Launch Fair Source

[chadwhitacre]

Now that the logistics of transferring the GitHub org are complete (#9) and I've made contact with the Fair Code crew (#10), it's time to get Fair Source off the ground! 🙌

What is Fair Source?

Fair Source is our answer to @adamhjk's CTA:

I think the way forward here is to make what I suspect is a loose confederation of folks using non-compete licenses to actually get together and draft their own set of values. To then brand that. And stand behind it proudly.

Fair Source is our fill-in-the-blank for “Codecov is now [__________].”

Organizing docs (shared with Sentry's design/build team).

Launch target: August 5.

To Do

• figure out some details
• make a website
  • wireframes
  • wireframes for key pages
  • high fidelity mocks
  • design revisions
  • final design delivery
  • illustrations
  • Build out the website #19
• make a social profile pic
• make social header background
• promote it at Sentry's next Launch Week in August
• stage blog posts on Sentry🔒 and Codecov🔒
• update the README
• prep PR from fork to main: New Site #25
• tuesday plan
  • merge New Site #25
  • partners publish blog posts
  • notify
    • journalists (mission north)
    • redmonk
    • this thread
    • Resolve conflict with "Open Source" misuse and identify better terminology getsentry/fsl.software#2
    • OSI
    • https://x.com/adamhjk/status/1687113805237714944
    • https://x.com/chadwhitacre_/status/1792591690823250266
    • podcast appearances from earlier
  • give HN / lobste.rs / r/programming / r/opensource time to happen organically
    • HN one (chart), two (chart), three (chart), four (chart)
    • Lobste.rs
    • Plausible

[ezekg]

I like this. I'll try to stay in the loop and change verbiage on Keygen to "fair source" when you're ready (from the cheeky "open, source-available" that seems to toe the line a bit too much according to a few people).

Are you going to fully merge https://faircode.io into this, or will it stay separate? You mentioned their "in the loop", but just curious as to what that actually meant (if you even know yet).

[chadwhitacre]

I like this. I'll try to stay in the loop and change verbiage on Keygen to "fair source"

Woo-hoo! Awesome! 😁

Re: Fair Code, there are few more details at #10 (comment). @janober and I had a call and he is busy being a CEO, so he is happy to see someone else run with this. :) If all goes well we will see Fair Code fully merge into Fair Source! 🤞

[chadwhitacre]

Can we talk about outcomes? What outcomes are we trying to drive here?

Here's a sketch: 10 years from now basically every company shares their core products. Google Search. Facebook News Feed. Late majority, 80%+ of companies are using Fair Source (at least for new products). Starts with developer tools(?), expands from there.

Why? What are the values?

Sentry's values are user freedom and developer sustainability, which matches the first Fair Code principle, "Free and Sustainable." The rest there are: "Open but Pragmatic," "Community meets Prosperity," "Meritocratic and Fair." @dcramer talks about "access to technology and knowledge for developers."

What are the benefits?

1. Knowledge. Individuals can read and learn from software that is shared (though probably not if they are employed at an upstanding competitor).
2. Usage. Fair Source should allow some measure of software use, not just reading the code.
3. Hackability. Fair Source should allow for modifying the software to suit ones needs.
4. Contributing. Fair Source should allow for contributing modifications back to the producer.
5. Transparency. Democracy dies in darkness, etc., etc.

🤔

[chadwhitacre]

Hmmm ... maybe Fair Source distinguishes between software producers and consumers. Fair Source producers grant consumers the right ("freedom") to:

1. read,
2. non-competitively run,
3. modify, and
4. share their modifications with the producer and with other consumers.

The delta with Free Software/Open Source is that it doesn't distinguish producer and consumer as strongly.

The delta with closed source is that it distinguishes producer and consumer more strongly.

[chadwhitacre]

Interesting Twitter exchange with ESR, led to a post "Widespread Use of a Fair Source Product."

[chadwhitacre]

Open Core - Open Source license on community edition, proprietary license on enterprise features.

Fair Core - Fair Source on community edition, proprietary license on enterprise features.

Keygen is Fair Core. Accurate, @ezekg?

[chadwhitacre]

I cleaned up the homepage and started driving traffic a bit.

[ezekg]

Open Core - Open Source license on community edition, proprietary license on enterprise features.

Fair Core - Fair Source on community edition, proprietary license on enterprise features.

Keygen is Fair Core. Accurate, @ezekg?

