Worth noting that the "escape hatch" clauses in the EUPL that allow converting it into other licenses mean it's only ever as strong as the weakest license it names for such an operation, AKA EPL/MPL/LGPL.
Any actor that wants to mess around with providing a closed extension on a network service can exercise that option with an EUPL codebase, so if you care about that, you're better off explicitly naming the AGPL or whatnot.
EUPL is built for government agencies first, and most of the focus is ensuring that nobody has to worry about mix-and-matching it with other copyleft licenses, plus legal language that covers and harmonizes variations in notions of copyright/patents/intellectual property across EU countries, not so much waging war against hyperscalers. (But it's still great to have around!)
dotancohen 44 minutes ago [-]
This article would do better if it simply enumerated the problems with the LGPL and addressed how this new license which I've never heard of addresses those problems. This hinting and alluding might make great SEO, but that's fit for neither the audience of people producing software, nor for HN.
The article seems pretty clear that the LGPL is too weak compared to the EUPL for this author, and one of the main concerns is the "SaaS loophole" which I assume would be addressed by the AGPL but also seems addressed by the EUPL.
brainwad 31 minutes ago [-]
But the EUPL itself says that derivative works may be distributed under the LGPL instead, as long as those works are derived from both a EUPL and LGPL parent. This seems kinda trivial to abuse and the author should have noticed this clause if that was their main concern.
LoganDark 25 minutes ago [-]
Huh, that's a pretty massive loophole. Pretty much makes the whole license irrelevant.
mnahkies 40 minutes ago [-]
What are people's thoughts/experiences about dual licencing?
Eg: is there a clean way to dual license such that hobbyist, and exploratory work (eg: a proof of concept done in a commercial setting) are allowed, but using it in production requires a fee?
If you've done this, has it been successful? Obviously there's been many projects relicense over recent years (terraform, redis, etc) - but it's less clear to me if this is a viable path for new projects starting out, or if it just kills adoption from the beginning.
geokon 46 seconds ago [-]
You have to be rather large and a big deal for this to work - b/c if it gets any traction people will re-implement any code base that's not huge. I know FFTW has this model and the SMILE library as well. I've heard some people also do this with MATLAB/Octave. I wish this was integrated in to something like Github - where you can click to buy a proprietary license for a library and all dependencies.
mihaelm 19 minutes ago [-]
I think it definitely hurts adoption. No hobbyist or experimenter wants to delve into legalities head first by first having to understand the licensing terms of software, whereas permissive licenses like MIT and Apache 2.0 are easily-understood and familiar.
The solution is probably to be more selective what you're open sourcing if you're planning to build a business. And what you open source, you do it under a permissive license so people don't feel limited should they wish to play around with it.
A more restrictive license might be more apt if you don't really want to open source, but you must for regulatory reasons.
It stops companies from building high-revenue products for free, while not being as scary as AGPL/LGPL from the business perspective, and completely unrestricted for everyone else (despite not being technically an open-source license).
mihaelm 14 minutes ago [-]
You might also be interested in the O'Saasy license (https://osaasy.dev/) which is in the similar vein, but simpler.
HashiCorp switched to BUSL license for their products/tools when they already had substantial market share, and they still faced MIT-licensed forks (Terraform -> OpenTofu, Vault -> OpenBao). It will be interesting to see in a few years if those tools notably cut into their share.
I'm not sure a new tool with a BUSL license will get adoption as easily.
- With BUSL the restriction is revenue-based. You can still create competing products, but would have to pay a licensing fee.
mihaelm 9 minutes ago [-]
Good points, the second is very "dual-licensing" in nature. BUSL is certainly the more "mature" option and there's a higher likelihood people came across it in the wild.
ghaff 4 minutes ago [-]
The heat around this particular issue has cooled down a bit and I'm not sure anyone is especially happy with the state of affairs. But questions around AI have sucked a lot of the oxygen from the room for now.
addandsubtract 17 minutes ago [-]
Isn't that what Epic, MiniMax, Z.ai, and others are doing, where a license is free for personal use / low revenue projects, but cost a (steep) fee for commercial use? They don't use dual licenses, but rather a tiered license.
kzrdude 23 minutes ago [-]
Using EUPL is mostly a way to signal that you want to use a license grounded in EU law, not in US law. That's at least the way I've looked at it.
