- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
Sentry has moved to a new license for its products called Functional Source License, and explains in this article the story of the licensing for these products and why they throw BSL for FSL.
I would actually entertain the argument of protecting themselves against free-riding if and only if they would publish a transparency report detailing how they reimburse open source projects for the “common infrastructure” like, say, Linux, that they use to build and run their commercial offering and how they arrive at the amount they consider fair for their use. So far, I have not been able to find anything remotely like that, so their while argument is marketing and gas lighting.
I agree that that would be excellent, but I think there is still a difference, like Linux they do allow a company to use (but not for anything, only for some things) and enhance their open source software instead of paying for their service without contributing it back.
Except its not like Linux at all. Linux uses the GPL which imposes no usage restrictions. This is why the GPL is a free software license and the FSL is a proprietary software license.