With dev.to (now named forem for the underlying software, soon to be reflected more officially), we believed pretty strongly that AGPL accomplished what we wanted in terms of encouraging and enforcing transparency across the network. According to our license, you can't make changes that you don't inform the end users of.
This means if you wanted to sneak in any extra tracking or anything you have to publish the new stuff. No way around it without expressly breaking a widely-used and established software license.
In this sense we want clear restrictions in place. However, we've pledged to make any smaller libraries we release MIT unless something else is specifically needed—because that's just the less onerous approach. It would certainly make our lives more difficult if all the Ruby Gems and npm packages we tried to import had restrictive or complicated licenses.
How’s it going, I'm a Adam, a Full-Stack Engineer, actively searching for work. I'm all about JavaScript. And Frontend but don't let that fool you - I've also got some serious Backend skills.
Location
City of Bath, UK 🇬🇧
Education
11 plus years* active enterprise development experience and a Fine art degree 🎨
Thank you Ben that is very useful info as a potential strategy, I like the explicit requirement to notify the copywrite owner. Could you refuse a change, I would imagine so, what about prevent a forem client from using your software?
It's interesting, something that's always been an afterthought to me could have huge implimentation if I choose poorly. Kind of like that iniana Jones movie.
We can't force someone not to modify the software (that would not fly in open source land very well), but by ensuring they publish changes (copyleft), we can try and ensure a healthy open source ecosystem and transparency to the end user.
Because they need to publish changes, we could deem that an individual forem is not appropriately compatible or aligned with our values such that we could make the choice to not offer support.
In general we hope our software is useful as is and if someone needs a change they're able to commit back upstream, but we'll see how things shake out.
How’s it going, I'm a Adam, a Full-Stack Engineer, actively searching for work. I'm all about JavaScript. And Frontend but don't let that fool you - I've also got some serious Backend skills.
Location
City of Bath, UK 🇬🇧
Education
11 plus years* active enterprise development experience and a Fine art degree 🎨
Sorry I tend to talk in extremes. I have to admit I'm really just getting into the true meaning of open source and what it means to foster an open source community.
For me, I'd like to have a license that allows anyone to modify my software but not be able to sell it unless credit was given. That kind of leads into, how do licenses get created in the first place, could I just write one on the back of a napkin?
There are licenses that would restrict commercial use or restrict use on really any terms. An yes—licenses are essentially created on the back of a napkin. You can create them out of thin air. The questions tend to be around are they legally enforceable? And in that regard it's nice if they've been around long enough to stand up to scrutiny or evolve based on challenges.
Not all legal documents are truly enforceable, and you never really know until you wind up in court. But this is why people tend to try and choose licenses that a bunch of other people are also relying on. It's sort of like strength in numbers. If the whole world decided on a shared understanding of something and nobody really challenged that for a while, it holds a lot more weight than if you whip something up out of thin air and say this is the way things are.
Soooo you probably don't want to go totally on your own, but if you poke around you can find a license for pretty much any use case and you're best off picking stuff that other people are using for a bit of strength in numbers.
How’s it going, I'm a Adam, a Full-Stack Engineer, actively searching for work. I'm all about JavaScript. And Frontend but don't let that fool you - I've also got some serious Backend skills.
Location
City of Bath, UK 🇬🇧
Education
11 plus years* active enterprise development experience and a Fine art degree 🎨
A bit off topic but when you react to my posts I tend to get floods of reactions, do you have super admin powers? I'm not licensed to know I guess. Thank you for taking the time, I have certainly got some jumping off points and I hope this helps other people too, great answer.
How’s it going, I'm a Adam, a Full-Stack Engineer, actively searching for work. I'm all about JavaScript. And Frontend but don't let that fool you - I've also got some serious Backend skills.
Location
City of Bath, UK 🇬🇧
Education
11 plus years* active enterprise development experience and a Fine art degree 🎨
And as a super admin, when I or other folks take these actions, they have more impact. It's a complicated system, but you can see in general how it works in the code 😄
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
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With dev.to (now named forem for the underlying software, soon to be reflected more officially), we believed pretty strongly that AGPL accomplished what we wanted in terms of encouraging and enforcing transparency across the network. According to our license, you can't make changes that you don't inform the end users of.
This means if you wanted to sneak in any extra tracking or anything you have to publish the new stuff. No way around it without expressly breaking a widely-used and established software license.
In this sense we want clear restrictions in place. However, we've pledged to make any smaller libraries we release MIT unless something else is specifically needed—because that's just the less onerous approach. It would certainly make our lives more difficult if all the Ruby Gems and npm packages we tried to import had restrictive or complicated licenses.
Thank you Ben that is very useful info as a potential strategy, I like the explicit requirement to notify the copywrite owner. Could you refuse a change, I would imagine so, what about prevent a forem client from using your software?
It's interesting, something that's always been an afterthought to me could have huge implimentation if I choose poorly. Kind of like that iniana Jones movie.
We can't force someone not to modify the software (that would not fly in open source land very well), but by ensuring they publish changes (copyleft), we can try and ensure a healthy open source ecosystem and transparency to the end user.
Because they need to publish changes, we could deem that an individual forem is not appropriately compatible or aligned with our values such that we could make the choice to not offer support.
In general we hope our software is useful as is and if someone needs a change they're able to commit back upstream, but we'll see how things shake out.
Sorry I tend to talk in extremes. I have to admit I'm really just getting into the true meaning of open source and what it means to foster an open source community.
For me, I'd like to have a license that allows anyone to modify my software but not be able to sell it unless credit was given. That kind of leads into, how do licenses get created in the first place, could I just write one on the back of a napkin?
There are licenses that would restrict commercial use or restrict use on really any terms. An yes—licenses are essentially created on the back of a napkin. You can create them out of thin air. The questions tend to be around are they legally enforceable? And in that regard it's nice if they've been around long enough to stand up to scrutiny or evolve based on challenges.
Not all legal documents are truly enforceable, and you never really know until you wind up in court. But this is why people tend to try and choose licenses that a bunch of other people are also relying on. It's sort of like strength in numbers. If the whole world decided on a shared understanding of something and nobody really challenged that for a while, it holds a lot more weight than if you whip something up out of thin air and say this is the way things are.
Soooo you probably don't want to go totally on your own, but if you poke around you can find a license for pretty much any use case and you're best off picking stuff that other people are using for a bit of strength in numbers.
A bit off topic but when you react to my posts I tend to get floods of reactions, do you have super admin powers? I'm not licensed to know I guess. Thank you for taking the time, I have certainly got some jumping off points and I hope this helps other people too, great answer.
Well as a mod, I can send an extra "thumbsup" which gives the post more visibility. Most likely has to do with that?
Ah yes I can do that too. Thanks for clarifying.
And as a super admin, when I or other folks take these actions, they have more impact. It's a complicated system, but you can see in general how it works in the code 😄