More and more firms are realising that AGPL coupled with dual licensing allows them to be open source whilst protecting their commercial interests.
echelon · 3h ago
AGPL doesn't have the critical "no commercialization" clause that prevents a direct competitor. It just prevents hyperscalers.
AGPL will stop Amazon. It won't stop WP Engine.
There needs to be a license that enables your customers to use you freely, but not your competitors from reselling your hard work.
jchw · 2h ago
Your customers, potential competitors, and even hyperscalers are all possibly the same people at different points. AGPL works because corporate lawyers are horrified by it, not because it actually discriminates against hyperscalers. If you find something that even sane lawyers wouldn't tolerate, then you have greatly limited the benefits of being open source in the first place. If you make a license that actually discriminates on user or use case, then it's not open source.
If you want to protect your project from being resold by potential competitors, do not release it as open source.
I think this problem might solve itself, though. Slowly but surely, companies and power users have become very wary of VC funded companies making big promises and big open source releases, with the knowledge that there is rarely a plan for sustainability and that there is a good chance if they stand on that rug it could be pulled later. Soon, if trends continue, the advantages that you once got from announcing something as open source will start to evaporate and turn into a liability as people start seeing ahead to the eventual "but of course we have to be able to monetize this eventually" stage.
The way I see it, a project can always be open sourced later on once there's a way to do it and ensure the company can remain sustainable. For the flagship product of a company, especially a VC-funded company, not starting open source is the ethical thing to do.
resiros · 2h ago
> For the flagship product of a company, especially a VC-funded company, not starting open source is the ethical thing to do.
I can't even..
Seriously, I don't understand where your argument is coming from. Because, if you look at it from the greater good perspective, commercial open-source is one of the only venues to build high quality software that can be freely self-hosted, modified and built-upon. Yet, you basically push for people building closed source software, due to what I understand is dogmatic believe of what open-source should mean.
> If you make a license that actually discriminates on user or use case, then it's not open source.
Based on a definition, bought and sponsored by the hyperscaler lobbies. Why the hell would discriminating against hyperscaller selling the product makes it non "open-source". 99.9999% users of open-source are not hyperscaler wanting to host and sell the product and will get value from the project.
jchw · 2h ago
Firstly, no it wasn't. The history of the open source definition and OSI are interesting, including hijacking a term that was already in use, but the hyperscalers had nothing to do with it. I'll avoid restating Wikipedia, it's enough to say that's not right.
Secondly, you can call it whatever you want but "open source" licenses that discriminate against user and use case are useless. Even if I just want to use something like a data structure implementation from your "open source" release in some unrelated project, I now have to inherit all of this baggage about your competitors. That just doesn't make any sense. The endgame of that is an ecosystem of open source that ultimately serves absolutely nobody except for maybe startup PR needs.
resiros · 2h ago
> The endgame of that is an ecosystem of open source that ultimately serves absolutely nobody except for maybe startup PR needs.
We self-host n8n, which by definition not open-source, and love it. It serves us. Not just n8n PR. That is the case for almost all self served products for non-commercial reasons
jchw · 2h ago
This is extremely confusing. I'm just talking about how it would harm the open source ecosystem if we allowed things that were not open source to be advertised as open source (and how it's bad when something is unopened after people start relying on it being open). I am not claiming that only open source software is good for society. Like, I don't really think it's a coincidence that GNU, DSFG and OSI all remain in relative agreement for decades over what makes something truly free or open source. They weren't all bought and sold by hyperscalers. There's reasons for the freedoms that are required to meet the definitions.
On the other hand, I think you can release shared source and closed source software that is still plenty useful and beneficial. For example, I am a very big fan of how Unreal Engine is licensed. Yes, it isn't "open source" and it isn't marketed as such. You can't take Unreal Engine components and go use them elsewhere even if you're not competing with Epic Games. Still, they provide some extremely powerful and useful software free of charge to basically all independent game developers. I think that's fantastic.
