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Is there a License that requires the user to donate if they make revenue? (lemmy.giftedmc.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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I tried a couple license finders and I even looked into the OSI database but I could not find a license that works pretty much like agpl but requiring payment (combined 1% of revenue per month, spread evenly over all FOSS software, if applicable) if one of these is true:

  • the downstream user makes revenue (as in "is a company" or gets donations)
  • the downstream distributor is connected to a commercial user (e.g. to exclude google from making a non profit to circumvent this license)

I ask this because of the backdoor in xz and the obviously rotten situation in billion dollar companies not kicking their fair share back to the people providing this stuff.

So, if something similar exists, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for reading and have a good one.

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[–] 47 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If you want to sell proprietary software, why not just write and sell it? Or as others have suggested, dual license it? Hell, even the old shareware model could work for what you’ve described.

Unless you’re paying enforcers, how would you know if a corporation paid the right amount to use the code? How would your union determine distribution amounts to projects? How far upstream would payments go? How will disputes among developers be resolved?

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Lots of foss use dual license: free for individual or non-profit use, but pay for commercial use, or even commercial use above a specific threshold. As part of my job, I’ve had to remove several of these, where the developer thinks it’s free but the corp can’t comply with the free licensing. It works.

    Here’s an extremely well known example

    I still haven’t decided what kind of company mine is with respect to foss. Its a good thing that they put effort into complying with licensing terms, they do support developers making contributions back, and historically they’ve “bought” a few foss projects (hire the developer, include that in his job responsibilities)! However I haven’t yet seen them make a corporate contribution and the first response with being out of compliance is to remove the dependency.

    So it’s good that we take it seriously, and good that we historically contributed, however we don’t seem to co tribute much anymore and clearly get more benefit from foss than we give back

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  • [+] [S] -21 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    I dont want to write proprietary software. I write foss software. But i dont want you to make money off of my invention without giving back, easy as pie.

    The rest would obviously have to be determined. A union is a separate entity, same as the linux foundation seems to distribute donations (from another comment) it would have to be discussed and agreed upon.

    Still, those who use foss, make money and dont donate upstream are scum imo.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    This is not FOSS then. FOSS puts no restrictions on downstream use of your software other than that you acknowledge and credit the original authors.. This is "Open Source" with strings attached. It's no different than being forced to sign an NDA to see your code.

    You either make it free for everybody, or then it isn't free software.

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  • [+] [S] -28 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Wrong. Free in FOSS means freely distributable, not free of cost. My idea of cost is just different than "pay for download".

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    It does mean free of cost if the person downstream from you decides to not charge for it after getting it from you and forking it. That's why you're not finding a FOSS license that allows this. Because again, that's not FOSS.

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  • [+] [S] -21 points 2 years ago

    From the osi website i read a text that leads me to believe that the person downstream can charge as much as they want, they never have to give you anything for it if they add at least one more product.

    The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

    To me this reads like a corpo scam to get free work.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I think you may be mistaken.

    By definition, if the user of the software is not free to do as they wish with the software, the software is not free/libre. It could fit the definition of open source, but it is not free/libre if you are restricting what the user can do with your source code.

    And starting comments with "Wrong." Is just rude.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Here's Stallman's/FSF's view on requiring loyalties (lol) royalties (read the whole section, it's explicitly stated at the end), and here's similar requirement in OSI's Open source definition.

    You are free to use whatever license you wish, but don't call it FOSS/Open source if you don't agree with their definitions.

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  • [+] [S] -16 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

    So, if I understand this correctly, open source means free beer, just not if you sell the end product.

    its all a scam for free work for corpos then. Very disappointing.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So, if I understand this correctly, open source means free beer, just not if you sell the end product.

    Yes, once you give the beer to someone, you can't require any further payments no matter what they do with it. Free software philosophy says users are free to use the software however they wish and for whatever purpose they wish without any barriers (like having to pay for commercial use).

    its all a scam for free work for corpos then. Very disappointing.