I'm not really sure how you'd categorize it using those 2 definitions. Keygen's entire code base is licensed under Elastic, which has a clause that allows license-key-gated features. So CE is licensed under Elastic, and EE is licensed under Elastic + a license key for those features. So I guess you're right i.r.t Fair Core, but the overloaded term for "license" seems ambiguous, i.e. license terms vs license key, because they're both under the same license terms — just Elastic has provisions for protecting certain parts of the code base from modification and use with a license key (where a license key allows use but not modification).

So would that mean any project using Elastic which used the license key provision in the license terms for additional features would be Fair Core, not Fair Source? Is that what you're thinking? Fine either way. I think it makes sense.

By the way, great rebuttal¹ i.r.t. widespread use of "fair source."

Footnotes

1. I was kind of taken back with that exchange (among others) with ESR on Twitter. I don't particularly enjoy how people on the other side seem so — for lack of a better term — arrogant (especially referring to this exchange). I wish we could all just work together, but they seem so vehemently against that. I personally still think the term "open source" needs to be a larger umbrella — but I digress (maybe I'll fight that battle another day). The "fair source" and "fair core" terms are a good enough compromise, even if the other side still hates us for it for some reason esoteric reason. ↩

[chadwhitacre]

Elastic, which has a clause that allows license-key-gated features

Ah, interesting, okay. Hmmmm ... 🤔 Trying to synthesize the different real-world approaches, wrapping my head around each one. This helps, thanks.

[ezekg]

I think Fair Core is a fair term for projects licensed under the Elastic terms, since it's a Fair Source "core offering" with additional features granted by a license key. It's similar to Open Core, where some of the project is available for everyone, while the rest requires an additional agreement (a license grant, license key, payment, w/e).

[chadwhitacre]

Looking through Fair Code as a starting point, I see six licenses and 11 companies, but only 4 licenses are in use by the listed companies:

• SSPL - MongoDB, ingest,
• ELv2 - Elastic, Airbyte, Keygen, nango, OpenReplay
• BSL - CockroachDB, HashiCorp, Sentry (oops)
• SUL (not on SPDX) - n8n

Now of course we also have:

• FSL - Sentry, AnswerOverflow, Convex, CodeCrafters, GitButler (ref)

My thought is that we should have some opinionated take on what licenses to promote. Something like:

• SSPL for hyper-copyleft
• ELv2 for permissive-style with Fair Core option
• FSL for eventual Open Source

I think we acknowledge BUSL and SUL (and maybe others?) but steer people towards the above. I think any future license we would recommend should go through SPDX inclusion first at a minimum.

SUL

SUL was based on ELv2. I'm not seeing in the announcement or discussion thread an explanation of the difference. Why was ELv2 insufficient? 🤔 Here's a gist with both, with minor formatting adjustments made in order to get a clean diff (below). Afaict SUL a) subtly modifies the limitations and b) removes the concept of license keys. IMO it is not sufficiently different nor sufficiently adopted (i.e., it's not in SPDX) to warrant top-tier promotion. I think we promote ELv2.

--- ELv2	2024-05-16 11:19:27
+++ SUL	2024-05-16 11:19:24
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
-# Elastic License
+# Sustainable Use License
 
-Version 2.0
+Version 1.0
 
 ## Acceptance
 
@@ -11,17 +11,15 @@
 The licensor grants you a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide,
 non-sublicensable, non-transferable license to use, copy, distribute, make
 available, and prepare derivative works of the software, in each case subject
-to the limitations and conditions below.
+to the limitations below.
 
 ## Limitations
 
-You may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed
-service, where the service provides users with access to any substantial set of
-the features or functionality of the software.
+You may use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes
+or for non-commercial or personal use. 
 
-You may not move, change, disable, or circumvent the license key functionality
-in the software, and you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the
-software that is protected by the license key.
+You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free
+of charge for non-commercial purposes. 
 
 You may not alter, remove, or obscure any licensing, copyright, or other
 notices of the licensor in the software. Any use of the licensor’s trademarks
@@ -44,7 +42,7 @@
 
 You must ensure that anyone who gets a copy of any part of the software from
 you also gets a copy of these terms. If you modify the software, you must
-include in any modified copies of the software prominent notices stating that
+include in any modified copies of the software a prominent notice stating that
 you have modified the software.
 