But that's all aside from what open source is. Unreal Engine isn't open source and it doesn't do anything for the open source ecosystem. Which is fine, because the entire world doesn't revolve around open source.
echelon · 11m ago
"fair source" is one of the new nomenclatures for software with source available that is anti-hyperscaler.
Spivak · 1h ago
There is clearly a tension here where a bunch of people want to call their software open source without actually believing in what open source actually means. And this is absurd because it is betraying the fact that it's a marketing term. It seems like a bunch of startups realize that if they're trying to market to certain kinds of developers, if the software isn't open source, they won't touch it.
You seem to believe that we shouldn't create closed source software but at the same time directly advocating for it—that's what it is that's what you're describing. If you want a more practical and less idealistic reason why it sucks when software companies prevent people like AWS from using their software, it's because the actual users of your software, the customers of AWS, wish to pay AWS to host it for them. They would like to hire the lovely folks who work at AWS to host and manage the software for them and the license prevents that. You are preventing your users from doing what they want with the software. And that's the rub, that's why it's important to not discriminate based off of use.
bruce511 · 5m ago
>> There is clearly a tension here where a bunch of people want to call their software open source without actually believing in what open source actually means.
So much this. If Open Source is a marketing term then companies are free to call whatever they do "Open Source" and the term becomes meaningless. You may as well call the software "Free Range".
On the other hand if Open Source is a defined thing, built around a specific definition, and the 4 freedoms, and so on, (hint: it is) then the marketing term could lead you places you don't want to go.
So there's a generation of programmers who want to "redefine" Open Source to suit their preferences. Dilute the definition until it's meaningless. I'm strongly against this.
To be clear everyone is welcome to use any license, with any restriction they like. But if it doesn't conform to the OSI definition don't call it Open Source.
Stop trying to turn a technical specification into a generic marketing term.
echelon · 19m ago
Open source means Amazon pillages you and takes your margin. Period.
That just isn't going to work anymore.
The hyperscalers know this and they want you to keep building software this way. They'll write a managed version of your thing and collect all your money.
Fair source would be "customers can use this in an unlimited way as long as they don't sell a managed version".
That's what we need to do. Carve out the ability to make money for the originators doing the work.
Open source has turned us all into serfs working on giant kingdoms we don't own.
NOTE ALSO, the OSI has been so corporate captured that their definition of open source AI is not at all open. You shouldn't trust them at all.
nkmnz · 1h ago
> If you make a license that actually discriminates on user or use case, then it's not open source.
No true scotsman.
jchw · 1h ago
I would love to hear your explanation for why you think that statement is an invocation of "no true Scotsman" of all things. Are you sure you know what that means?
graemep · 2h ago
> There needs to be a license that enables your customers to use you freely, but not your competitors from reselling your hard work.
There are such licenses. They are just not open source.
drdaeman · 1h ago
> that enables your customers to use you freely [...] There are such licenses
There are such licenses only if you change the definition of "freely" to fit the narrative. Historically, "freely" (as in "free software") means granting end-user four essential software freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
If I can't redistribute ("resell") software, or can't run it and let others access it for a fee - it's not "use freely" anymore.
Not sure what you mean by "unfortunately". If you're looking for a license that's not open source, you'll find one that isn't - obviously.
echelon · 4m ago
This is great.
"Open" is too binary. You can't exclude companies that would harm you.
We need "fair", "equitable", or "sustainable" (as this one is termed) licenses.
You should be able to give your customers 100% the ability to use, modify, and redistribute so long as they don't resell you.
You should be able to cut off Amazon and Google from using you.
You should be able to prevent certain uses, like managed versions of your software.
graemep · 1h ago
It is also an example of why I, as an end user, prefer FOSS licenses. The possibility of forking. The redistribution clauses there do not prevent forks, but definitely make them less likely, so you remain dependent on a single supplier.
braginini · 2h ago
Fair point, but it won't be considered open source. NetBird wants to stay open source. AGPL gives certain protection, but is not 100% bullet proof.
m463 · 50m ago
"no commercializaton" is not free software.
The users should not be restricted. The responsibility comes from redistribution.
znpy · 1h ago
> AGPL will stop Amazon. It won't stop WP Engine.
