Doesn't open source just mean you have access to read and modify the software? It's the stronger term Libre that implies that you grant all distribution/selling rights to the public.
In software licensing a “permissive license” is a well-established term for a free or open source license that does not restrict downstream derivatives to use the same license (or the license family) for the downstream contributions, as opposed to a copyleft license which does impose such a requirement.
Apache 2.0 is, indeed, a permissive license, and that is a central purpose of its intent.
(Anything) + Commons Clause is not a permissive license, and that too is a central purpose of its intent.
> with one, intentionally very narrow exception.
The restriction in the Common Clause is not “very narrow” (or with very clear boundaries, which makes the area of legal risk larger.)
They clearly intend it to be very narrow it seems.
Can you point out any way it will restrict me or anyone else from using it internally?
BTW: It may seem I think this is all good.
I do not think that.
I do think the cases I've seen so far can be reasonable.
The bigger and more problematic picture I think I see is:
- if every project and its dog applies this that will hurt me if I rely on cloud hosted services
- if the big actors think this is a good idea and start applying thos or something worse to their currently open source software, restricing competition on hosting.
- hollowing out of the open source movement.
Because that's never been how I understood it. I'm pretty sure I understood it to be, at least in it's most encompassing sense, that the source was visible long before the time OSI says it created the label.
Edit: s/weakest/encompassing/
It's deliberately misleading people to ape this terminology to promote software which does not guarantee the fundamental freedoms of open source. If you want to use a proprietary license, own up to it, don't try to get the mindshare of open source when you aren't.
The ancient Greek empire might have included Italy in the past, but an Italian who says they're from Greece today is lying.
That may be, but the terminology chosen by OSI is easily misunderstood, exacerbating this problem. When I see "open source", I think mostly of the source and can I see it, possibly whether I am allowed to alter it for myself. Like an "open book" (hey, I can freely annotate my own copy).
Whether something is free to sell, or redistribute, or alter and redistribute always seemed like variations on what the easily inferred (even if incorrectly inferred) core meaning of open source.
Interestingly, I think the vast majority of people probably think open source means the source is visible, regardless of whether it's an OSI approved license, and regardless of whether they are happy with the license. If that's true, and common usage is at odds with OSI intention, where does that leave us? I think I could easily argue either side in that case.
It leaves us with an education problem.
Ten years ago I don't recall ever seeing people confuse the term Open Source with source-code-available - but the Open Source community was much, much smaller then so I guess the people involved were all on the same page.
Now that Open Source has genuinely won (when's the last time you hard a company say they have a policy of NOT using open source?) it seems we have a new terminology problem that I was previously unaware of.
So what were we referring to Linux and the different software running on it back then as? I was running Linux back in 1996, and I can't seem to remember any other way it was referred to.
Free Software. Sometimes with “free as in speech” to distinguish from the also common “free as in beer” no-cost but restrictively licensed (or, often at the time, with no express license) software.