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Comment by mzi | Hacker News Reader

The license[0] for this project might be problematic. It is worded very vague and far reaching.

[0]: https://github.com/micro/micro/blob/master/LICENSE

The part that's really tricky to me is the noncompete clause, since neither side is a static entity. There are lots of situations where you could end up as competitors.

The current status in open source licensing in relation to cloud providers such as AWS should signal why the choice was made to move to using Polyform Shield. Its drafted by Heather Meeker, a lawyer with vast experience in this space who has drafted many of the other custom licences for the commercial open source businesses. We are in desperate need of licensing standardisation for commercial open source that moves beyond custom drafting or AGPL, etc. In this case, having spoke to Heather we chose to adopt Polyform and think others will too in time.

This is a commercial license, but it's not even a remote approximation of “open source”, so the references to “commercial open source” and comparisons to the AGPL (which is a copyleft open source license) are misleading.

The source is openly accessible, openly developed, and you can fork it if you don’t like it. It’s definitely open source.

https://opensource.org/osd

“6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.”

vs.

https://github.com/micro/micro/blob/master/LICENSE

“## Noncompete

Any purpose is a permitted purpose, except for providing any product that competes with the software or any product the licensor or any of its affiliates provides using the software.

## Competition

Goods and services compete even when they provide functionality through different kinds of interfaces or for different technical platforms. Applications can compete with services, libraries with plugins, frameworks with development tools, and so on, even if they’re written in different programming languages or for different computer architectures. Goods and services compete even when provided free of charge. If you market a product as a practical substitute for the software or another product, it definitely competes.

## New Products

If you are using the software to provide a product that does not compete, but the licensor or any of its affiliates brings your product into competition by providing a new version of the software or another product using the software, you may continue using versions of the software available under these terms beforehand to provide your competing product, but not any later versions.

## Discontinued Products

You may begin using the software to compete with a product or service that the licensor or any of its affiliates has stopped providing, unless the licensor includes a plain-text line beginning with `Licensor Line of Business:` with the software that mentions that line of business.

Licensor Line of Business: M3O (https://m3o.com)

## Sales of Business

If the licensor or any of its affiliates sells a line of business developing the software or using the software to provide a product, the buyer can also enforce [Noncompete](#noncompete) for that product.”

I am aware of the OSI definition of open-source. However that is only one definition. Although it is a popular one, it is neither authoritative nor ubiquitous. My definition is just as valid as theirs, and it has never confused anybody outside of pedantic debates like this one.

According to the author of the license[0], it is not open source.

[0]: https://polyformproject.org/what-is-polyform/

Yeah, the non-compete term makes it particularly radioactive.

Unless you're not using it to compete. Which would be most applications providing content directly to users.

> Unless you’re not using it to compete.

Well, if you thoroughly explore the licensors current business so as to assure yourself that that’s not an issue, and are willing to accept the cost of ongoing monitoring in the future since your rights to continue to pull in future updates are affected by changes to the licensors business interests of which they are not required to provide you any notice (they only have to provide notice for things that they want to lock you out of even if they temporarily abandon a market).”

No sane user with anything at stake is going to put any kind of reliance on something with those terms.

And that’s just for a piece of software with a single upstring licensor with those terms. I don’t even want to begin to think about what a nightmare would be involved if you wanted to build a system that would rely on more than one piece of software, from different licensors, under this license.

If I were writing an app that provided information as to what plants were native to a user's particular region, for example, I would have absolutely no fear of that license.

That said, I can understand if one has a philosophical aversion to the license.

Thanks for pointing this out: previously I had looked at Micro with a view towards using it, and I had utterly failed to notice this.

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