This one is something that were brought up a lot by developers including me who are very weary about corporations profiting off of our work for free and this basically put us off from contributing to open source in general.
We get a bunch of dialogues about this such as:
Developers like me: "Many of us who create are concerned about our work being exploited. The possibility of corporations profiting from our open-source contributions without giving back to the community disincentivizes us from participating in such endeavors."
Open-Source Advocates: "The AGPL exists to mitigate such concerns. It requires derivative works to also be open-source."
Developers like me: "While I appreciate the intention behind AGPL, there is a loophole - a 'condom code' if you will. Even though Linux Kernel prevents such strategies by refusing to merge these changes and that it's difficult for a singular corporation to force an adoption of a forked version of Linux Kernel, a corporation can fork our much smaller project however and introduce such legal bypass to the copyleft restrictions. This bypass can be justified by them under the guise of extending the software's capabilities with a plugin interface or an interprocess communication protocol layer, similar to how PostgreSQL allows User Defined Functions. However, I must caution that I'm not well-versed in the legal intricacies."
When bringing up on non-commercial clause for licensing
Open-Source Advocates: "Disallowing commercial use of your project contradicts the principles of open-source."
Developers like me: "Well, then perhaps we need a new term, something like 'Open Code Project'. We can create projects that encourage collaboration and openness while also restricting commercial exploitation."
So I created this post, because we do need to discuss on a path forward for Open Source in general knowing that corporation can shirk around this restriction and discourage developers like me from participating in open source or open code projects.
Edited to add:
I really want to thank you all for discussing a rather contentious topic and adding your own thoughts to this. I really appreciate everyone's thoughts into this. I clearly have a lot to do on researches.
I agree, the parasitic nature of this relationship has been sharpened in the past week and made many of us think more critically of it.
My question is - what happens if several significant FOSS projects change their licence to "Sources must be publically available if repackaged" or even "Cannot be packaged for sale", specifically to prevent a non-freely available distro profiting from it.
Yes, that distro could fork the software at the point before the new licence is applied, but they they would be responsible for maintaining that fork going forwards, no? And that would take a lot of resources and need it to be called something else.
Absolutely, your understanding mirrors mine. The re-licensing process is a complex one, particularly in the context of FOSS projects with multiple contributors. It requires unanimous agreement from all contributors, unless a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) or Copyright Assignment Agreement is already in place, which can simplify the process.
As for the scenario where a distro continues to maintain a hard fork of the project from the point before re-licensing, it's certainly possible. However, as you pointed out, it would place a substantial burden on the distro in terms of resources. They would need to maintain and update the code independently, which might not be feasible or desirable.
In regards to the proposed license conditions, "Sources must be publicly available if repackaged" or "Cannot be packaged for sale", it's worth noting that the first one is already embodied in the principles of GPL/AGPL. The second proposal, however, raises more complex considerations. This approach would indeed help address the issue of commercial exploitation that I initially raised. But as you've mentioned, the challenge lies in navigating the re-licensing process.
If a FOSS project is already licensed under a different license, a re-license would require obtaining permissions from all contributors, which might prove to be a logistical challenge. Therefore, any change in the licensing model needs to be thought through carefully, taking into account not only the potential legal complexities but also the broader implications for the open-source community.
Disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer.
I recently came across this license, which addresses some of your concerns: https://commonsclause.com/
Thank you for posting this! It's very interesting on how it can be applied on top of existing open source licensing. I've got some reading to do!
Reminds me of what happened with elasticsearch and amazon.