    I'm sorry you feel that way, and it's becoming a not-so-rare sentiment lately (or at least I've started noticing it more), but I don't agree. Look at (A)GPL and how many companies are doing their best to avoid such code - like when Google made their own C library for Android and even stated that its main goal was to avoid copyleft licenses. I've also seen plenty of people say that GPL code is pretty much useless for their work due to their company's policies forbidding its use.

    I also think that revenue-based loyalties screw over small companies the most - sure, you get the donations from the massive companies that can work with 1% of their revenue gone while also keeping it free for non-commercial users, but in my view you also help those same massive corporations by making the software less viable for their smaller competitors who don't have the economies of scale on their side, and for whom that 1% might legitimately break the bank.

    And to be clear, I don't mean any of my arguments as some kind of "gotcha! Look, I'm right and you're wrong", I just thought I might share my reasoning for why I don't think your statement is fair.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 2 years ago

    Thats a very reasonable answer, in brutal contrast to all the childish trolls in this community that flooded my inbox and are blocked now.

    I‘ll probably just leave it at that. Its probably agpl forever for me since I‘m not giving my work to anyone who thinks they can just fuck over the little man. If we cant work out a foss version that is fair to devs then it is copyleft.

    Still very disappointing. Thank you for providing the explanation though. I appreciate it.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    i dont want you to make money off of my invention without giving back

    Why do you think that you're interested in writing FOSS software? Nothing you've posted here supports that claim. You do, however, speak like a textbook entrepreneur who wants to be paid for their innovation.

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  • [+] [S] -11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I have built stuff to help people all my life and have gotten fuck all for it. Its very easy to understand why I sound like this. Because I dont like people freeloading on others. Its selfish and disgusting.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    If you don’t like people accepting what you freely offer, then don’t offer it. If you want to be paid, sell your work. It’s extraordinarily simple.

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  • [+] [S] -10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I dont like your condescending tone mate. I can have my opinion without having this and that ascribed to my personality every step of the way. Stop projecting.

    I‘m ending this now. Good bye.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Im an outsider to this community but I am confused by this. I actually do understand wanting to earn from your work but I wouldn't then offer free stuff expecting money in return.

    I am not in IT but with my skillset I get paid from work and then I do charity work separately, I dont think it would make sense for me to find issue with the lack of return on my charitable time.

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  • [–] [S] -3 points 2 years ago

    I can relate. I‘m not asking to get paid by anyone. I‘m expecting to get paid by people who earn money with my work.

    But I have found a satisfying solution. I‘ll just license my work under agpl and nobody can use it for proprietary stuff.

    I was trying to help but most folks were unable to be constructive and see that. Instead they did everything to shut me down so I blocked them. Everybody won.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    On the contrary, friend, I’m simply trying to help you see that you’re reinventing the wheel. Literally everything that you’ve said you want in a software license already exists. Bill Gates already did it. It’s called proprietary software. Develop it and license it to whoever wants to use it.

    It actually sounds like you want to open a software development studio or a consortium of independent contractors. It’s a great idea. Run with it.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    If you don't want to give it away for free, then just don't make it FOSS. It's that simple. People use free-libre licenses because they want to use that license model. If you don't want to, then don't.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Think of all the other free software you've used in your life. Were you selfishly freeloading?

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  • [+] [S] -6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Not ever. I started donating when I could financially and understood why it is important.

    The discussion we had was that people who can, who profit from this software, give back their fair share.

    People can disagree with my idea all they want but profit seekers freeloading is a huge flaw in foss.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The whole point is that their fair share is sharing code modifications and making them available to be merged upstream.

    Do you think Redhat and the many other companies writing open source tools and drivers should be paying some of their revenue even though they've contributed a shit ton of code upstream?

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  • [–] [S] -1 points 2 years ago

    No. To the contrary. I think companies controbutions to foss should be weighed against it but I also think that using others work should come with an obligation to contribute an equal value than you get if you are profitseeking.

