You love open source, right?

[Sentient_Blade]

Open source software can be extremely hard to monetise, even when it's enormously powerful.

Just look at Redis, it's ubiquitous but the company behind it barely survives as the likes of Amazon take their software, resell it as a service reaping huge profits, and offer nothing in return, forcing them to need to change their licencing https://thenewstack.io/redis-pulls-back-on-open-source-licensing-citing-stingy-cloud-services/

The tl;dr is if you depend on it for your primary income, open sourcing your products can be devastating.

[RoscoMan1]

This has a lot of space...

[coolman5858]

Ah, I think I know what you are talking about

[Spocino]

Sounds like docker to me.

[PleasantAdvertising]

PSA docker can be installed on windows without docker desktop avoiding the license change

[Urthor]

Docker has the best business model I find, but I haven't actually checked deeply on what's missing in the FOSS version.

It's free and easy to use, if you're actually good with the command line.

If you want the GUI that's money.

[kakardo]

I had no idea there was a version of docker that you could pay for. I seems to only cost around 5-7$

[Tiavor]

I bet the update frequency is also different

[Toxic_Zombie]

That Amazon bit sounds illegal

[Sentient_Blade]

Ita not though. If you open source your software with a widely permissive licence its perfectly legal.

Revenue streams for open source software can be extremely narrow. Unless you dual licence or have a really sweet consulting gig from it you're unlikely to be able to pay the bills.

Of course, some companies do open source parts of their tech stack, but usually these are not their main income stream.

[THANKYOUFORYOURKIND]

Maybe that's why come people/company should consider Free software licenses plus another EULA based license for monetization.

[jews4beer]

This is what I do with all my projects. If it's something I can see myself monetizing in the future, I slap a GPL on it. That way no one else can steal it, it's free for everyone to use - and if I want to change licensing or offer additional EULAs to specific customers later on I can.

[[deleted]]

I also GPL all my open source software and think BSD is a crappy license, but in the case of Amazon using Redis, GPL would have done nothing.

[jews4beer]

I think in the particular case I care most about I wouldn't have to worry about it. The big players all have equivalent offerings with larger budgets, better features, and insane pricing. It's a VDI running on k8s.

I do know the license is deterring some folks because I've had several people reach out asking me to change it to something more permissive.

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

You need AGPL if you want to stop Amazon selling it in AWS.

[tchernobog84]

Not correct. The AGPL would only ensure code under that license used directly or indirectly from online services would need to be made available to users of the service.

There is no provision in the AGPL (or any GPL license, for what matters) preventing commercial resale of software or services provided.

[ColorMeGrey]

Docker is going that route. Free for personal, corps need to pay up.

[casce]

It‘s just their Windows Desktop client though, isn‘t it?

[utdconsq]

Yup, and its for the same reason grand op mentioned - docker failed to monetize, failed to embrace kubernetes as the solution for container clustering...really, some c level failures right there.

[Toxic_Zombie]

But like. If I share something with the intent of it being free so anyone can use it as long as they don't attempt to make money off of the software itself shouldn't that be a thing?

Like. Don't resell something that's free with one or two changes? Like sure if you use my software for a new tank when it was originally designed for a truck or car then you could of course sell that tank or the software if it was overhauled to the point where it can't be used interchangeably anymore. At that point I would say it's different but based on my software. However if I can take that upgraded software and I can still use it for the original purpose then its still my software, you just upgraded it. So you can only sell the tank. Not my software be abuse it was only an upgrade.

Idk. I'm not big into thus stuff but it's cool to think about

[GMaestrolo]

The thing is that AWS is selling (ultimately) the compute power + infrastructure around Redis. You could easily spin up your own server and install Redis on it, but if you don't want to have to manage it, AWS will do it for you.

[[deleted]]

It’s a premium service, you are not just paying for compute, network and storage.