WP Engine is not a problem, Amazon is.
echelon · 3m ago
The company doing 90% of the effort should see 90% of the upside.
WP Engine, as I understand it, contributes next to nothing to the codebase and takes a huge bite of the overall market.
resiros · 2h ago
I think that's perfectly fair. The community is quick to put whoever builds commercial OSS software on a cross the moment they change their license to ensure they still have a competitive advantage. Instead, we should encourage commercial OSS companies. COSS companiesare one of the only venues for creating high-quality OSS projects that you can self-host.
> I think that's perfectly fair. The community is quick to put whoever builds commercial OSS software on a cross the moment they change their license to ensure they still have a competitive advantage. Instead, we should encourage commercial OSS companies.
Complete agreement there. I'd like to laud NetBird for using AGPL rather than one of the recent VC-fueled proprietary-with-source-available licenses.
> I personally think the definition of open-source is problematic (and clearly biased by the lobbies of hyperscalers).
Open Source has existed since before "hyperscaler" was a concept that existed, and before Software as a Service was a going concern. Its definition has not in any way been affected by the lobby of an industry that didn't exist when it was defined.
One rationale for not changing the definition of Open Source is an issue of Schelling points / focal points ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) ). Right now, we have a common definition of Open Source; if everyone could put their pet restriction in ("no military", "no SaaS", "no AI", "no nuclear power"), we'd end up with a hundred variants and no ability to collaborate and share code across projects.
gr4vityWall · 1h ago
> Why aren't n8n or MongoDB considered open-source?
In the case of MongoDB, it's because the SSPL requires that all the software used to offer the network service is also licensed under the SSPL. That prevents it from being used to write Free Software by mixing free programs and libraries that use a different license, even if they are free.
So, for example, if your network service supports managing MongoDB instances, and it includes Caddy or Nginx, then you're not complying with the license, as Caddy and Nginx aren't released under the SSPL and you cannot relicense them.
> Why does requesting that others not sell your product make the project not open-source?
Because requesting them to not do that makes your program proprietary, and thus non-free by definition.
braginini · 2h ago
The OSI definition doesn't allow that kind of restriction, mainly because it's all about keeping software as free and open as possible.
But the thing is, commercial open source companies play a huge role in making great open source tools, especially ones you can self-host. Without them, a lot of the software we rely on wouldn't even exist. People often push back when these companies change their licenses, but they forget the reality. Big cloud providers can make tons of money off open source projects without giving anything back. That's a tough spot for the folks.
I'm sure that in the nearest future we will have some COSS licenses :) Well, as an open source contributor I hope so
kiba · 2h ago
Making money isn't the problem. Restricting it is.
api · 2h ago
I'll put it rather bluntly: present-day open source is largely free labor for SaaS companies.
SaaS, meanwhile, is the least open and least free model of software distribution, significantly less open or free (as in freedom) than closed-source commercial software you run yourself. This model, SaaS, is powered from the ground up by open source, and most SaaS gives little or nothing back. Some SaaS is not much more than a management and UI layer built around pre-existing open source standards and code.
Something is very wrong if open source exists largely to enable the least free model of software distribution. Open source as currently conceptualized is stuck in the pre-SaaS eras of the 1980s and 1990s and refuses to adapt to what "free" and "open" mean in the new landscape.
It doesn't help that the OSI is fully captured by companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta with a vested interest in promoting the SaaS and cloud-first model. If local-first ever gained traction it would be a threat to not just their SaaS products but their incredibly lucrative cloud businesses.
phkahler · 2h ago
>> I'll put it rather bluntly: present-day open source is largely free labor for SaaS companies.
I've used Free Software and Open Source over 20 years and have never paid a SaaS company a dime.
OTOH the most valuable software that I regularly use is Free Software as opposed to Open Source Software. So maybe the OSS really is primarily free labor for SaaS?
api · 2h ago
I'm an OG open source user too. I installed Slackware Linux with kernel 0.99.15 from a stack of floppies as a teenager.
