Source First License 1.1: https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md
This is a non-open source license. They were claiming to be open source at one point, but they’ve listened to the community and stopped claiming they were open source. They are not trying to be Open Source™.
They call themselves “source first”. https://sourcefirst.com/
They’re trying to create a world where developers can make money from writing source first software, where the big tech oligarchy can’t just suck them dry.
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Well, if they want to try that they are of course free to try, but the argument has a big gaping hole:
They might not ever change the license terms afterwards for software already on your hard-drive, but they absolutely can do so for updates and likely will. Normally that would result in a fork if the new terms are bad, but who would be willing to fork software under a restrictive non-commercial license that doesn’t even allow you to collect donations for running the infrastructure?
So in the end you are basically back at square one with nothing but nice promises by them and still vendor locked.
Hm. That’s a good question actually. I get the feeling this FUTO license is more designed for local apps, not SaaS.
If the license changes to something hostile. The users can keep using the version before the new license. Someone could even fork the project and offer it for free. This is allowed.
You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes.
But for SaaS, there’s also the cost of running servers on the cloud… so you either foot the bill and offer the SaaS for free OR you ask for a commercial license.
Which… actually… is this the end of the world?
You could still have your fork. People could still offer it online publicly. But as soon as you start getting so many users that you need to ask for donations, then you’d have to pay.
Seems like individual app users wouldn’t be affected much. Only people setting themselves up to be service providers would end up paying.
Yes, you could continue using the old unmaintained app, but this is similar to using old proprietary app versions that lack security updates and are always at risk of stopping to work due to some changes in your OS. So that is far from ideal.
Non-commercial is really not well defined legally. For example in Germany, a public tax funded broadcaster was found in breach of a CC-BY-NC license for using an image on their website. And many similar legal examples exist. So basically anything that involves a service offered to more than one person, even if totally free and donation funded, is not safe from litigation.
And obviously, if upstream changes the license to something that triggers a hostile fork, it is unlikely that you will get a commercial license for that hostile fork. Furthermore, even if you somehow can make a deal, you will always remain hostage of that proprietary license.
FOSS licenses are explicitly designed to protect the users of the software from such potentially abusive licensing, so I really don’t think anyone will see this as an improvement.
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“FUTA License” would sound more fun ngl
Oi mate, you got a loicense for that dick?
i don’t. Come arrest me, officer >:3
I don’t know if I should “come” just yet O-O
I’m not sure how this license would foster community contributions to the codebase, assuming that was an objective. When I say “contributor” I mean both individuals as well as corporations, in the same way that both might currently contribute to the Linux kernel (GPL) today.
As written, this license grants the user a non-exclusive license for non-commercial use. But that implies that for commercial users – like a corporation – they’ll have to negotiate a separate license, since Futo Holdings Inc would retain the copyright. So if a corporation (or nation state entity) throws enough money at Futo Holdings Inc, they can buy their way into any sort of license terms they want, and the normie user can’t complain.
This is kinda like the principal-agent problem, where the userbase and individual developers now have to trust that Futo Holdings won’t do something reprehensible with the copyrights, be it licensing to certain hostile countries or whatever.
Whereas in the GPL space, individual developers still own their copyright but license their code out under a compatible license. So even Linus Torvalds cannot unilaterally relicense the Linux codebase, because he would need to seek out every copyright owner for every line of code that exists, and some of those people are already dead.
I’m personally not a fan at all of forcing individual contributors from the community into signing over copyright (or major rights thereto) or other stipulations as a condition for making the codebase better, with the exception of an indemnity that the code isn’t stolen or a work-product for hire. I used GPL in the comparison above, but the permissive licenses like MIT also have similar qualities.
EDIT
Thinking about it more, would corporations even want to contribute? Imagine CorpA decides to add code, having already paid for an existing commercial license from Futo Holdings. But then CorpB – who is CorpA’s arch nemesis – pays Futo Holdings an absurd amount of money and in return gets a commercial license that’s equivalent to the WTFPL. That means CorpA’s contributions are available for CorpB to use, but CorpB has zero obligation to ever contribute a line of code which CorpA could later benefit from. It becomes a battle of money, and Futo Holdings sits as the kingmaker. GPL abates this partially, if CorpA is both using and distributing code. But the Source First License v1.1 has zero mitigation for this, apart from “trust me bro”.
community contributions to the codebase, assuming that was an objective
I don’t think that’s the main objective of the FUTO license. I believe the main objective is to incentivize developers to create great software that respects individual users and fights back against the big tech oligarchy.