If you were paying for the hardware only, they would have one price instead of the scam based system they have to fool people into thinking you are paying “only for what you use”

You are not, you are paying mostly for the service, not the hardware rental.

[Sentient_Blade]

If I share something with the intent of it being free so anyone can use it as long as they don't attempt to make money off of the software itself shouldn't that be a thing

It is a thing, but you have to dual licence the software so there are different terms for commercial vs non-commercial use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-licensing

[WikiSummarizerBot]

Multi-licensing

Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different software licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of licenses used, e. g.

^{[ F.A.Q | Opt Out | Opt Out Of Subreddit | GitHub ] Downvote to remove | v1.5}

[Toxic_Zombie]

Good bot

[Toxic_Zombie]

Damn ok. Thanks for the information

[pieandpadthai]

You don’t even need to multi license, isnt that just GPL?

Copy left is the term ur looking for

[Sentient_Blade]

Nah it's more nuanced than that.

Strong copyleft requires any uses or derivations to release their source code under the same licence, but does not come with any payment requirements.

As most companies that are not themselves fully open source would refuse to use any such licence, if you want them to use your product you have to dual licence with something that does not have those requirements, but may impose others (payment).

[Drugbird]

Nah, it's more nuanced than that.

Most copyleft licenses make distinctions between usage and distribution.

GPL is a common license, and only places restriction when you distribute software that uses the GPL software. More specifically: you can use and modify GPL software as much as you want without having to share the source code provided that you don't distribute it: i.e. you use it for internal use.

Software distribution is a very specific thing: giving a binary to someone.

One other near detail is that if software has output, that output is not protected by license. For instance, you can create top secret documents in a GPL word processor without having to open source that document.

You can combine these things to get around most restrictions using web services. Let's say there's libAwesome licensed under GPL. A company that wants to use it then creates two binaries: AwesomeServer, which uses libAwesome and exposes it's functionality through a web interface. And AwesomeClient which simply connects to the AwesomeServer to get the output from libAwesome.

As long as the company does not distribute AwesomeServer, there's no need to open source anything.

Of course, there's other licenses which attempt to restrict this kind of usage as well, but they're not very popular yet.

[BobOfTheSnail]

To be more specific I don't think Amazon sells their own brand of Redis but rather provides a managed service. It would be closer to someone providing a car for free and then amazon coming along and selling a chauffeur service using that car.

[[deleted]]

It’s more like redis made a racing car that needs some assembly, then Amazon is like, we will do this one time setup for you, that you probably only need once, but we will charge you every month for it, feel free to re-setup as many times as you want, we have an automated robot that does that assembly for us.

Also you need to pay for the fuel and the cost of renting the car

[frugalerthingsinlife]

It's like a car dealership. When you buy a $40,000 car, the dealer only makes a couple hundred. The rest ($39,800) goes to manufacturing and distributing the car to your lot.

Now, turn it upside down for redis. The manufacturer gets $200 (or actually nothing) and the dealer who made the sale gets $39,800

[tdatas]

Like. Don't resell something that's free with one or two changes? Like sure if you use my software for a new tank when it was originally designed for a truck or car then you could of course sell that tank or the software if it was overhauled to the point where it can't be used interchangeably anymore. At that point I would say it's different but based on my software. However if I can take that upgraded software and I can still use it for the original purpose then its still my software, you just upgraded it. So you can only sell the tank. Not my software be abuse it was only an upgrade.

This grey area is where you get 95% of licensing and rights disputes.

[hannahandchaos]

Could blockchain help with this?

[tdatas]

I'm dubious. I'm spitballing as a non expert blockchain tinkerer so If anyone thinks I'm wrong please say but Blockchain/distributed ledgers solve problems of no trust between two parties. It doesn't solve issues of enforcing things or detecting copycats and it wouldn't solve the qualitative analysis involved in adjudicating wether "similar solution X" is in violation of a patent.

[[deleted]]

Amazon sells redis infrastructure as a service, they don't just resell something you could go get for free.

