Post #2173610

2026-05-07 13:29 UTC

ok there's an "open source" business scheme i've seen out there that works like (a) product itself has an MIT-like license (b) useful add-ons have a GPL license (c) want to use the GPL add-ons without having to follow GPL? pay the business money and they'll license them separately (d) public repo has a contributor agreement in which contributors essentially surrender all copyright to the business running the project i get that you gotta make a buck but this is pretty exploitative and sketchy

Replies (7)

@jwz@mastodon.social 2026-05-07 19:02

@aparrish@friend.camp Primordial precedent for this, though -- if you made a contribution to any GNU project, it wasn't enough to license your code under GPL; RMS also demanded a copyright assignment to FSF before accepting it.

Open ##2173609
@aparrish@friend.camp 2026-05-07 13:31

it seems carefully crafted to give one's business the nerd-pleasing veneer of "open source," and maybe even getting some free labor from contributors, while not actually committing yourself to the flourishing of the commons in any way

Open ##2289590
@aredridel@kolektiva.social 2026-05-07 13:32

@aparrish@friend.camp Yeah that's got good and bad versions, though I can't think of which I've seen in the wild lately. If the core itself is MIT, that feels pretty decent — no need for core contributors to sign away much. The add-ons, that is the clever and/or exploitative. A lot depends on how granular those addons are. Is it the typical SAML sort of thing? Written by the company maintaining it? Seems fine by me. A core feature everyone needs and that core developers do most of the maintenance of? UGH

Open ##2289594
@brennen@federation.p1k3.com 2026-05-07 14:32

@aparrish@friend.camp this reads kind of... open core with extra steps, particularly with the contributor agreement in the mix.

Open ##2289597
@mirth@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-05-07 18:12

@aparrish@friend.camp I've been part of various licensing discussions and one of the big worries when you're small is the "AWS problem": What happens when a big company decides to sell a competing service on your thing? Can you add friction and at least make them write their own? Should you have open code at all? None of the answers are all that great.

Open ##2289599
@rhea@cathode.church 2026-05-07 22:14

@aparrish@friend.camp I really hate how necessary it is for projects to have corporate sponsorship to begin with. It’s the rule rather than the exception that corporations pull some shenanigans to get people to pay for their software.

Open ##2289601
@varx@cybersecurity.theater 2026-05-09 04:32

@aparrish@friend.camp What's the enticement to pay for the GPL alternative? I feel like it's not common to write code that links against an add-on.

Open ##2289602