But that implies that for commercial users – like a corporation – they’ll have to negotiate a separate license
Yep. That’s the point.
they can buy their way into any sort of license terms they want, and the normie user can’t complain.
I don’t quite see the issue here. Can you explain a little more? A third-party would just get a license to sell the software, not to develop it.
trust that Futo Holdings won’t do something reprehensible with the copyrights, be it licensing to certain hostile countries or whatever.
Isn’t this currently possible with Open Source™? Like the whole point of Open Source™ is that anyone can use the software for anything, right? ICE probably uses Linux now to manage people in internment camps in the US. If anything, wouldn’t the FUTO license be better for potentially preventing this?
would corporations even want to contribute? … CorpA’s contributions are available for CorpB to use, but CorpB has zero obligation to ever contribute a line of code which CorpA could later benefit from
Isn’t this exactly the case in Open Source™? Google may contribute something to Linux, but my company will never contribute anything. Seems like Google is ok with my company benefiting from their work.
I don’t think that’s the main objective of the FUTO license
That’s fair. I stated my assumption because perhaps they have different objectives. That said, history is quite clear: the greatest success of open-source software development is that it pools efforts from anyone – truly anyone – that is willing and able to put in the time, be it individuals or workers hired by a corporation.
When a license is heralded as an alternative to open-source – as the title of this post does – I think said license needs to be evaluated against the historical success story that open-source projects like Linux, BSD, Blender, etc have demonstrated. Not having the quality of attracting community contributions is a negative, but all licenses have some sort of tradeoff and ultimately that’s what people evaluate when picking a license.
I believe the main objective is to incentivize developers to create great software that respects individual users and fights back against the big tech oligarchy.
This is a laudable goal, though I think the ACSL is more direct at doing the same. It too is a non-open source license, but IMO, I give credit to them for being upfront about that, rather than pointless muddying of the term “open source” that Futo attempted (and ultimately failed at).
More dogmatically, I don’t see how elevating Futo Holdings Inc (or any other company that will manage software licensed under Source First v1.1) into a “benevolent dictator company for life” will fight against the tech oligarchy. It might act as a counter to FAANG specifically, but there’s no guarantee that Futo Holdings doesn’t end up joining their side anyway, or gets bought out by the oligopoly. Which would then put us all worse off in the end.
I don’t quite see the issue here. Can you explain a little more? A third-party would just get a license to sell the software, not to develop it.
Futo Holdings Inc, as the assigned owner of copyright over a software project, reserves the right to license their software however they choose. They can absolutely issue a license to allow a company to privately develop an in-house fork. In copyright speak, the Source First license being “non exclusive” means Futo Holdings can issue someone else a different license. History shows us examples, such as Microsoft’s non-exclusive license of DOS to IBM, which was quite handy since that allowed MS-DOS to be sold with non-IBM PC clones.
And for an example of licensing that allows in-house edits and recompiling, see the source code license offered by AT&T Labs to various universities, which included one UC Berkeley that eventually developed BSD Unix.
Isn’t this currently possible with Open Source™? Like the whole point of Open Source™ is that anyone can use the software for anything, right?
Use, yes. Distribute? Absolutely not with GPL. If ICE wants to create an OS designed to optimally coral unlawfully-detained people in barbaric conditions, then they – just like you, me, the DPRK, or Facebook – can fork Linux and do that. But if ICE then wanted to distribute that CruelOS to another country’s border patrol or secret intelligence or to a private defense firm, they would be obliged by the GPL terms to also offer whatever source code they modified in the Linux kernel to produce CruelOS.
GPL is about making sure the same rights perpetuate for all of time, for all future users, always. If Linus Torvalds turned evil today, the remaining kernel devs would just fork. Whereas Futo Holdings makes no guarantees, and they themselves can turn evil one day. This isn’t even a contrived example. See IBM/Hashicorp’s Terraform and the FOSS OpenTofu that spawned after they tried to change the license.
