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Ask HN: How about delayed MIT/GPL?

2•afiori•4h ago
One way a company can protect an open-source product from large cloud providers is to restrict the license to forbid some commercial uses, typically offering the software as a service.

The community and programmers in general almost always dislike these moves.

One thing I have seen little discussion of is clauses like: "after N years, this license becomes MIT/GPL."

To me, this seems to solve most of the practical issues, while obviously doing little to address software-freedom or boiling-frog concerns.

Do you agree? Would such a clause change your opinion?

Comments

torstenvl•48m ago
Prior to that date, presumably it would be under some proprietary license, right?

That means two things:

(1) It'll be difficult to manage community changes and proprietary changes (they might even be mutually exclusive or get on different trajectories). Ultimately this model probably means little to no open contribution, little to no community.

(2) There is nothing actually forcing the open source release.

If this is something one is interested in doing, it should be woven into the AOO/AOI/OA/bylaws with an enforcement mechanism. E.g., explicitly acknowledge that the corporation is directed to treat the trust of the open source community as among the highest goods, open source has to happen at a certain interval (you might choose 14 years, modeled after the original copyright term).

You might even create structures to enforce this, e.g., SPI has a board seat with no power except to force a vote on not releasing changes on schedule, and that such a decision requires a 3/4 majority or something.

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