 ## No Other Rights
@@ -55,11 +53,11 @@
 ## Termination
 
 If you use the software in violation of these terms, such use is not licensed,
-and your licenses will automatically terminate. If the licensor provides you
+and your license will automatically terminate. If the licensor provides you
 with a notice of your violation, and you cease all violation of this license no
-later than 30 days after you receive that notice, your licenses will be
+later than 30 days after you receive that notice, your license will be
 reinstated retroactively. However, if you violate these terms after such
-reinstatement, any additional violation of these terms will cause your licenses
+reinstatement, any additional violation of these terms will cause your license
 to terminate automatically and permanently.
 
 ## No Liability
@@ -85,9 +83,9 @@
 power to direct its management and policies by vote, contract, or otherwise.
 Control can be direct or indirect.
 
-"Your licenses" are all the licenses granted to you for the software under
-these terms.
+"Your license" is the license granted to you for the software under these
+terms.
 
-"Use" means anything you do with the software requiring one of your licenses.
+"Use" means anything you do with the software requiring your license.
 
 "Trademark" means trademarks, service marks, and similar rights.

[chadwhitacre]

I've started a Google Doc that I'll be using to coordinate with our design team (also linked in the description).

[chadwhitacre]

I connected over email with Elastic. They are not interested in participating directly in Fair Source at the moment, but they are more than happy for us to promote ELv2.

[chadwhitacre]

Sentry's Launch Week has been moved. The Fair Source launch is now scheduled for August 16.

[chadwhitacre]

Sentry's Launch Week has been moved again. The Fair Source launch is now decoupled from Sentry's Launch Week and we can ship as soon as we're ready.

[chadwhitacre]

Pitch to simplify through a single Fair Source License: #16.

[chadwhitacre]

Decision on #16 was to reticket #17 and proceed here as follows:

1. Rename Functional Source License to Fair Source License.
2. fair.io says:
   1. "Fair Source is a great way to meaningfully, safely share your company's core products."
   2. "Want to adopt Fair Source? Here's the playbook:
      1. apply Fair Source License,
      2. audit for secrets,
      3. make it public,
      4. announce 'Foo is now Fair Source'
   3. "FAQ"
      1. "What if I want to monetize self-hosted? Fair Source License is not for you, look into ELv2."
      2. "What if I like copyleft? Fair Source License is not for you, look into SSPL."
      3. "Can I still call it Fair Source if I use ELv2 or SSPL? Yes, of course. Any good faith attempt to meaningfully, safely share your company's core products counts as Fair Source."
      4. etc.

Refer to the Google Doc for further iteration.

[chadwhitacre]

Decision taken to not block launch on renaming FSL to Fair Source License. More detail at #17 (comment) ff. We still intend to promote FSL as the flagship Fair Source license (and FCL as secondary if/when it lands, #17), and may revisit the question of renaming post-launch.

[chadwhitacre]

Bringing this back here:

We have to help people understand all the facets of open source and most importantly, the access to software.

If you distill this idea into its most fundamentals it’s about access. We believe giving people software, access to code, it can change everything. It was that for me, and I believe everyone in this group.

My primary goal is to recreate that access, and the goal. The internet has gotten much bigger, but not more difficult. We have an opportunity to keep it open.

@dcramer The common discourse is around freedom to read, run, modify, and distribute software. Is "access" simply a synonym for "software freedom," or is there some nuance I'm missing, or ... ?

[chadwhitacre]

Posting some additional guidance from @dcramer culled from last week's convos in private Slack:

i would start by writing down the requirements for a fair source license, and the things we think maybe shouldn't be requirements but "ideal" (imo the time delay thing is ideal vs requirement)
and then get feedback from folks on that, and use SSPL, ELv2, AGPL? as tests (reminder im not an expert on these licenses)

heres my point of view:

1. theres a set of non negotiable requirements for fair source licenses
2. theres a set of recommended goals

FSL may achieve them all, ELv2 may not
e.g. recommended should be "a large chunk of the software is either permissive open source, or with a maximum of a 4 year delay, permissive"

we should be clear on the requirements, and recommendations, and note licenses which achieve both

I would make the approach more focused on “here are different licenses that follow this model, here’s example user, and here’s some kind of grading of if they achieve it fully or not"

[chadwhitacre]

I've published "The Historical Case for Fair Source."

[ezekg]

@chadwhitacre looking at your tweet — is ELv2 not considered Fair Source anymore? It's not eventual-OSS.