Google may contribute something to Linux, but my company will never contribute anything. Seems like Google is ok with my company benefiting from their work.
If Google contributed to Linux, it would be GPL licensed. Google knows that this means the playing field will always be level: no one can built and distribute that code in a way that Google couldn’t later benefit from.
Think of it like this: Google buys everyone in the tavern a beer. Everyone’s happy. But part of the deal is that if anyone else buys for themselves a beer, they have to buy for everyone as well. Google is fine with this, because it means that Microsoft wearing the dark suit will also have to pony up if he wants another drink. As will Netflix in the skinny jeans sitting at the booth. As would Ericsson, the Swede dancing jovially to a tune.
With the Source First license, Google has no guarantees that Microsoft won’t use his manly charisma to charm Futo Holdings into giving him a better deal than what Google got. Google is bitter at that prospect, and decides not to buy everyone a beer after all. You, me, and Bob who fell asleep in the corner now need to pay for our own beers, but the bartender won’t give us a group discount anymore. We are now all worse off.
In closing, I had this to say in an earlier post:
Using the tools of the capitalist (copyright and licenses) to wage a battle against a corporation is neither an even fight, nor is it even winnable. Instead, strong communities build up their skills and ties to one another to fight in meaningful ways.
If you’re not building (software) communities, the struggle will not succeed.
It does inherently lean into the concept of corporate forks over community forks. A byproduct of prioritizing monetary gain. I think the license is really just a foot in the door to allow for community audits. Realistically I don’t see anyone wanting to contribute to something like this unless the product has slim to no real competition.
Community audits sound great on paper, but it’s something which the FOSS licenses (eg GPL, MIT) also provide. As a practical matter though, auditing has a two-fold objective: 1) identify risks so they can be quantified, and 2) mitigated. For non-commercial users in the community, an audit is high-effort with low return. And further, this license disincentives mitigation even if the audit does turn up something, because of having to sign the copyright away just to submit a bug fix.
For commercial users, auditing is more palatable, being part-and-parcel to risk management. And these commercial operations have the budget to do it, but then this license means the best way to keep improvements out of their nemesis’s hands is to maintain an internal fork that never returns code to the public repo. So commercial users will have to pay more to obtain that sort of license.
All this seems harder than just using MIT code (or even GPL), if such is available. And that’s exactly why I can’t see myself using source-available software in a personal or professional capacity, when there’s any other choice available. It seems worse off for everyone except the owner of the public repo. The license stinks of vendor lock-in, and even if I’m not the one who will pay the rent, I dogmatically will not support rent-seeking like this.
Im pretty sure the objective is not to get contributions. You talk like contributions could actually replace actual full time maintainers of the software. They cannot. If a payment of corpB is large enough to completely buy out the software, then the objective is completed in the sense that this should provide enough money to maintain the software by paying maintainers or even hiring new ones, there is no need to beg for corpo contributions then.
The objective is not to make the most community friendly licence, it is to pay the people who do the actual work.
A lot of my response was already rendered further down the thread. So I’ll only comment on this part:
The objective is not to make the most community friendly licence, it is to pay the people who do the actual work.
If this is the singular or main objective that Futo has, then the basis of OP’s post is entirely dead. The title of the post is very clearly “FUTO License, an alternative to Open Sourd”. But if we take your submission as fact, then there is no comparison whatsoever.
Open Source – whether using OSI’s definition or including FSF’s – has almost never focused on the financial aspect, for better or worse. It’s why commercial entities like Canonical and Red Hat are so rare, because software engineers prefer spending their free time working on great things rather than doing admin.
Futo sounds like they want to be a commercial entity like Red Hat but without the limitations that Open Source or Free Software would impose on them. And they’re welcome to do that, but that endeavor cannot honestly be called comparable to the mostly community-driven projects like BSD, GNU, and Linux, or commercial ventures like RHEL and whatever cloud-thingy that Canonical is selling now.