You're part of a very, very small minority. I'm talking about the majority of developers and what the majority of users experience.
What most users are experiencing today is an aggressively non-free non-open zero-privacy rent-seeking software environment that is enabled by open source under the hood. This seems contrary to the stated goals of free software.
ognarb · 3h ago
Honestly I think it's fair. Really the only people affected by this change are people creating proprietary forks, everyone else benefits from this change.
I just wish there was a way to ensure that the company itself doesn't do a proprietary fork.
whartung · 3h ago
Simple. Don't have contribution agreements. Contributors maintain their copyright so as they can prevent relicensing. Mind, FSF requires copyright for their submissions (I believe), but they're, arguably, a "good actor" in this space.
But, if the code base becomes a patchwork of contributors, it can become difficult to relicense.
eikenberry · 2h ago
FSF stopped requiring contributor agreements years ago.
sneak · 2h ago
It’s not fair. The AGPL violates freedom 0 and is nonfree.
Running a SaaS with in-house modifications is a protected use case for free software. The AGPL is a EULA masquerading as a license.
triknomeister · 2h ago
Definition of freedom has changed in cloud era. The idea behind GPL was, if you modify your code and distribute it, you need to contribute back the changes, with the wider goal of increasing the commons. All the legalese was just to make sure that the idea worked.
In the era of cloud, distribution needs to include distribution over wire, because so many apps are now run in the cloud. And that's why AGPL. It preserves the spirit of GPL in modern times.
satvikpendem · 2h ago
If you are distributing an AGPL software as a derivative work, you must also distribute the source. You can make as many modifications for internal use and not distribute them, if you're not making a derivative work.
triknomeister · 2h ago
> They see this as bad, because they think you should be forced to publish your modifications to the software you use internally, even if you don’t want to.
This is incorrect. You are only forced to publish if you are creating derivative works. See how overleaf uses propietary git integration with AGPL overleaf.
graemep · 2h ago
That article makes a lot of dubious claims. The central claim is that by breaking links to the source code in development on your own machine with no one else using it, then you are breaking the license by not showing a notice offering the source to yourself.
This is typical of software developers trying to interpret law. Can you imagine someone explaining to a judge that they are suing for a breach of license terms under the circumstances. "So, you are saying he did not give himself access to the code on his laptop?"
Even if that nonsense was correct, there is a dead easy workaround. Run a server with the code on it bound to localhost and you then have your network server for all users interacting with the code (yourself!). Not needed, just an additional layer of proof the claim "it is impossible to comply" is false.
Edit: to add, I am also not impressed by the author's other blog posts, such as a moan about not having PRs for FOSS projects accepted for good reasons (if you dig down into it). Lots of other complaining and nonsense too.
When given the choice, there are very few cases where I don't pick the open source product. The peace of mind it won't be shutdown on you, the confidence the company has in their code quality, or the option to ignore migrations and stay on previous versions is worth way more than featureset deltas.
xxpor · 2h ago
>The BSD-3 license, under which NetBird has operated until now, is a permissive license. It was instrumental in our early growth, offering maximum flexibility and encouraging wide adoption. However, this permissiveness also presents a significant long-term challenge with an imbalance where the value created by a community can be captured and privatized, ultimately undermining the sustainability of the open-source project itself. Well, AGPLv3 addresses this imbalance.
How is this logic not literally Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?
tokai · 2h ago
They are literally changing license to protect from E³. The only logic that makes what they do E³ is the slavery is freedom logic.
seanclayton · 1h ago
Who does this extinguish other than people who didn't want to share with the rest of the world---ie. hoard?
colechristensen · 2h ago
>How is this logic not literally Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?
It is exactly that. We need more free software which is actually free for everyone and every use case in all the senses of free. We don't need more "free software" except there are owners who get to control who uses it, how they use it, and how they can make money with it.
There is SO MUCH WASTE that could be eliminated by a few developers getting paid decent salaries to put their work into the public domain (by this I mean BSD style very permissive licenses).
