Comment by mythz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mythz | Hacker News Reader

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Yeah I'm surprised there's so much focus on the license of a free library that's also OSS. The AGPL/OSS license only applies if you're creating a custom build from source in OSS projects, if you're just using #Script from the official NuGet package you're using the commercial license which is free to use without restrictions for both commercial/non-commercial usage.

#Script started out as an alternative to Razor Pages [1] (where it was initially called ServiceStack Templates [2]) to give ServiceStack Apps a productive alternative to Razor for developing server-driven Web Apps, but as it's highly extensible without external deps or reliance in external tooling it was easy to re-purpose as a dynamic emeddable language to be able to basically script any .NET App, hence the rebrand to a stand-alone #Script language, all the whilst its implementation remained in the core ServiceStack.Common assembly. If it becomes an issue we can look at pulling it out of the main ServiceStack repo in a stand-alone repo with a weaker copyleft OSS license, but it would require a bit of work and would need to ensure it's not disruptive to existing ServiceStack Customers, I just didn't expect there to be any issue for a gratis library that's also OSS.

Incidentally the ServiceStack.Glue library that the Desktop Apps use to embed .NET Core Apps in a Chromium Desktop Shell is MIT [3].

[1] https://sharpscript.net/docs/sharp-pages

[2] https://github.com/NetCoreApps/TemplatePages

[3] https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.CefGlue

Surprised? Let me give you my perspective on this whole thing.

I was almost sold on sharpscript for handling our email templating needs until I realized how obfuscated the licensing and overall project structure is. I've been reading through threads about it on HN for 2 days now, and still don't have a clear understanding of what the real intentions are here.

If I just follow the rabbit hole from the #script nuget.org page:

https://www.nuget.org/packages/ServiceStack.Common

I wind up at the following license URL:

https://servicestack.net/terms

Which has the following:

"Use of the Software and Documentation is subject to the restrictions contained in this Agreement. ServiceStack, Inc. grants you a non-exclusive, limited, non-transferable, freely revocable license to use the Software. ServiceStack, Inc. reserves all rights not expressly granted herein in the Software and the Content and may terminate this license at any time for any reason or no reason."

I will not be using this software. If anyone wants to change my mind, pull sharpscript into its own repository, give it its own nuget, and post crystal clear license terms alongside each which do not contain any sort of legal backdoors where you get to rip the rug out from under me at some arbitrary point in the future. If you want money for this, just ask for it up front and be honest with your intentions. I may actually consider purchasing a license if the terms aren't trashy like in the current license above.

I was about to post that exact quote.

"may terminate this license at any time for any reason or no reason"

How could anyone build a business on this?

Sure, you shouldn't use anything you don't feel comfortable with. That clause is common in other commercial Software license agreements, e.g. Xamarin originally had the same clause before they were acquired. IMO it's a good deterrent to protect against bad actors from suing us, and why it was included. Fortunately we've never had a bad actor sue us to ever need to test it in courts.

As mentioned in my parent comment you've replied to, I'll consider pulling it into its own repo with a liberal OSS license, but it would be a lot of work since it's included in a core library and any changes can't disrupt existing Customers already using it. But wont be anytime soon as I'm already overloaded with other higher priority features I have to work on.

> I may actually consider purchasing a license if the terms aren't trashy like in the current license above.

I've no intentions to ever sell any licenses to use #Script, it will always be free.

Why do you find it surprising people are confused when:

On the one hand you state "All other ServiceStack Software inc. all client libraries, inc. Serialization and ServiceStack.Common (containing #Script) are unrestricted libraries which can be used for free without a commercial Developers license in both commercial/non-commercial projects"

On the other hand your terms state "Subject to the terms of this Agreement, Licensee is granted a right to use the Software for small projects and evaluation purposes without charge provided that use of the Software is within the "Free Usage Quota" published on Licensor's website at servicestack.net."

"small projects and evaluation" is not free to use without restriction.

You're referring to different things where you've quoted me out of context [1], and have omitted where I've specifically said that only the commercial products have free usage quotas [2].

All the packages I've listed do not have any free-quota restrictions so they don't require a paid Developers license to enable unrestricted usage, since they already don't have any restrictions.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20756148

[2] https://servicestack.net/download#free-quotas

OK, but that's not what the license linked to from the package page says. It doesn't say "Some products are unlimited use, and others are restricted as stated here". It says all products are restricted as stated there. It does not discriminate between commercial and non commercial products.

> All the packages I've listed do not have any free-quota restrictions so they don't require a paid Developers license to enable unrestricted usage, since they already don't have any restrictions.

How does that line up with your license that states "small projects and evaluation" only?

I'm not doubting that your intentions are for the licensing to be as you state, but that's not what your license says :)

> It says all products are restricted as stated there.

It does not say this, it says:

> Licensee is granted a right to use the Software for small projects and evaluation purposes without charge provided that use of the Software is within the "Free Usage Quota"

The free usage quotas only exist on the commercial products which I've already linked to https://servicestack.net/download#free-quotas

On the free products pages, like ServiceStack.Text product page [1] and GitHub project page [2] and #Script home page [3] all specifically mention they're free to use. Whilst all of ServiceStack's non .NET libraries like the JS/Typescript clients [5], Swift [6], Java/Kotlin [7], Dart/Flutter [8], CefGlue Support, etc are all published with liberal BSD/MIT OSS licenses.

[1] https://servicestack.net/text

[2] https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Text

[3] https://sharpscript.net/#free

[5] https://github.com/ServiceStack/servicestack-client

[6] https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Swift

[7] https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Java

[8] https://github.com/ServiceStack/servicestack-dart

[9] https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.CefGlue

In case you haven't worked at a larger company before:

- nonstandard license = legal will have to review license

- AGPLv3 is a non-starter at many places

AGPLv3 software is used in some places, but projects normally license the pre-compiled binaries under more permissive terms. Example: mattermost is AGPLv3 but the binaries are MIT-licensed https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-server/blob/master/... so it'll be easier to get approval to use the binaries.

I'm sure SharpScript is a cool technology, but some of your licensing choices really hamper adoption.

As I've said above, only OSS projects that create custom builds from source use the AGPL/FLOSS license, the license was added to allow OSS projects to use all of ServiceStack without needing to pay for a developers license.

All other usages of ServiceStack from its official NuGet packages are only available under its commercial license which only requires a paid developers license for its commercial products that contains free-quota usage restrictions [1]. The rest of ServiceStack, inc. all core and client libraries like ServiceStack.Text, ServiceStack.Common (containing #Script), ServiceStack.Client, etc are all unrestricted libraries that are available to use graits/for free.

[1] https://servicestack.net/download#free-quotas

So you are saying the lawyers have to approve the "ServiceStack License Agreement". The probability of this may be within an order of magnitude of likeliness as getting approval for the AGPLv3.

https://www.nuget.org/packages/ServiceStack.Common/ -> "License Info" -> https://servicestack.net/terms

Right they'd approve the commercial license just as they would with every other commercial product they're using.

> which is probably in the same order of magnitude of likeliness as the AGPLv3

It's disingenuous to claim the commercial license is the same as the AGPL, the commercial license allows usage in closed-source programs, AGPL does not.

Sorry if my wording was confusing... my claim is that the likelihood of a sign-off from the lawyers was similar, not that the licenses were similar.

In both cases the license serves as a bump in the road that doesn't need to be there. ScriptSharp seems like an awesome piece of kit.

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