If the goal is to pay for professional talent, with revenue from B2B sales, and only non-commercial users get a free-bee, then that’s just a shareware company with more steps. Futo trying to dress themselves up like Red Hat remains as disingenuous as when they tried to misinform open-source folks about what open-source is.
I’ll be frank: my interest in software licensing is about finding licenses that strike a sensible balance. It’s about distributing rights and obligations that are equitable and sustainable, while perpetuating software uptake and upkeep. It’s a tough cookie. But I think the Source First license alienates too many potential audiences and its financial model falls apart under any game theory analysis. So I’m not keen on looking down this avenue anymore.
Bruce Perens is working on something related with the Post-Open license.
TIL! Interesting!
Every time this licenses comes up I have to repeat myself: It’s source-available proprietary (free)ware; “source first” is “open source washing” at it’s finest
From an old comment of mine:
[…] It strips you of the options the four essential freedoms provide.
IMO [“but protecting muh devs and making it financially viable as a for-profit”] is not rly an argument. Libre software is free as in freedom and not necessarily free as in beer. You could license it under the (A)GPL, charge for downloads in the Play store or for compiled binaries on ur website and ask for donations on F-Droid.
You could even do a freemium version where some features are locked in the binaries you distribute and need a license from ur website or smth (for those who don’t want to use Google Play). (iirc SD Maid 2/SE does this)
E.g.: AFAIK the QT Framework (which I don’t particularly like) is dual licensed, making it both Foss that ppl have to contribute back to and viable as a for-profit
open source washing
I definitely agree with you on this IF the company is claiming to be Open Source™, but then uses a source available license.
However, FUTO is NOT claiming to be Open Source™.
I think about it this way: either a business releases the app as close source and users can’t see anything OR the app is released as source available and users can see what’s going on. Contributions are not expected and may not even be allowed. Open Source™ wouldn’t even be considered as an option.
You could license it under the (A)GPL, charge for downloads in the Play store or for compiled binaries on ur website and ask for donations on F-Droid.
You could even do a freemium version where some features are locked in the binaries you distribute and need a license from ur website or smth (for those who don’t want to use Google Play). (iirc SD Maid 2/SE does this)
Someone else could just compile the app themselves, unlock all premium features and distribute it to play store without violating the license?
Interesting, I understand where they’re coming from, but as others have said, I still feel like it’s shady to keep calling it “open source” when open source is already well defined.
I think they have a noble mission, yet I can’t really say I like their means. Maybe in that “finding a middle ground”, since they’re mostly making consumer software, a lot of that payment part could have been covered by simply providing their releases under a payment on the app distribution channels (Play Store, their website, others?), most people that would pay would do so to avoid going through hoops to get the app for free through other means. That way they could have afforded to be actually open source. Maybe it wouldn’t be as effective though, I can’t know for sure, at the end of the day it’s a battle of idealsI still feel like it’s shady to keep calling it “open source” when open source is already well defined.
They are not open source. They do not currently claim to be open source.
https://futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/
calling our software “open source.” … we’re changing. … We’ll use the term “source first” instead for our projects.
Ok that’s good, I was thinking that since Rossman had thrown the term around many times in the video
i will never understand what people hope to accomplish with these licenses, when even the fucking GPL isn’t particularly reliable.
a license is only useful if it can actually be enforced and people are willing to interact with it, if a license isn’t robustly worded and thought out or it’s simply not backed by a trusted group, it’s basically entirely pointless.
I maintain that the GPL is the best license purely because it has the FSF behind it and it has been used since time immemorial, it’s one of few open source licenses that has seen repeated stress testing in courts and stood up to it.
Afaik gpl doesnt pay my rent
i will never understand what people hope to accomplish with these licenses
It’s simple. The point is to stop Amazon, Google, etc from selling your product.
not backed by a trusted group, it’s basically entirely pointless.
FUTO has money to fight for the FUTO license. MariaDB, Hashicorp, Sentry etc have money to fight for the BUSL license.
You did not watch the video, I see. Because if you had, you’d know what they are trying to accomplish. He says it 3 minutes into the video. Probably shorter than it took you to type out that uninformed comment.
@paequ2 “You may use or modify the software only for non-commercial purposes” this license appears to be non-free too, as it breaks freedom 0, the freedom to run the program for any purpose
FUTO License is not open source. They do not claim to be open source. They’re not trying to be open source. They call themselves “source first”.