BlackRabbit1 40 minutes ago [-]
For hardware/electronics I also recommend looking at the CERN OHL licenses.
They cover a very specific niche GPL/AGPL/etc. do not cover properly.
alturp 25 minutes ago [-]
> "Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires."
Claiming this and afterwards deciding to use a weak copy left license like EUPL (which can be integrated with proprietary software without disclosing source code) instead of AGPLv3, which really closes SaaS loop is a bit lost to me.
jruohonen 1 hours ago [-]
CC BY-NC-ND is what I'm also increasingly using (for non-code), though not always, and disheartenedly. (And as commented, the non-code context is different.)
hypfer 39 minutes ago [-]
ND is usually a bit sad, as it makes the thing a dead-end.
The magic of the web has always been that things would continuously morph through being reinterpreted and all, and that just doesn't happen with ND.
I can of course see the valid reasons why one would pick that license, but it's still.. kinda sad that it's culturally dead.
ghaff 31 minutes ago [-]
I discussed NC in my other comment. But, yes, ND is arguably counter the whole remix culture that was supposedly part of the impetus for Creative Commons in the first place. I do kind of see the logic behind prohibiting, say, a remix of a video or photo in a way that misrepresents the subject. But I also don't particularly like it.
jruohonen 36 minutes ago [-]
True enough; philosophically, I am still in the BY camp (a.k.a. BSD/MIT/etc.), and I do not particularly care about the NC part, but ND is increasingly important for non-code. But if they could do even the BY properly, it would be a step to the right direction (and, to some extent, I think they're doing that).
hypfer 35 minutes ago [-]
Huh. Can you elaborate why you view ND as increasingly important, whereas NC bothers you less?
Because for me, it would be the exact other way round.
jruohonen 30 minutes ago [-]
ND is important for those who do "authoritative writing" (for a lack of a better term); i.e., when you write with your real name, you do not want nonsense and disinformation associated with your name.
hypfer 29 minutes ago [-]
Ah, yeah, in the meanwhile I've also googled your nick and saw that you're in academics.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
ghaff 16 minutes ago [-]
Yes, I think of it more in the context of photo and video integrity, but you can certainly imagine an unscrupulous individual rewriting something and changing the meaning. Of course, I doubt a license would stop that person.
ghaff 38 minutes ago [-]
The problem is that not even Creative Commons was able to come up with a real definition for non-commercial when they last (I think) revised the license. Essentially it means trivial uses (a photo in a grade school assignment) or its contentious in a way that reasonable people can disagree about. What constitutes acceptable usage of a properly attributed photo? Personally, I just properly attribute and stopped worry about whether most presentations constituted commercial use or not.
Joel_Mckay 45 minutes ago [-]
For FOSS I personally prefer Apache 2.0 license, as 10 years from now I have no idea what people will need for their projects.
Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work. Just don't redirect commercial support tickets onto community projects, or get neglected customers to contact authors.
The way I see it... is symbiotic commercial relationships are important, as people can get their time sponsored to work on FOSS code. Also, having community projects form reliable long term infrastructure opens additional opportunity for people to work with FOSS options.
Telling people how they should have fun is always lame... whether it is Sony/Microsoft... or just some disillusioned dude convinced their work won't be obfuscated by an LLM in 30 seconds. =3
broodbucket 17 minutes ago [-]
>Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work
Copyleft doesn't say that they can't, it says they have to make their changes available
ricardobeat 17 minutes ago [-]
This, for some reason, has become a controversial idea — as evidenced by your comment being downvoted.
I honestly cannot understand what angle people are coming from, when they disregard the community effects of open-source software entirely. If your main goal is to make money, there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a business instead.
