[License-review] Request for License Review - BarrerSoftware License (BSL)v1.0

[Josh Berkus]

(switching to my personal account, since this has become a discussion)

> Thanks for writing back about this.
> 
> for Section 6, all we are saying with that part is that the software 
> itself should be free and remain free. services around it and things 
> like that is fine for commercialization but the software itself should 
> be free itself. we are still giving the full modify, use, distribute and 
> things like that, just that if a program or software made by a creator 
> wanted to make the software to be truly free, then it should be free period.

That's not what the text of your license says.  Your license has quite 
an expansive definition of commercialization, both in the preface and in 
the license text itself.  For example, your license currently prohibits 
charging for hosting, or for distribution bandwidth (the latter would be 
quite difficult to enforce).  It doesn't matter, though, because a 
blanket prohibition on charging for software packages has been 
consistently determined to be a violation of OSD6 by the OSI (as well as 
the FSF).

There is a long tradition of "no commercialization" licenses in 
software; it's a popular model for obvious reasons.  Such licenses are 
not, however, open source. This is why licenses like the GPL3 focus on 
requiring distributors to release source instead.

Given that we've had two submissions which have been confused on this 
exact point this year, it's probably time for a blog post.

> 
> On the naming of the license, we searched for something with that same 
> naming and didn't find that so now we are going to switch the name to 
> Barrer Open Source License (BOSL) so it follows what it should be for.
> 
> Thanks for getting back with me with your comments and hopefully this 
> can help you out better.
> 
> Daniel Elliott
> 
> Founder/Owner
> 
> Barrer Software
> 
> On Sunday, December 28, 2025 17:40 PST, Josh Berkus 
> <josh.berkus at opensource.org> wrote:
> 
>> Holiday greetings, Mr. Elliott
>>
>> > Currently, no OSI-approved license provides strong anti- 
>> commercialization
>> > protections while maintaining all four essential freedoms (use, study,
>> > modify,
>> > distribute).
>>
>> No OSI-approved license provides this, because no such license would be
>> considered Open Source. This is precisely what clause 6 of the Open
>> Source Definition covers, unambiguously:
>>
>> ---------------
>> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
>>
>> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a
>> specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program
>> from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
>> ---------------
>>
>> As such, we are unable to approve your license, as there is no question
>> that it is not open source. You are welcome to withdraw the submission,
>> or we can file a rejection for the record according to the terms of
>> License Review, if you wish.
>>
>> In addition, if you are going to publish an open-ish non-open source
>> license, let me suggest that you NOT use the acronym "BSL"? That's
>> already widely used by the Business Source License (also BuSL), another
>> popular non-OSS license.
>>
>> -- 
>> -- Josh Berkus
>> OSI Board Member
>>
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Josh Berkus