To be abundantly clear, “free software” (aka free as in speech) and “open source” are understood as two different categories, and when software falls into both, would be called Free and Open Source (FOSS).
Wikipedia has this to say:
FOSS stands for “Free and Open Source Software”. There is no one universally agreed-upon definition of FOSS software and various groups maintain approved lists of licenses. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is one such organization keeping a list of open-source licenses.[1] The Free Software Foundation (FSF) maintains a list of what it considers free.[2] FSF’s free software and OSI’s open-source licenses together are called FOSS licenses. There are licenses accepted by the OSI which are not free as per the Free Software Definition. The Open Source Definition allows for further restrictions like price, type of contribution and origin of the contribution
@paequ2 Ok
i want talking about Open SOuece anyaway. i was taling about free softwareAh, yep. FUTO License is neither Free™ nor Open Source™ (nor are they trying to be). However, they still allow users to see, modify, and distribute code.
You may use or modify the software only for non-commercial purposes such as personal use for research, experiment, and testing for the benefit of public knowledge, personal study, private entertainment, hobby projects, amateur pursuits, or religious observance, all without any anticipated commercial application. You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes.
But, yeah, they’re aiming for something different.
There’s no derivative licence that makes the source free to use but forces you to contribute (work or money), if you make money from it?
Here’s what I’ve found:
- BUSL 1.1: a source available license that grants the right to copy, modify, create derivative works, redistribute, and make non-production use of the Licensed Work. If you release v1 of your app, 4 years later v1 becomes Open Source™. However, the latest version is still blocked from “production use”. This actually seems pretty reasonable.
- Post Open: a source available license (and whole organization) that’s broken into 2 parts: zero-cost license for regular users and a paid contract for commercial use. It sounds like the Post Open Collective would go out and enforce and charge companies to use Post Open software and then pay devs. (Not ready yet!)
Hashicorp recently switch to BUSL 1.1 for Terraform (and other things), which a lot of people got pissed about… which I understand! They took all of the community’s contributions and then changed the terms on them! I get that.
However, starting a project from scratch with BUSL 1.1 and then not claiming to be Open Source™ seems totally fine to me. Contributions from the public may come or may not. That’s fine. A lot of projects don’t have a rich community of people all over the world contributing. A lot of projects are just 1 dude or 1 company doing 95% of the dev work. That’s fine. If you don’t want to contribute to a project because it’s source available instead of Open Source™ that’s tooootally fine.
The regular user, however, would still mostly get the benefits of Open Source™. The people affected would be the ones trying to make money off of your app.
I am using Futo Keyboard. Downloaded it when it was marketed as open source. Unfortunately found out a few days ago it isn’t actually open source. It’s still a damn good keyboard, but it’s still unfortunate. AGPL exists for a reason. Oh well.
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That framework laptop tho 💦💦💦
Edit: the comments on here really show that 1) people just read headlines and 2) many people cannot think for themselves and will just quote or regurgitate from whichever text they were indoctrinated without second thought. The “but it’s not free as in freedom” and “it’s not opensource because it’s not OSI” comments show up on every single post about this topic. It’s like people referring to the bible and screaming “blasphemy” when someone says something that doesn’t fit. Or like people losing their minds because a non-white actor is “not canon”.
I wish people had to answer multiple choice questions before being allowed to comment. Maybe it would make them actually think instead of just spew their religious bile all over the comment section.
Oh yeah. People believing in community built and owned software, that runs the entire internet, is totally the same thing as racism. 🙄🤣
Just because you don’t agree with the views of open source, doesn’t make them brainwashed.
Because here, you come off as deranged calling others religious fanatics.
EDIT but what’s really fucking funny to me is you call other people religious fanatics and racists. Or at least like them. While you fanatically paste the anti commercial linecse thing like it’s 2012 Facebook again.
People believing in community built and owned software
Btw, I’m not arguing against this. I believe Open Source™ is valuable and has its place. This post isn’t about Open Source™, despite most people on this thread trying to label the FUTO license as Open Source™ and then getting mad because it’s not actually Open Source™ even though FUTO isn’t claiming to be Open Source™. This is something else.