    The reason is that a lot of companies contribute nothing and say they would pay if they had to but cant donate because its optional and their policy is to spare respurces as much as they can.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah, that's cool and all, but your software isn't FOSS if ppl have to pay to use it... Just license it under the AGPL and call it a day

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  • [+] [S] -22 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You dont understand what FOSS means then. Free in FOSS means freedom, not free beer. You can absolutely charge someone to use it, which I'm not suggesting. I'm saying if a corpo uses software under my idea of a license, they have to pay fairly, thats it.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I know what FOSS means, but it seems like you think a license only needs to comply with one of the rules set up by OSI to be a FOSS license. If you charge your users (corps are also users) licensing fees, then you're discriminating against specific fields of endeavor (users making money using your software). I'd argue you're also interfering with other software projects, as some projects are strictly refusing donations (uBlock Origin as a popular example). As a last point: how would a business know which software it's using and how do you define what project should get how much of their 1% of revenue? If a business is using proprietary ERP-Software, and that is using any random FOSS-Library, then how would that business know that the library is being used and, assuming they found out, how would they determine how much to donate?

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  • [–] [S] -3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Many questions. Thanks for asking.

    As I understand it, you can very well charge for your software under foss terms. otherwise it would he free beer, no?

    Who would get how much is to be determined. I asked a question and since it doesnt exist, I proposed an answer. So far, I‘m at equal shares. 10 projects means 0.1% revenue for each. If one doesnt take donations, its more for the rest, etc.

    If I use a proprietary software I am not liable to their licensing agreements upstream. Pretty easy actually. I dont care what deal micorosoft has with some other dude when I install windows. Thats just absurd. But yes, your vendor would have to pay since they used the code.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    You can technically charge for FOSS, but that sort-of collides with the freedom to redistribute the software. You may have heard about that when the whole RHEL/Rocky Linux dispute happened.

    Equal shares can also be kind-of unfair if your backend is using sqlx for the entire database communication and then you also use some small image-conversion library to convert the favicon from .png to .ico.

    My last point may be a bit confusing, let's try to make it a bit easier to understand: In this case, you are a company, that is directly using a piece of code that is licensed under the license you've been thinking about, and you're also using a piece of proprietary software, e.g. some ERP-Software. The proprietary software is using a FOSS library that permits it to be used in a proprietary binary, let's say because it's BSD-Licensed. How do you know that the ERP-Software is using that library, and how would you determine how much you'd have to donate to them. You kind-of have to donate to them, because your ERP-Software wouldn't run without that library

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    The best use case for purchasing FOSS software is contractor work, specific modules for existing platforms and/or FOSS projects. I've done that myself in the past. The client pays for the custom software, it's written, and then they gets to do absolutely whatever they want with it. If the client wants to publish it, they're well within their rights. Most of the time it's too entangled with their internal company workflow to be useful to anyone else though.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 years ago

    I can see that this for some kind doesnt work with the current state of foss. Its basically free work for corpos.

    I will therefore implement 100% agpl in my projects and make them incaccessible for anyone who tries to put into proprietary software.

    The equal shares are just one possible solition and since this community is full of trolls who cant just discuss something (you and a handful peeps excluded), I‘m not really in the mood to think about this anymore. I‘ll just use the most restricted license and call it foss just to piss people off.

    To your last point I dont know what the misunderstanding is. As I read it, you‘re saying the proprietary software includes a foss library. I wouldnt know or care because I bought a product not a library. My idea was for using the code not for the end user of a derivative work.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Just make it proprietary. Hear me out. I get that FOSS comes with altruism, but you also have no obligation to share with someone (or corporations) that don't share our values. Make a proprietary version for them and if you still want an open version for who ever might find it.

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  • [+] [S] -12 points 2 years ago

    You're basically saying what I'm saying just with different words. I dont want two versions. Free doesnt mean free beer. I want companies to pay for it (and all other foss projects) period. The reason I want it in one is that its still foss (because it doesnt have to be free of cost) but companies cant weasel their way around giving back.

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  • [+] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)
    [removed by mod]
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