Imagine a grant giving organization that companies were encouraged to give a hundredth of a percent of their revenue to which focused on paying full time developers to build and maintain fully featured tools which are the most useful to society as a whole.
anp · 2h ago
I have said a lot of times that I feel like people keep trying to reinvent a state and taxes to pay for shared infrastructure with open source maintenance. I don’t know how to use the state to solve the problem without severely degrading the quality of what gets built though.
bitpush · 2h ago
That's a weird take. If another $company wants to continue development with BSD-3 license, they can do so starting today and nothing of value would be lost.
The change is NetBird company saying, the improvements from now on are AGPLv3 licensed, but that doesnt stop from anyone to fork today and continue with BSD-3 license.
braginini · 3h ago
In order to safeguard the long-term innovation, sustainability, and collaborative spirit of NetBird, we are switching to the AGPLv3 license - ensuring it remains a powerful, community-driven resource for decades to come.
grandfugue · 3h ago
Looks like AGPL is a new norm? Redis switched to AGPL too. SSPL is also common on the server side. Curious of how you view AGPL vs. SSPL and choose the former.
braginini · 2h ago
SSPL is appealing for business but it is not open source. That is a deal breaker for us. We want to remain open source under a license that is recognized as open source.
satvikpendem · 2h ago
They're switching because they saw the failure of doing the source-available rugpull and causing other, sometimes even more successful, forks to show up, like Redis and Valkey. SSPL is not open source so it's not something I'd ever choose.
braginini · 2h ago
+1
mac-attack · 2h ago
Licensing talk is confusing to someone not steeped in it. I talked to Claude about it 1-2 weeks ago when it was first announced and it was framed as a reinforcement of FOSS ideals.
I actually made the jump from tailscale -> netbird last month. Definitely more work and learning, but much more aligned w/ my perspective of self-hosting and open-source software. (Yes I thought about headscale but the YouTube reviews of netbird won me over).
braginini · 2h ago
What did you find harder to achieve with NetBird than with Tailscale? I refer to more work and learning. Or is it purely related top self-hosting?
AGPL will stop Amazon. It won't stop WP Engine.
There needs to be a license that enables your customers to use you freely, but not your competitors from reselling your hard work.
If you want to protect your project from being resold by potential competitors, do not release it as open source.
I think this problem might solve itself, though. Slowly but surely, companies and power users have become very wary of VC funded companies making big promises and big open source releases, with the knowledge that there is rarely a plan for sustainability and that there is a good chance if they stand on that rug it could be pulled later. Soon, if trends continue, the advantages that you once got from announcing something as open source will start to evaporate and turn into a liability as people start seeing ahead to the eventual "but of course we have to be able to monetize this eventually" stage.
The way I see it, a project can always be open sourced later on once there's a way to do it and ensure the company can remain sustainable. For the flagship product of a company, especially a VC-funded company, not starting open source is the ethical thing to do.
I can't even..
Seriously, I don't understand where your argument is coming from. Because, if you look at it from the greater good perspective, commercial open-source is one of the only venues to build high quality software that can be freely self-hosted, modified and built-upon. Yet, you basically push for people building closed source software, due to what I understand is dogmatic believe of what open-source should mean.
> If you make a license that actually discriminates on user or use case, then it's not open source.
Based on a definition, bought and sponsored by the hyperscaler lobbies. Why the hell would discriminating against hyperscaller selling the product makes it non "open-source". 99.9999% users of open-source are not hyperscaler wanting to host and sell the product and will get value from the project.
Secondly, you can call it whatever you want but "open source" licenses that discriminate against user and use case are useless. Even if I just want to use something like a data structure implementation from your "open source" release in some unrelated project, I now have to inherit all of this baggage about your competitors. That just doesn't make any sense. The endgame of that is an ecosystem of open source that ultimately serves absolutely nobody except for maybe startup PR needs.
We self-host n8n, which by definition not open-source, and love it. It serves us. Not just n8n PR. That is the case for almost all self served products for non-commercial reasons
On the other hand, I think you can release shared source and closed source software that is still plenty useful and beneficial. For example, I am a very big fan of how Unreal Engine is licensed. Yes, it isn't "open source" and it isn't marketed as such. You can't take Unreal Engine components and go use them elsewhere even if you're not competing with Epic Games. Still, they provide some extremely powerful and useful software free of charge to basically all independent game developers. I think that's fantastic.
