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Comment by tmikaeld | Hacker News Reader

I don't see a problem with the current model..

If open source projects change their licensing to force paying for business use and the cloud giants doesn't want to pay, the cloud giant could afford forking the project and make their own version.

This could lead to the original project being unmaintained and the new fork becoming the standard, if that happens and given enough time, the cloud giant can make software patents on the changes they've committed and change the license of that code/features. Making it even harder to create something similar or even something new with the same features.

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> I don't see a problem with the current model..

The question is why you are doing OpenSource. If you are a VC funded startup doing OpenSource for marketing (engaging a community ofnusers, producing an environment of tools around your product and sometimes providing a patch) there is an issue if revenue goes to AWS.

If you do OpenSource since you actually need the tool and/or it's not your core business there is little issue if others are using it to provide a service. They might even make your software more robust and stable and better for you. As long as your goals are not misaligned. If they are misaligned they form away and it's like they were never there for you ...

> the cloud giant can make software patents on the changes they've committed and change the license of that code/features

If you choose a license with a patent grant (e.g. Apache), wouldn't this be fairly difficult to pull off? To re-license they'd have to re-write all the original contributions or create a separate project with the 'patent-encumbered' code under a different license without a grant, on which the main project depended.

That's just it, a project can be dual licensed, which is not so uncommon.

A business license + open source license, often called cripple-ware, they make the system quite useless without a GUI or management tool for example.

I might be missing something, but I'm not following the "that's just it". A third party contributor (say AWS) can't take a single-licensed Apache project and decide to dual-license it.

The original developer can dual license and force Amazon to contribute (either in cash, or in code).

2 fundamental flaws here: Being blackmailed is a huge problem.

Anyone can patent changes to your software regardless of the license agreement.

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