[License-review] For Approval: License Zero Reciprocal Public License

[Kyle Mitchell]

On 2017-10-24 17:10, Tzeng, Nigel H. wrote:
> On 10/23/17, 8:55 PM, "License-review on behalf of Kyle Mitchell" <license-review-bounces at opensource.org on behalf of kyle at kemitchell.com> wrote:
>     > This rings very near to the sentiment that set off License
>     > Zero.  The immediate moral response to industry abuse of
>     > community was a license addressing the _source_ of the pain,
>     > a noncommercial license.
>
>     > It was only talking to friends and fellow devs still holding
>     > on in the copyleft camp that lead me to write L0-R.  The
>     > core realization there was that commerce was just the most
>     > visible symptom of the underlying disorder.  The fundamental
>     > difference is in values, in a lack of reciprocity that makes
>     > a one-way valve between producer-community to
>     > consumer-users, to the benefit of the latter.
>
> Permissive licenses are “one-way valves” in the same way
> that gift giving is “a one-way valve”.
>
> We don’t make things permissive because we intend to
> receive anything in return.  We make things permissive
> because we want folks to use the code we wrote.

I've referred to permissive licenses as "gift wrap" myself, e.g.:

https://twitter.com/kemitchell/status/916342243719495680

  MIT, BSD, Apache-2.0, and other permissive Open Source
  software licenses are legal gift wrap. When you wrap
  software up like a present, and stick on the Internet, you
  have given a gift.

It's the norm of using only permissive licenses, encouraging
their use at the total exclusion of other kinds, and
expecting only permissive licenses from others, that makes a
one-way valve.  A norm that encourages programmers to be
maximally generous, and surrender most of their leverage, by
default, before they're even aware of the ramifications.

> And the evil industry you rail against ended up paying for
> a lot of that code to be written.

I don't rail against industry.  For the most part, I
represent it.

The wiser part of industry releases quite a bit of Open
Source under permissive terms, for good reason.  The wiser
part of industry also realizes that the same release,
licensing, and maintenance play doesn't work, long term, for
big swathes of available programming talent.  They _want_ a
way to make good, open work common and sustainable in the
chasm between beginner just starting out and seasoned,
employed veteran at a large company.  A company with a
cost-benefit view of, say, The MIT License, that no
individual can match.

>     > So I asked devs what kind of deal they'd want with users, if
>     > they could write their own.  It boiled down to "share what
>     > you do with my code as open source, or support me if you're
>     > stuck in a place that can't or won't do that" plus "I want
>     > to keep working on GitHub, distributing on npm, and using
>     > the other current-generation code services".
>
>     > That's a harder copyleft bargain than AGPL, mashed up with
>     > permissive distribution permissions.  L0-R was born.
>
> Reciprocity is nice but doesn’t pay the rent.  Which is
> likely why your developer friends wish to get paid in cash
> for commercial use of their code.

https://writing.kemitchell.com/2017/02/10/Medicant-Maintainerati.html

  None of that pays your rent. As an economic entity, you
  have, in the most direct sense, voluntarily bowed out of
  the picture.  Financially speaking, all the time you have
  spent producing the product is, at best, a loss leader.

Many of my developer friends want to use L0-R.  And they
expect some income from "selling exceptions" to it, since a
goodly portion of commercial users would rather pay than
reciprocate.

> Which is fine but this seems like a very complicated way
> to accomplish what a CC-BY-SA-NC style of license would
> do…but isn’t considered open source.

And isn't recommended for software.

For the record, L0-NC, the noncommercial public license
option for License Zero, uses the "noncommercial" language
direct from the CC-...3.0 series.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, a noncommercial license
addresses a symptom of an underlying disagreement, not the
disagreement itself.  Some companies would be fully open to
reciprocating under L0-R.  Those companies would still have
to pay for an exception under a noncommercial license.  Most
developers I speak to, hearing that hypothetical, lean
toward L0-R.

-- 
Kyle Mitchell, attorney // Oakland // (510) 712 - 0933