The main thing I’m thinking about is how to prevent Google, Facebook, etc from extracting huge amounts of wealth from small devs who get nothing in return. The obvious answer has been to release an app as closed source. That blocks out Big Tech AND users. Source Available licenses might be a third option to block out Big Tech, but not regular users.
I never said anything about you or your arguments. I was talking about the analogies the person used to antagonize everyone. And I love how you glossed over all of that to get a little bit hurt at me.
But while your here, your fighting the wrong battles.
Because we are much stronger doing things in the open than we will trying to pick and choose who gets to do what. Even small utilities can contribute to people learning and adapting.
So what if google also benefits? They benefit off of using TCP, SSL, and thousands of standard technology. Should those be charged as well? It’s such a boogy man at the cost of other people learning and benefiting from what you’ve done the same way you benfit from others. It’s not about gatekeeping, it’s about being community.
I’m gonna draw another place I think too much effort is being given to making sure the “correct” people benefit and that’s selective welfare programs. It’s costs shit tons of money to administer programs like food stamps. When if we gave everyone UBI, it wouldn’t matter. Because everyone gets it.
EDIT: In a copy left license, I still own the copyright to my work. So there’s that as well.
But all that on a shelf. I don’t give a fuck what you do with your software. I just don’t want to be called a racists for whatever reason because I believe in community owned software.
And I love how you glossed over all of that to get a little bit hurt at me. …
Sorry, the reason I glossed over that is because I didn’t want to get involved in that conversation. I was just trying to get the conversation back on topic. I don’t endorse the personal attacks.
So what if google also benefits?
Why are we ok with workers not getting paid for their labor? Would you still work at your job if they didn’t pay you? These companies aren’t small shops, they’re huge giants that in some cases are destroying countries. They’ll be ok if they have to share a tiny fraction of their obscene wealth with regular people.
TCP, SSL, and thousands of standard technology. Should those be charged as well?
That’s a great question. I’m not really sure actually. Btw, I don’t think Open Source™ should go away. I do think there could be a middle ground though. There should be more nuance than just 0% give away or 100% give away.
Even small utilities can contribute to people learning and adapting. … It’s such a boogy man at the cost of other people learning and benefiting from what you’ve done the same way you benfit from others.
I think you may be confusing Source Available with Closed Source. Source Available licenses don’t stop regular people from creating a community, contributing, learning, adapting, improving software. They do stop companies from making money off of your work though.
I’m not confusing the two. If I copy the “source available” and accidently remember it in a “commercial” product, I’m technically hooped. It’s considered derivative work and therefore I’m in violation of the license. Regardless if I’m a simple app dev or Google.
Also, like I said a few times now. I done own the code I contribute. Technically meaning if you contribute code, and use that snippet in a commercial context, again, your in violation of the license.
This is why copy left is the defacto standard. The author of the code retains copywrite ownership of it.
Your still resolving solved problems.
Ooooh, wait. I think I understood one of your points better now…
I done (don’t?) own the code I contribute. Technically meaning if you contribute code, and use that snippet in a commercial context, again, your in violation of the license.
So, I think you’re saying, what if you contribute some code to a source available project, maybe some boilerplate that’s the same everywhere, and then you use that same contribution in a commercial product? Then you’d be in violation of the source available license? Is that what you’re saying?
This seems like a good reason NOT to contribute to a source available project, which is totally fine. Whereas this is possible with GPL if you 100% own the code and didn’t sign a CLA.
However, not all projects are “I want everyone to pitch in and I want everyone to own the project.” There are lots of projects where 1 dude or 1 company want to retain ownership of their app and don’t need or want outside contributors. Normally, they’d probably just be closed source—maybe they might consider being source available.
(Just as long as they don’t pretend to be Open Source™, in which case fuck them.)
What’s the point of source available if I’m never allowed to derive value from it?
sure, keep insulting people with principles while buying into proprietary software being “open source washed” (for the lack of a better word)
Please be aware that you are attacking people with principles. They simply value different principles than you.
I have no problem with the different principles or even that you dismiss those principles. Just be aware that you are.