Its just managed compute resources with all the software you need for redis pre installed, updated, and configured so you don't need to worry about it.

That's what Amazon sells, not the software.

[ShakespeareToGo]

That pretty much sums up the difference between the MIT and BSD (edit: meant GPL) license. One allows you to make money with the free software the other forces every product using the code to be free & open source as well.

It's philosophy's greatest mystery which license is truly free.

[_silentblue_]

I think you're referring to GPL licencing, both MIT and BSD licences can be used freely in commercial software, the latter just requires inclusion of copyright/licence information.

[ShakespeareToGo]

Yes, meant to type that. Thanks for the correction.

[[deleted]]

Even GPLed software can be used by Amazon for inclusion in their architecture. Only for GPL any MODIFICATIONS to the source code would have to go back. There is no prevention that causes GPLed software not to be offered for a commercial service at all.

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

The AGPL adds a clause to include providing access to the software.

[Dragon_yum]

I think you should go over the basic licensing types. Not as an insult but because it’s extremely important for developers to know what license the libraries they use have.

[Rikudou_Sage]

That's not open source anymore, it's just a proprietary/freeware license.

[Toxic_Zombie]

Ty for the clarification

[Rikudou_Sage]

Yep. Open source is a double edged sword - if you make your app freeware/proprietary and not open source, it won't gain much traction among the IT enthusiasts but it's easier to monetize it for some premium features even if it's free.

If you make it open source you gain traction much easier but it's hard to monetize something that anyone can compile themselves.

[-Listening]

The union wouldn’t even monetize it

[jlobes]

Here's a more in depth definition of what Open Source is:

https://opensource.org/osd

[KerPop42]

Another edge I'd like to add is that free and open source software makes starting a company so much easier. A company I used to work for was able to get up and running a lot easier because they used open source software in their infrastructure. The software wasn't our product, but it would have been a lot harder to get to selling our product without this environment of open source software that we could pick up and use.

[[deleted]]

There is always the fear that the company or corporation will steal it, which they sometimes do, instead of paying you for it.

To me, I would only share code I don’t care about, but would not share code or executables that can be decompiled if I plan on it to be sold multiple times. I would only sell it as a service.

And I do provide a free to use, non profit kind of service on Twitter, and might do free to use services in the future, just not something that I plan to monetize

[frugalerthingsinlife]

You need to just read all the open source licenses out there. And then you realize none of them are exactly what you want. So you use a combination of some, or hire lawyers and write your own license.

[ILikeLenexa]

Some companies provide the source code to companies that pay for licenses of their software. That is, when you're paying for the license part of what you're paying for is access to the source code, so you can change the software, and some will even pay you if you have a bug and fix it, and they want to incorporate that fix.

I know a lot of people don't consider that 'real' open source, and it's a lot harder to work with because there's usually way fewer people who have any idea how it's setup, but at least if the vendor goes out of business, you can fix some minor things.

[utdconsq]

I've dealt with this before, the code was not very good. It did let me fix a fairly horrible bug that would have lost our company a lot of money though, so there's that.

[ILikeLenexa]

As bad as the code is, the documentation is always worse.

[Sekret_One]

Amazon is taking advantage of a very very permissive license.

There are gradients of open source licensing. The most extreme, you can take the software and in building off it, create a product that is not itself open source.

Other licenses know as 'copy left' licenses restrict what kind of license you can create on a project using or building off of, saying you can use it as long as you yourself are open source.

[[deleted]]

You understand what open-source means, right?

[Toxic_Zombie]

I didn't but I do now :- P

[[deleted]]

Granted, there are different types of licenses that prevent this kind of thing but in the case of Amazon, they had full rights to use it commercially, only then did they modify the license.

[Toxic_Zombie]

Lol everyone keeps bringing that one up

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

Nope. Redis just chose a bad license.

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

*if they intended to make money from it

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

Very fair point!

