[License-discuss] Thoughts on AAL and OSS vs FOSS

[Hillel Coren]

Hi Kevin,

Adding an attribution (for example in the page footer) doesn't prevent a
business from reselling the app, it just makes it less likely they'll want
to.

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 1:16 PM Kevin P. Fleming <kevin+osi at km6g.us> wrote:

> Developers do have that option, but that option is not compliant with
> the OSD (since that is explicitly discrimination against a specific
> field of endeavor), and thus any license which provides that feature
> is not OSD-compliant. The feature you are asking for is the same core
> feature of the Commons Clause, the SSPL, and all of the other licenses
> which attempt to protect the code's authors by disallowing other
> group(s) from selling or hosting the software.
>
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 2:54 AM Hillel Coren <hillelcoren at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for your email! Can we try approaching it from a different
> perspective...
> >
> > Do you believe a developer should have the option to share their code
> without fearing a competitor will use their code against them?
> >
> > This is from the FAQ on opensource.org: "But depending on the license,
> you probably can't stop your customers from selling it in the same manner
> as you."
> >
> > I see the AAL as a good choice here, is there another license you would
> recommend?
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 11:55 PM Lukas Atkinson <
> opensource at lukasatkinson.de> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sun, 29 Mar 2020 at 20:41, Syed Arsalan Hussain Shah wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Regarding ALL
> >>>
> >>> Josh claims that there is no repository on github
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-March/021667.html
> >>>
> >>> But the
> https://github.com/search?q=attribution+assurance+license&type=Code gives
> me so many respostiores and I beleive AAL is widely used License.
> >>
> >>
> >> Amazingly, most AAL uses I see on Github have silently modified the
> license to remove the GPG requirement (which nearly no one complies with
> anyway? [1]). And most of the modified AALs seem to be in old forks of
> InvoiceNinja software or Attendize? Neither is the license particularly
> widely used, nor are many people using the license as currently approved.
> >>
> >> My guess is that at most 100 primary authors on Github use the license,
> as based on a query [2] looking only at license files, excluding one
> prolific author, three frequently forked projects, and excluding the
> keyword “Affero” to detect license databases. Libraries.io lists ~250
> packages using the AAL [3], but there seem to be severe data quality issues.
> >>
> >> [1]:
> https://github.com/search?q=%22attribution+assurance+license%22+%22BEGIN+PGP+SIGNED+MESSAGE%22&type=Code
> >> [2]:
> >>
> https://github.com/search?q=%22attribution+assurance+license%22+filename%3ALICENSE+NOT+Attendize+NOT+%22Hillel+Coren%22+NOT+clipbucket+NOT+craterapp+NOT+Affero&type=Code
> >> [3]: https://libraries.io/licenses/AAL
> >>
> >>>
> >>> > I have to add, I find it pretty ironic that your own site uses an
> attribution based license, the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
> International License :)
> >>
> >>
> >> The problem isn't attribution – nearly every open source license
> requires some copyright-like attribution notices to be shown. If you want a
> license that handles attributions very well and fairly, consider Apache 2.0
> with its NOTICE file mechanism.
> >> The problem is that the AAL perverts the idea of reasonable attribution
> into a problematic requirement to carry advertising-like attributions in a
> prominently visible place.
> >>
> >> Attribution means different things in different licenses.
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> >>
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> >>
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> >
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