Fair-code is not a software license. It describes a software model where software:
- is generally free to use and can be distributed by anybody
- has its source code openly available
- can be extended by anybody in public and private communities
- is commercially restricted by its authors
The licenses are legal and allow you to monetize code - but they place restrictions on how it can be done, by design.
A restriction common to all those licenses is that you must own the code to monetize it.
If you create a project with a license like this and require a CLA for contributions, why would I not look for a different to project to contribute to? You’re literally telling me only you are allowed to profit from the code I write. Some people will be okay with this, but many won’t (note that current FOSS licenses allow you to monetize the code even if you did sign a CLA).
OTOH, a company trying to get free cotributions while hampering their competition will greatly benefit from such a license.
So these licenses benefit scummy companies, and make the lives of independent maintainers harder, while lowering the potential for contribution. They are objectively worse than what we have now, and are clearly not free licenses
I accept your argument, it is the same that others have made 100 times. It still does in no way address the issue that the people making these licenses try to address. Instead of actively trying to work together to form something that changes this rotten situation, people poke holes in the efforts of others. But alas.
Yes and no. In this fictional situation where you write noteworthy amounts of code for the software I maintain alone, which already gets used by revenue-producing entities and earns some money, you would rightfully ask to be taken on as maintainer and become part of the group profiting from the software, no?
This would obviously also raise the amount of malicious effort to be taken on as maintainer just to leech on code and that issue would be needed to be addressed. But I dont see how your point is more valid than mine.
I feel like most people arguing against this stuff dont really play these scenarios through and always have the big scummy company in mind that coopts this honest idea. But in the meantime they throw every developer and maintainer under the bus that only wants to write code for everyone and keeps getting exploited by his employer (because foss software doesnt pay, duh), who gets chewed on by his users all while someone takes their product and sells it for profit.
„Why not sell it yourself?“ is always a bad faith argument imo. I believe nobody who says they actually make money with foss and also are decent indipendent programmers. As seen in recent events, only the shiny projects get any amount of donations and even that is laughable. The lemmy devs would be millionaires already if they were a company.
Feel free to counter my point.
In practice it has been scummy companies using these licenses so far.
If you use these licenses as a maintainer and don’t require a CLA, basically no one (including you) can profit off the code. This is obviously worse than the current situation IMO.
Requiring a CLA will reduce contributions (especially when using these licenses IMO), which will hurt your project.
I would rightfully ask, but you could just refuse. You will become (in this scenario) the company leeching off a developer. And if I’m passionate about the project, I’ll probably keep contributing, since I won’t be able to profit from a fork anyway.
There are many more issues with this idea - what if the maintainer disappears? (say someone forked the project and continued development - with these licenses the fork can’t be monetized)
What about the fact that once you sign a CLA you basically have to trust the maintainer/company to not just relicense the code under whatever terms they want (this is not theoretical, ElasticSearch used this method to change to a “fair code” license).
Thanks for elaborating. I can see your point.
And what would change from now for you personally? You dont get paid now but with a fair license the maintainer (and the project) would get paid… which they do under commercial licenses anyway.
With a free license I could get paid though (and the maintainer and project could, too), I would just have to do the work myself to make it happen (by starting a company offering enterprise support for businesses using the project, for example).
Don’t expect that just because you use a “fair code” license you will be paid - it’s likely that companies would just prefer to use a free software project instead (just like today when companies almost never use AGPL licensed code).
I get that. I dont know if you ever built a company but I did, multiple. And that is completely different from coding. Someone can deserve to be paid without opening a company imo.
I dont expect to get paid because I use a certain license. I expect to get paid if someone uses my work to make money with it. Your argument also has two counters:
But this is contrary to what is actually happening - when ElasticSearch changed to a “fair code” license, Amazon forked the last version and now maintain OpenSearch.
If you created a new project from scratch which is uniquely useful then sure, companies will probably pay. But what happens if a free competitor pops up? Or if one already exists? I don’t see corporations paying for stuff they can get for free.
Then how are you expecting to get paid? It’s not like with these licenses you would automatically get paid when someone uses your code. You still need to do non-trivial and non-development related work to form some business relationship with these companies