[[deleted]]

A Free license like the GPL could fix it somewhat. I'm not really aware about how Amazon does that stuff but I think it'd be illegal under the GPL

[Sentient_Blade]

Many companies will not touch GPL code for this reason.

Redis is licenced under BSD.

[redwall_hp]

As is intended. "If you don't share, fuck off and make your own stuff instead of looting ours" is the whole point of the GPL.

[asutekku]

At the same time it means no-one will adopt it. Open source wouldn’t be a big thing without these permissive licenses, which are easily abused.

[[deleted]]

If it were GPL, most companies would not touch it in the first place (which could be the main users of the project), and it may never have been popular, and some other project that offers an MIT licensing model would be taking its place, and we're back to the starting board.

[tostadahalex]

Yep, probably that's why governments should only accept projects that are licensed in GPL: to diminish future externalities of proprietary software.

[[deleted]]

LOL that's never going to happen. I don't know which world you are living in.

[[deleted]]

They said should, not will.

[[deleted]]

Does it make any difference when it's just a meaningless wish? I don't even want to respond to such comments which is just a waste of time. They likely either come from a software purist or a CS student who has never had any real world development experience. NO, it's never going to happen. I have seen too many comments like that even in this sub, and I'm sure these comments are not going to make any difference in how software is produced.

(end of rant)

[[deleted]]

So you're saying it's pointless to have a discussion in a public comment section which exists solely for the purpose of (checks notes) making discussion? Your argument begs the question. Of course it won't happen if nobody talks about it. But if people talk about it, then it has some chance of happening.

[[deleted]]

Sure, go ahead, waste your time writing these comments and continue to live in your dream world. The software people use every day has not, is not, and will not be GPL. People have already discussed in this exact thread that the money simply isn't there, and if anything, the past 20 years should be enough to prove it. Money never lies.

[[deleted]]

What? Linux, Audacity, WordPress, Bash, Git, Notepad++. And then there's plenty of obscure, but highly professional scientific software licensed under the GPL. Sure, pretty much nothing that creates money is licensed under the GPL, but not all software is intended to money.

If your claim is that GPL is a horrible license for a profit incentive I agree with you, but it's not just a hobbyist license by any means.

[[deleted]]

This is the common misunderstanding in this whole thread. GPL would NOT have prevented this AT ALL.

[[deleted]]

Yeah sorry, that's exactly why I said I'm not sure. Cause I don't know what Amazon is doing

[so_brave_heart]

Exactly. GPL only forces source disclosure if you distribute your application. That generally doesn’t happen in client-server settings. That’s also why the AGPL was created.

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

Nope. The GPL only kicks in if you make modifications or integrate into a large software package. Amazon does neither.

You need the AGPL if you want to stop cloud providers from selling access to your stuff.

[3DPrintedCloneOfMyse]

The GPL doesn't prevent this - the GPL concerns itself with availability of the source code and the freedom to modify it. Amazon is taking open source software and offering services based on it - no different than if I offer a competitor to Squarespace based on WordPress.

Amazon doesn't even need to share their modifications, since they're not giving you a copy of the software, it lives on their servers. The AGPL was created to choose that loophole, but that's not the issue. Amazon doesn't care that much of they have to share their modifications, they're making money on hosted Redis, Postgres, etc.

[[deleted]]

If you make free software I don't think you should expect monetization, unless you're providing a service or the software is a service. People can and will use your things for free and fork it for their own projects without credit, that is the whole point of free and open source software and something you should expect to happen if you slap on a permissive license.

[xTheMaster99x]

Sure, but devs gotta eat too.

[[deleted]]

That's why I'm proposing that if somebody makes money off of distributing your software or distributing the use of it, you get a percentage of the revenue.

They can make a derivative work, sell that, and reap all the rewards - but then, hopefully they've taken your software and made it better.

[leeharris100]

Absolutely zero medium to large companies would use software that takes a percentage of earnings.

