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Comment by andrewchambers | Hacker News Reader

Tbh, I find some of the complaints in this thread about it not being totally free irritating. When food, houses and healthcare are all free, maybe all code can be free too. (But i don't think a society has ever succeeded by doing that.)

I personally don't have a problem with a license that allows a user to modify source code, and run modified source code, but only after paying a fee. It seems to me DOOM mods work like this already, the code is free, but the game resources like textures etc can only be used after paying for a license. Id software gets paid, people can hack all day on the game, seems like win win to me.

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The problem is that it doesn't help.

Commercial open source tends to be done for two reasons:

1. Common goal development. Several companies needs a UNIX. Rather than do all the development themselves, they work together. That's how Linux works. 2. Backup if original company's strategic goals move from your goal.

Here, neither work as you can't cooperate with others due to licensing issues.

If the license doesn't allow applying or distributing third party patches I would be annoyed. If it allows it provided each party has paid for a license I would be happy.

It says right here, https://supportedsource.org/definition "Modifications. The license must permit modifications to the source code."

But you also can't just take parts of the code and redistribute it for free, because "Restricted Uses. The license should include restricted uses, such as disallowing resale or sublicensing."

The point isn't to prevent people from customizing their use of the software. The point is to create a system where developers get paid and projects are financially sustainable, instead of being abandoned or barely maintained.

> The point isn't to prevent people from customizing their use of the software. The point is to create a system where developers get paid and projects are financially sustainable, instead of being abandoned or barely maintained.

The problem is that's actually one of the main powers of Open Source - the ability to fork it past the desires of upstream.

For example, I use Windows, which is "supported source". OK. Microsoft decides to put spyware. Now I need to rip it out. OK. Did so.

Now, one day later, Windows gets updated.

I have to go through the code again.

If it would be "Open Source", I'd just fork it. But now, I can't even share modifications (is it a derivative work?).Now every user would have to go through the code, find the privacy violations, and re-compile it.

Also, what happens Microsoft get's fed up and fully closes source (no more updates to "Supported Source", and they drop out of the program)? Each user has to keep up his version of Windows?

Not too useful.

If you think about it, how are there commercial communities around Apache/MIT/BSD?

Because no one wants to upkeep his fork, so they contribute code back so others can help maintain it.

That freedom can only be maintained by the ability to fork.

I personally don't have a problem with any license. I think Free and Open Source software is important, though, and this is not it. The problem here is not the fact that there is a license that allows licencees to view source code. The problem is that this organisation wishes to replace open source software with their view.

(Note: I'm not going to talk about software freedom here, which is a subtly different perspective. I just want to talk about open source). The idea behind open source is that when I decide to use the software, I am not locked in to a single vendor. Not only do I have access to the source code, but I have permission to modify it and distribute it for any reason that I want.

It's that advance permission for modification and distribution that de-risks your project. If, in the future, I want to do something differently than the original author, I can. For example, imagine that I tie my infrastructure in to version 2 of the software, but they release version 3, removing most of the functionality that I depend on. I want to use version 2 and backport security changes from version 3 into version 2. Similarly, I want to distribute my changes so that anybody else that's in the same boat can pitch in on the backporting effort.

So, as an author, you give up some control of the ultimate destiny of your code. There are some advantages as well, though. If your customers take advantage of their ability to add features of their own choosing, you have turned customers into collaborators. In that way, you have a kind of consortium effect. However, you are in a privileged position, because you still own all the trademarks wrt to the project. So even if someone starts to compete against you, they can't piggy back on your marketing and sales efforts. Not only that, but if you choose a copy-left style license, they can't effectively compete unfairly against you because all of their modifications are also usable by you.

So it's a kind of balancing act. You get this low barrier of entry for participation of your customers and they get a substantially de-risked product.

There are lots and lots of licenses out there which permit the viewing of source code. It has been very popular with game engines for a long time now. Microsoft made the attempt (now abandoned, I think) of have the "Shared Source" license. Even back before free and open source was a thing, source code was often available, though there was no explicit license to use it.

This is not a "better" open source. It is objectively much worse at fulfilling the goals of open source software. Like I said, I don't care if they want to use licenses like that. I won't use their software, nor will I recommend that people accept a license like that. But I don't have a problem with them existing. I do have a problem with them pretending that what they have is an improvement on free and open source software.

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