[Developers] Acre hosted app licensing - BSD only?

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Tom Morris wrote:
> 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."

Fair enough.

> 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.

Absolutely.

>> 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.

As for HTML and CSS, I don't buy your argument: the web grew at the 
incredible pace it did (compared to all other IT architectures that 
preceded it) also because of 'fair use' cut/paste of content copyrighted 
by others. Alternative licensing terms won't prevent that from happening 
again.

Your argument potentially holds for Javascript libraries and MQL 
queries... although I don't think anybody would be using Acre to write 
such a complicated piece of reusable Javascript that he/she would feel 
compelled to protect it. If so, we will explicitly suggest them not to 
use acre for it and just link it from somewhere else.

> Got a fancy look-and-feel for your Acre app?  I can reuse it to my
> heart's extent on my vanilla web app.  

Yes, this is precisely what we want to enable. If you belong to the 
class of individuals that don't like this sharing dynamic, the benefit 
of you using the service might be lower than its cost.

> 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.

I have not seen a single widely-used javascript library out there that 
was licensed with more protection than BSD... this is a testimony that 
people know that having more protection won't prevent abuse and is 
likely to reduce sharing dynamics or usage appeal.

Those libraries that tried otherwise (EXT comes to mind), either failed 
and opened up or closed up altogether and went commercial.

This is also because most software licenses are based on the concept of 
'redistribution of derivative work' and on the web the concept of 
'redistribution' is foggy, very few software licenses work as-is on the web.

And those who were designed to protect even in non-redistribution 
situations (AGPL comes to mind), they impose so much restrictions that 
it would practically make you software feel too restrictive to almost 
any kind of user.

> 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.

True, although after long thinking and careful evaluation of 
alternatives, we came to believe that simplifying sharing by homogeneity 
of licensing terms provides more benefits than disadvantages, especially 
given what Acre is, what languages the apps are written in, what is the 
existing licensing/sharing ecosystem for those languages, how easy it is 
to link external code in and what kind of social dynamics we want to 
nurture with it.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi                              Application Catalyst
Metaweb Technologies, Inc.                      stefano at metaweb.com
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