But that's all aside from what open source is. Unreal Engine isn't open source and it doesn't do anything for the open source ecosystem. Which is fine, because the entire world doesn't revolve around open source.
You seem to believe that we shouldn't create closed source software but at the same time directly advocating for it—that's what it is that's what you're describing. If you want a more practical and less idealistic reason why it sucks when software companies prevent people like AWS from using their software, it's because the actual users of your software, the customers of AWS, wish to pay AWS to host it for them. They would like to hire the lovely folks who work at AWS to host and manage the software for them and the license prevents that. You are preventing your users from doing what they want with the software. And that's the rub, that's why it's important to not discriminate based off of use.
So much this. If Open Source is a marketing term then companies are free to call whatever they do "Open Source" and the term becomes meaningless. You may as well call the software "Free Range".
On the other hand if Open Source is a defined thing, built around a specific definition, and the 4 freedoms, and so on, (hint: it is) then the marketing term could lead you places you don't want to go.
So there's a generation of programmers who want to "redefine" Open Source to suit their preferences. Dilute the definition until it's meaningless. I'm strongly against this.
To be clear everyone is welcome to use any license, with any restriction they like. But if it doesn't conform to the OSI definition don't call it Open Source.
Stop trying to turn a technical specification into a generic marketing term.
That just isn't going to work anymore.
The hyperscalers know this and they want you to keep building software this way. They'll write a managed version of your thing and collect all your money.
Fair source would be "customers can use this in an unlimited way as long as they don't sell a managed version".
That's what we need to do. Carve out the ability to make money for the originators doing the work.
Open source has turned us all into serfs working on giant kingdoms we don't own.
NOTE ALSO, the OSI has been so corporate captured that their definition of open source AI is not at all open. You shouldn't trust them at all.
No true scotsman.
There are such licenses. They are just not open source.
There are such licenses only if you change the definition of "freely" to fit the narrative. Historically, "freely" (as in "free software") means granting end-user four essential software freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
If I can't redistribute ("resell") software, or can't run it and let others access it for a fee - it's not "use freely" anymore.
"Open" is too binary. You can't exclude companies that would harm you.
We need "fair", "equitable", or "sustainable" (as this one is termed) licenses.
You should be able to give your customers 100% the ability to use, modify, and redistribute so long as they don't resell you.
You should be able to cut off Amazon and Google from using you.
You should be able to prevent certain uses, like managed versions of your software.
The users should not be restricted. The responsibility comes from redistribution.
WP Engine is not a problem, Amazon is.
WP Engine, as I understand it, contributes next to nothing to the codebase and takes a huge bite of the overall market.
I personally think the definition of open-source is problematic (and clearly biased by the lobbies of hyperscalers). Why aren't n8n or MongoDB considered open-source? (https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md, https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/community-edition) Why does requesting that others not sell your product make the project not open-source?
Complete agreement there. I'd like to laud NetBird for using AGPL rather than one of the recent VC-fueled proprietary-with-source-available licenses.
> I personally think the definition of open-source is problematic (and clearly biased by the lobbies of hyperscalers).
Open Source has existed since before "hyperscaler" was a concept that existed, and before Software as a Service was a going concern. Its definition has not in any way been affected by the lobby of an industry that didn't exist when it was defined.
One rationale for not changing the definition of Open Source is an issue of Schelling points / focal points ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) ). Right now, we have a common definition of Open Source; if everyone could put their pet restriction in ("no military", "no SaaS", "no AI", "no nuclear power"), we'd end up with a hundred variants and no ability to collaborate and share code across projects.
In the case of MongoDB, it's because the SSPL requires that all the software used to offer the network service is also licensed under the SSPL. That prevents it from being used to write Free Software by mixing free programs and libraries that use a different license, even if they are free.