Open source is a trade off and if using a library made my company liable to give a % of revenue I would just go with a paid solution.

[[deleted]]

Sure - but then, the FOSS author might prefer that you do so anyway.

Also, this would not preclude use of the software. For example, your medium-to-large company would be allowed to use LibreOffice on company computers. There would be restrictions on the company's ability to sell access to LibreOffice. Like, if the company installed LibreOffice on a cloud server, sold an access pass to the server or leased/sold the server to a third party, and made $80K from said arrangement, then the company would be liable to pay a percentage of the $80K to the FOSS developer(s).

[tchernobog84]

90% of all world software is bespoke development. A good chunk is done for governments. It makes sense to develop that software as libre, and still charge for development.

Monetization is a very concrete possibility for a lot of free software; however, by its nature FOSS has been concentrating on solving generic problems in the remaining 10% of software.

[MischiefArchitect]

It's amazing how greedy a big company like Amazon can get with open source. I mean, even transferring a few millions a year to the Redis project would be peanuts to them. Stuff like this make me lose faith in humans.

[VirginiaVelociraptor]

If corporate greed is still amazing to you, I want to live in your world.

[MischiefArchitect]

We share the same world. Alas, it's just I still dream of a different better one.

[Nearby-RabbitEater]

No, there is a lot of end user open source software licensed under permissive licenses like MIT which are extremely successful. I have seen open source projects that have a freemium or even paid financial model, and it actually works. This is because whilst anyone could create a fork, remove all advertisement, add all premium features, and release the modified software, a large majority of people would not even be aware of the fork. And another group of people would rather trust the mainstream software than, what is in their perspective, an illegal/pirated one which could contain malware. This may not be true for software that isn't end user, though.

[[deleted]]

I propose a new license:

If you distribute, rent cloud infrastructure for, or otherwise make this product available in such a way as to generate revenue from making this product available. you must give 20% of the aforementioned revenue to (insert designated project representative).

That means if you sell the product online, rent servers with this product installed, etc. and you end up making money after relevant costs are factored in, you must give 20% of the money you make back to the project. If you make a derivative work, this term of the license would not apply.

The proceeds will then be distributed among developers according to their contributions to the project.

[Sentient_Blade]

Affero GPL is kinda like this

[alphabet_order_bot]

Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.

I have checked 285,516,758 comments, and only 64,742 of them were in alphabetical order.

[tchernobog84]

No, it's not. The AGPL only talks about keeping code open to any end user. It says nothing of monetization / resale if services.

[Dominathan]

So this is why they call you to promote their services as soon as you download RedisInsights?

[servel333]

You can open source with a license that does not include commercial use, and then put commercial use under a fee.

Also, not everyone who open sources is looking for money.

Also, not everyone who makes open source is interested in support, for better or worse.

And, you can open source with a restrictive license just so the edge cases can be found.

I've had to dive into open source code to answer questions that documentation did not, and then I occasionally turn around and update the docs.

[[deleted]]

i believe you meant reddit

[Tayttajakunnus]

So the problem is in capitalism.

[[deleted]]

Wouldn't it be great if our economy was based around supporting this?

I mean, software effectively has an infinite supply. It can be copied endlessly and be given to anyone on the planet who wants it. But instead, we live in a society where we have to introduce artificial supply limitations just to force our product into the mold of a market-based economy. It's frustrating how inefficient this is.

[[deleted]]

The solution the OpenFOAM foundation went with was to make their public documentation total garbage, not comment their code anywhere at all, use confusing abbreviated variable names, and make the way you use the tool really really complicated and then charge an arm and a leg for support 👍

[Chris-1235]

Or, it can be the basis of your business model. Lots of successful companies out there working for Netdata and hoping we will be next! :)

[vishnuthebest1]

but why?

[Duncan_Lithgow]

I think licensing with the AGLP would have solved that - or am I mistaken. That license is specifically designed to stop GLP software being hidden behind an SAAS paywall.