LoganDark 58 minutes ago [-]
I don't like the phrasing of the EUPL because it says you have rights full stop and then in a later section it says there are actually conditions. For that reason I would not immediately be sure the conditions are even enforceable, other than "this was surely made by lawyers and therefore also surely valid".
Aside from that, it is nice to see Communication counted alongside Distribution; this should have been done from the start IMO.
jraph 48 minutes ago [-]
> I don't like the phrasing of the EUPL because it says you have rights full stop and then in a later section it says there are actually conditions. For that reason I would not immediately be sure the conditions are even enforceable.
Full right to use no conditions ≠ full right on what you can do with the code
LoganDark 33 minutes ago [-]
> Full right to use no conditions ≠ full right on what you can do with the code
2. Scope of the rights granted by the Licence
The Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive,
sublicensable licence to do the following, for the duration of copyright vested
in the Original Work:
- use the Work in any circumstance and for all usage,
- reproduce the Work,
- modify the Work, and make Derivative Works based upon the Work,
- communicate to the public, including the right to make available or display
the Work or copies thereof to the public and perform publicly, as the case may
be, the Work,
- distribute the Work or copies thereof,
- lend and rent the Work or copies thereof,
- sublicense rights in the Work or copies thereof.
Those rights can be exercised on any media, supports and formats, whether now
known or later invented, as far as the applicable law permits so.
In the countries where moral rights apply, the Licensor waives his right to
exercise his moral right to the extent allowed by law in order to make effective
the licence of the economic rights here above listed.
The Licensor grants to the Licensee royalty-free, non-exclusive usage rights to
any patents held by the Licensor, to the extent necessary to make use of the
rights granted on the Work under this Licence.
This is a lot more rights than just to use and there is absolutely nothing about conditions in this entire section.
There's not even a hint of conditions until three sections later where it starts modifying section 2, which feels sloppy to me.
amazingamazing 50 minutes ago [-]
Do these types of things really matter anymore? If you have tokens, given the source is available pretty easy to reimplement with plausible deniability.
Then again, it's not like even before the plagiarising slop machines you couldn't just get around licenses if you were dedicated enough to evil and was comfortable lying about the provenance of the code you're using.
Sure, it'd make all the lawyer types nervous for obvious reasons, but that's why you'd also need to be comfortable with the evil deed. But you're correct that the evil plagiarism machine makes it way easier.
lionkor 7 minutes ago [-]
If you think an LLM can just implement e.g. an alternative to the Linux kernel from scratch (or any other GPL licensed software), you might be falling for the marketing.
Have you seen LLMs build large, stable, pieces of software, that work well, with your own eyes? I have not. I have seen LLMs build small, well-understood things, and I've seen LLMs do super well with extremely well specified problems, but all the rest seems to be marketing (i.e. I couldn't observe or reproduce it).
Edit: I'm not talking about throwaway slop that just needs to run long enough to get funding.
ChocolateGod 41 minutes ago [-]
I think there's been a mistake in the thinking that restricting the licensing on open source projects will make the companies that use them as a service would make them contribute.
They don't, the companies just replace the software in question.
andxor 41 minutes ago [-]
It's a quixotic crusade, in perfect European style.
36 minutes ago [-]
Joel_Mckay 41 minutes ago [-]
As much as I dislike isomorphic plagiarism, your point is very valid...
It is a viable argument, and people shouldn't bury such insights given the estimated $9Tn worth of opensource work that was appropriated. =3
franciscop 7 minutes ago [-]
> "Over the years it has been clear that we in the “open source” camp (as opposed to the “free software” camp) were wrong all along. We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires."
I hate that some people like to put us all in the same bag. Please don't include me. I don't really care if either my neighbor or Elon Musk used my open source code. I publish it as such because it's a present to the world at large that I can do, and I believe everyone will benefit with my code being MIT.