So, for example, if your network service supports managing MongoDB instances, and it includes Caddy or Nginx, then you're not complying with the license, as Caddy and Nginx aren't released under the SSPL and you cannot relicense them.
> Why does requesting that others not sell your product make the project not open-source?
Because requesting them to not do that makes your program proprietary, and thus non-free by definition.
But the thing is, commercial open source companies play a huge role in making great open source tools, especially ones you can self-host. Without them, a lot of the software we rely on wouldn't even exist. People often push back when these companies change their licenses, but they forget the reality. Big cloud providers can make tons of money off open source projects without giving anything back. That's a tough spot for the folks.
I'm sure that in the nearest future we will have some COSS licenses :) Well, as an open source contributor I hope so
SaaS, meanwhile, is the least open and least free model of software distribution, significantly less open or free (as in freedom) than closed-source commercial software you run yourself. This model, SaaS, is powered from the ground up by open source, and most SaaS gives little or nothing back. Some SaaS is not much more than a management and UI layer built around pre-existing open source standards and code.
Something is very wrong if open source exists largely to enable the least free model of software distribution. Open source as currently conceptualized is stuck in the pre-SaaS eras of the 1980s and 1990s and refuses to adapt to what "free" and "open" mean in the new landscape.
It doesn't help that the OSI is fully captured by companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta with a vested interest in promoting the SaaS and cloud-first model. If local-first ever gained traction it would be a threat to not just their SaaS products but their incredibly lucrative cloud businesses.
I've used Free Software and Open Source over 20 years and have never paid a SaaS company a dime.
OTOH the most valuable software that I regularly use is Free Software as opposed to Open Source Software. So maybe the OSS really is primarily free labor for SaaS?
You're part of a very, very small minority. I'm talking about the majority of developers and what the majority of users experience.
What most users are experiencing today is an aggressively non-free non-open zero-privacy rent-seeking software environment that is enabled by open source under the hood. This seems contrary to the stated goals of free software.
I just wish there was a way to ensure that the company itself doesn't do a proprietary fork.
But, if the code base becomes a patchwork of contributors, it can become difficult to relicense.
https://sneak.berlin/20250720/the-agpl-is-nonfree/
Running a SaaS with in-house modifications is a protected use case for free software. The AGPL is a EULA masquerading as a license.
In the era of cloud, distribution needs to include distribution over wire, because so many apps are now run in the cloud. And that's why AGPL. It preserves the spirit of GPL in modern times.
This is incorrect. You are only forced to publish if you are creating derivative works. See how overleaf uses propietary git integration with AGPL overleaf.
This is typical of software developers trying to interpret law. Can you imagine someone explaining to a judge that they are suing for a breach of license terms under the circumstances. "So, you are saying he did not give himself access to the code on his laptop?"
Even if that nonsense was correct, there is a dead easy workaround. Run a server with the code on it bound to localhost and you then have your network server for all users interacting with the code (yourself!). Not needed, just an additional layer of proof the claim "it is impossible to comply" is false.
Edit: to add, I am also not impressed by the author's other blog posts, such as a moan about not having PRs for FOSS projects accepted for good reasons (if you dig down into it). Lots of other complaining and nonsense too.
https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source...
How is this logic not literally Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?
It is exactly that. We need more free software which is actually free for everyone and every use case in all the senses of free. We don't need more "free software" except there are owners who get to control who uses it, how they use it, and how they can make money with it.
There is SO MUCH WASTE that could be eliminated by a few developers getting paid decent salaries to put their work into the public domain (by this I mean BSD style very permissive licenses).
Imagine a grant giving organization that companies were encouraged to give a hundredth of a percent of their revenue to which focused on paying full time developers to build and maintain fully featured tools which are the most useful to society as a whole.
The change is NetBird company saying, the improvements from now on are AGPLv3 licensed, but that doesnt stop from anyone to fork today and continue with BSD-3 license.
I actually made the jump from tailscale -> netbird last month. Definitely more work and learning, but much more aligned w/ my perspective of self-hosting and open-source software. (Yes I thought about headscale but the YouTube reviews of netbird won me over).