[Developers] Acre hosted app licensing - BSD only?

[Tom Morris]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 8:18 PM, Stefano Mazzocchi<stefano at metaweb.com> wrote:
> Tom Morris wrote:
>> 2009/7/2 Stefano Mazzocchi <stefano at metaweb.com>:

>>> We've picked BSD for no other reason that we feel it strikes a balance
>>> between protection, simplicity and compatibility with the javascript
>>> library ecosystem that exists right now on the web and also didn't want
>>> a license that prevented people from taking code from Acre and use it in
>>> their own apps outside (this turns out to be especially useful would we
>>> decide to open source Acre or parts of it to allow others to run apps
>>> with their own resources instead of Metaweb's)
>>
>> In my world view, BSD isn't a balanced/middle-of-the-road license, but
>> rather a very permissive license with AGPLv3 at the other end of the
>> spectrum and things like EPL and LGPL in the middle.  It's great for
>> commercial companies who are promoting something or things with a
>> strong established ecosystem of commercial contributors like Apache,
>> but in other circumstances it's an invitation for commercial ventures
>> to take without giving back.
>
> You would have liked a reciprocal license better?

I wasn't advocating for a particular style of license.  I was just
disagreeing with the characterization of a license which is all the
way at one end of the spectrum as having "a balance."

Personally I tend to gravitate towards licenses like the Eclipse
Public License which are reciprocal for derived works, but non-viral,
allowing for closed source extensions.  However, I choose specific
licenses for given circumstances.  I understand the problems with
license proliferation, but the all or nothing approach of only
allowing a single license has issues as well.

> And in what way you think commercial ventures would be able to 'take
> away' your Acre code without giving back? Are you thinking of Metaweb or
> in general?

I was talking in general, not specifically about Metaweb.  The number
of ways to take without giving back are myriad and numerous.  It's not
really an issue if you assume that all applications are trivial or if
you assume that all applications are Freebase-hosted under ToS which
enforce BSD licensing (essentially reciprocity by dint of ToS as
opposed to license), but if you have folks contributing significant
chunks of JavaScript, HTML, or CSS which people can reuse in either a
non-Acre environment or in a open sourced Acre or cloned Acre private
hosting arrangement, the protection of the ToS goes out the window.
Got a fancy look-and-feel for your Acre app?  I can reuse it to my
heart's extent on my vanilla web app.  Were you forced to BSD license
that cool JavaScript library so that you could use it in your Acre
app?  Thank you very much, I'll have some of that too.

The easy answer is to suggest that Metaweb code be BSD licensed, but
allow Acre app writers to choose from some number of licenses for
their applications.  This allows people to reuse code which has
incompatible licenses as well as allow people some flexibility in
choosing a license which matches their personal preferences.  The
disadvantage is that the license fragmentation potentially makes it
more difficult to mix and match among difference Acre apps.  Whether
this is a net advantage or disadvantage is difficult to predict ahead
of time.

Tom