You're free to have different ideals, but it's silly to claim that my ideals are wrong and that finally "you" realized that my ideals are wrong. I don't even want to have a culture wars, just don't include me in yours please.
logifail 32 seconds ago [-]
> I don't really care if either my neighbor or Elon Musk used my open source code.
I wish we could spend less (collective) time here on HN talking about/worrying about Elon Musk.
We're (allegedly) here for "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
What SpaceX and/or Tesla are doing could certainly satisfy that, worrying about Musk himself certainly isn't.
ricardobeat 40 minutes ago [-]
> We won the debate, and gained little for users or developers. All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires.
As a long-time developer and consumer of OSS I have to disagree. Open-source software has had an enormous effect on the world, and that... was kind of the point? When we licensed things as MIT we knew that corporations would use it. We wanted them to use them, adopt them and bring new users into the community. You take some, you give back. There was no expectation of turning your late-afternoons JS framework into a business. And not having access to it would absolutely not have stopped corporate behemoths from getting where they are, but would have killed many small businesses and startups.
That said, I've started licensing some of my code with the BUSL license [1] - unrestricted use, unless you are a large company. The code becomes MIT-licensed automatically after a set window to remove maintainability concerns.
But why should I work for free so that companies can fire my fellow human beings?
brainwad 28 minutes ago [-]
The causality is wrong here. You chose to work for free with no reward, and _then_ companies found your work and used it. Presumably you started out working for free because it was intrinsically rewarding (otherwise: stop doing work you hate for free?).
29 minutes ago [-]
charcircuit 39 minutes ago [-]
>All that our efforts did was to make it easier for big corporations build things more cheaply and for billionaires to become trillionaires.
This is not true. Open source is fundamental to how easy users can create software in the LLM era. Users and developers have gained tremendous value. Saying they have gained little is simply false. And it's a good thing to make it possible for big corporations to make things cheaper. It means more efficient resource allocation for society. And for billionaires to turn into trillionaire they have to provide magnitudes more value to society in order to do so. Enabling people to provide trillions of dollars of value to society is a good thing that open source unlocks.
kypro 25 minutes ago [-]
Also theres not multiple trillionaires in the world, and the one trillionaire we have did that largely by innovating and creating new stuff rather than just leveraging existing OSS for profit...
Rendered at 11:48:41 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
Any actor that wants to mess around with providing a closed extension on a network service can exercise that option with an EUPL codebase, so if you care about that, you're better off explicitly naming the AGPL or whatnot.
EUPL is built for government agencies first, and most of the focus is ensuring that nobody has to worry about mix-and-matching it with other copyleft licenses, plus legal language that covers and harmonizes variations in notions of copyright/patents/intellectual property across EU countries, not so much waging war against hyperscalers. (But it's still great to have around!)
Other languages can be found here: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/eu...
Eg: is there a clean way to dual license such that hobbyist, and exploratory work (eg: a proof of concept done in a commercial setting) are allowed, but using it in production requires a fee?
If you've done this, has it been successful? Obviously there's been many projects relicense over recent years (terraform, redis, etc) - but it's less clear to me if this is a viable path for new projects starting out, or if it just kills adoption from the beginning.
The solution is probably to be more selective what you're open sourcing if you're planning to build a business. And what you open source, you do it under a permissive license so people don't feel limited should they wish to play around with it.
A more restrictive license might be more apt if you don't really want to open source, but you must for regulatory reasons.
It stops companies from building high-revenue products for free, while not being as scary as AGPL/LGPL from the business perspective, and completely unrestricted for everyone else (despite not being technically an open-source license).
HashiCorp switched to BUSL license for their products/tools when they already had substantial market share, and they still faced MIT-licensed forks (Terraform -> OpenTofu, Vault -> OpenBao). It will be interesting to see in a few years if those tools notably cut into their share.
I'm not sure a new tool with a BUSL license will get adoption as easily.
- BUSL is OSI-approved and listed in SPDX, so corporate lawyers won't be scared away by it: https://spdx.org/licenses/BUSL-1.1.html
- With BUSL the restriction is revenue-based. You can still create competing products, but would have to pay a licensing fee.
