open source community. Post-open betrays the values that underlay open source and it will be defeated in the end. Post-open is the enemy, in many ways, I see it as worse than typical proprietary software. At least proprietary software gives me the right to use it if I pay for it. Post-open software is about exclusion of big companies, and "power to the small" is never what open source was about. Open source is about freedom for everyone, including big companies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Vocal Minority on Sunday March 10 2024, @05:48AM (1 child)
I must admit I had a similar reaction to the name, but they may just be using it because it "sounds cool". Do you have any examples from the licence to show that it betrays the core values of open source?
(Score: 4, Informative) by rpnx on Monday March 11 2024, @03:05AM
I haven't read the whole license, but I read enough to know it's not compatible with open source. Giving power to an administration and also excluding based on revenue is not open.
(Score: 5, Funny) by kazzie on Sunday March 10 2024, @07:33AM
To me, "Post-Open License" sounds like permission for the mail carrier to steam open my letters.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 09 2024, @10:21PM (3 children)
When I'm comparing options and one of the options does the job _and_ comes with a dead simple license like the MIT, I'll opt for short and sweet every time.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aafcac on Saturday March 09 2024, @11:49PM (2 children)
I definitely think the issue here is trying to retain control of something that's being given away. Ultimately, I don't know that it's possible to do that and more complicated software may just need to be paid software in the long term.
That being said, I don't know that super complicated software is such a good thing anyways. Complicated software is harder to secure and requires more effort to learn to use. A lot of the older open source software was intended to be mixed intelligently with other tools by the user.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday March 10 2024, @04:55AM
>and more complicated software may just need to be paid software in the long term.
Instead of complicated, I'd say niche... there are plenty of decent open source browsers, and Libre Office is pretty successful as such things go - both plenty complicated, maybe too complicated for their intended purposes, but that seems to be what the users want.
>A lot of the older open source software was intended to be mixed intelligently with other tools by the user.
In my "user case" I'm most often combining simple software packages, or components like https://github.com/nayuki/QR-Code-generator [github.com] into more complex / niche targeted software. The paychecks keep coming, so I guess what I do is valuable.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Unixnut on Sunday March 10 2024, @04:16PM
It is a good point, in fact when you think about it more, it is the exact same problem that is seen with DRM and piracy. It is very hard to retain control of something once you have given a copy to someone else.
If nerds generally agree that DRM is futile because if something can be read it can be copied, then the exact same thing applies with source code. If it is shared, others can read it, if others can read it, they can copy it. Licences like the GPL etc... try to exert some control but unless you got the money to go after violators and spend a lot of time in legal battles, it is generally not possible to effectively retain control over something the other party has already got access to.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by chromas on Sunday March 10 2024, @08:18AM (1 child)
These licenses are getting out of hand. I'm not reading all that. I just wanna post my toys on the internet in case someone else finds it useful. Now I'll have to go find neural net to tell me which license has my favorite nuances I guess.
I asked Bing (GPT5, I think) What's the best open source loicense, and when I asked about WTFPL (the obviously correct option) it spewed out several paragraphs, then deleted them and told me to change the topic. Jesus wept.
In the mean time, all the best generative models take the big-name, organic all-natural free-range privacy-respecting models and then fine tune them privately on stuff that ignores the licenses and copyrights.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday March 11 2024, @04:28PM
I don't disagree, but . . .
I remember some years ago a NO LICENSE movement.
Fortunately it died out quickfully.
Some people wanted to release their software or other creative work with no license at all. Just don't even mention the subject other than to make it very easy to download and use.
There is a real problem with this.
If you don't EXPRESSLY give me a copyright license to use your work, I won't touch it with a ten foot pole. The corporate lawyers will forbid its use (which might be what you want!) The NO LICENSE people said they just wanted people to use their work without having to deal with legalese. I pointed out that without a license, I would be infringing their copyright which exists at the moment they created their work. But don't worry they would assure, I'm not going to sue you. They're just nice guys. They promise. But if they really promise and are such nice guys, they would put that promise in writing -- it's called a license.
Fortunately this nonsense didn't last long.
Infinity is clearly an even number since the next higher number is odd.