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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: 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.