They cover a very specific niche GPL/AGPL/etc. do not cover properly.
Claiming this and afterwards deciding to use a weak copy left license like EUPL (which can be integrated with proprietary software without disclosing source code) instead of AGPLv3, which really closes SaaS loop is a bit lost to me.
The magic of the web has always been that things would continuously morph through being reinterpreted and all, and that just doesn't happen with ND.
I can of course see the valid reasons why one would pick that license, but it's still.. kinda sad that it's culturally dead.
Because for me, it would be the exact other way round.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
Personally, it makes me happy if people can make a business using a bit of my work. Just don't redirect commercial support tickets onto community projects, or get neglected customers to contact authors.
The way I see it... is symbiotic commercial relationships are important, as people can get their time sponsored to work on FOSS code. Also, having community projects form reliable long term infrastructure opens additional opportunity for people to work with FOSS options.
Telling people how they should have fun is always lame... whether it is Sony/Microsoft... or just some disillusioned dude convinced their work won't be obfuscated by an LLM in 30 seconds. =3
Copyleft doesn't say that they can't, it says they have to make their changes available
I honestly cannot understand what angle people are coming from, when they disregard the community effects of open-source software entirely. If your main goal is to make money, there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a business instead.
Aside from that, it is nice to see Communication counted alongside Distribution; this should have been done from the start IMO.
Full right to use no conditions ≠ full right on what you can do with the code
There's not even a hint of conditions until three sections later where it starts modifying section 2, which feels sloppy to me.
Sure, it'd make all the lawyer types nervous for obvious reasons, but that's why you'd also need to be comfortable with the evil deed. But you're correct that the evil plagiarism machine makes it way easier.
Have you seen LLMs build large, stable, pieces of software, that work well, with your own eyes? I have not. I have seen LLMs build small, well-understood things, and I've seen LLMs do super well with extremely well specified problems, but all the rest seems to be marketing (i.e. I couldn't observe or reproduce it).
Edit: I'm not talking about throwaway slop that just needs to run long enough to get funding.
They don't, the companies just replace the software in question.
It is a viable argument, and people shouldn't bury such insights given the estimated $9Tn worth of opensource work that was appropriated. =3
I hate that some people like to put us all in the same bag. Please don't include me. I don't really care if either my neighbor or Elon Musk used my open source code. I publish it as such because it's a present to the world at large that I can do, and I believe everyone will benefit with my code being MIT.
You're free to have different ideals, but it's silly to claim that my ideals are wrong and that finally "you" realized that my ideals are wrong. I don't even want to have a culture wars, just don't include me in yours please.
I wish we could spend less (collective) time here on HN talking about/worrying about Elon Musk.
We're (allegedly) here for "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
What SpaceX and/or Tesla are doing could certainly satisfy that, worrying about Musk himself certainly isn't.
As a long-time developer and consumer of OSS I have to disagree. Open-source software has had an enormous effect on the world, and that... was kind of the point? When we licensed things as MIT we knew that corporations would use it. We wanted them to use them, adopt them and bring new users into the community. You take some, you give back. There was no expectation of turning your late-afternoons JS framework into a business. And not having access to it would absolutely not have stopped corporate behemoths from getting where they are, but would have killed many small businesses and startups.
That said, I've started licensing some of my code with the BUSL license [1] - unrestricted use, unless you are a large company. The code becomes MIT-licensed automatically after a set window to remove maintainability concerns.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Source_License
This is not true. Open source is fundamental to how easy users can create software in the LLM era. Users and developers have gained tremendous value. Saying they have gained little is simply false. And it's a good thing to make it possible for big corporations to make things cheaper. It means more efficient resource allocation for society. And for billionaires to turn into trillionaire they have to provide magnitudes more value to society in order to do so. Enabling people to provide trillions of dollars of value to society is a good thing that open source unlocks.