[chadwhitacre]

@ezekg I don't know. I've been chewing on the same question. @dcramer's guidance above was to have tiers—"ideal" and "required." He put eventual OSS in "ideal" and not "required" but I'm not so sure. I think the story of Fair Source is much stronger if both elements are essential:

1. meaningful self-hosted usage (even if some features are license-key-gated); and
2. eventual OSS.

I know you're interested in moving Keygen in the eventual OSS direction. What are your thoughts on how to define Fair Source and how to communicate whatever-we-define to the world? For better or for worse, the Open Source Definition has been crucial to maintaining Open Source as a meaningful term in the world. Do we need something equally definite for Fair Source?

Considered another way: if eventual OSS is not essential to Fair Source, then what will it look like to try to have different "tiers" of Fair Source? Maybe:

• 🥇 Gold—unrestricted self-hosting + eventual OSS
• 🥈 Silver—(unrestricted self-hosting w/o eventual OSS) or (restricted self-hosting + eventual OSS)
• 🥉 Bronze—restricted self-hosting w/o eventual OSS

That seems complicated to me to communicate, I worry it will muddy the brand for people out in the world.

[chadwhitacre]

To bring it inline from Twitter, here's a snapshot of the current design work for a vibe check. Vibe I think we're going for is safety, fairness (obvs), stability, modern and forward-thinking but not faddish. This is all very much in progress so now is the time to discuss.

[chadwhitacre]

https://fcl.dev/     👀 💃

Fair Source needs to acknowledge that many Open Source projects monetize self-hosting (PostHog, Cal.com, GitLab, etc.), and there's no way to safely do that here too without Fair Core.

Fair point. ;-) I searched for "open core" on opensource.org and found a strongly worded denunciation(!). It's probably worth being explicit on our website that we see both Open Core and Fair Core as legitimate approaches.

[ezekg]

Fair point. ;-) I searched for "open core" on opensource.org and found a strongly worded denunciation(!).

They denounce everything. Doesn't stop most Open Core projects rightly claiming they're also Open Source. Maybe that's a battle they lost? I don't know the history there.

It's probably worth being explicit on our website that we see both Open Core and Fair Core as legitimate approaches.

Agreed. In the same way an Open Core project can call themselves Open Source (much to OSI's dismay — just look at PostHog, Cal.com, etc.), I think Fair Core should be to Fair Source what Open Core is to Open Source.

[chadwhitacre]

Okay, gang! We're getting into the home stretch here. I've drafted two new pages for the website based on our conversation here a couple weeks ago: Fair Source Definition and Licenses.

@ezekg Will FCL be ready for launch, do you think? I have it listed under "approaches" on the licenses page.

August 2 is the one-year anniversary of the "Codecov is now Open Source" that kicked this all off. However, that is a Friday, and @selviano is on vacation that week (I'm out next week, btw). Shall we aim to launch on Monday, August 5? I intend to start a private email thread with the companies that have said they will launch with us, to coordinate more closely. @ezekg I'll include you on that. Anyone else listening here that wants in on that?

Plans this week:

• finalize the website copy (hence my pass through it this morning)
• run it by an analyst at Red Monk to get an outside perspective on verbiage and likely reception
• work with Sentry's in-house illustrator to see if it makes sense to take the site design in a more illustrated direction
• finalize launch plan with partners
• prep to hand off website copy and design to our in-house engineer for the build phase next week

Anything else missing? How are we feeling about this? I'm excited! :D

[ezekg]

@chadwhitacre working to hopefully finalize FCL this week (have a call tomorrow to do so). I have a landing page for FCL ready to go, as well as a "Keygen is now Fair Source" blog post ready to go announcing that Keygen is relicensing from ELv2 to FCL, which delves into Fair Source itself a bit, and also introduces the Fair Core License and the "why."

An August 5th launch would work for me.

[ddevault]

Hey @chadwhitacre et al, just to be clear, are you planning to move forward with branding "fair source" as a form of "open source"? I offer you the best wishes with the fair source plans, subject to it being clearly distinguished from open source.

I ask specifically because this blog post you cited is explicitly passing off non-open-source licenses as if they were open source.

[chadwhitacre]

Hi, @ddevault, thanks for jumping in.

are you planning to move forward with branding "fair source" as a form of "open source"?

Binary answer: no.

I ask specifically because this blog post you cited is explicitly passing off non-open-source licenses as if they were open source.

If you scroll down a bit on that post, you'll see this next-day update:

Authors Note: Hey, we messed up in this post by referring to BUSL-1.1 as Open Source. We’re sorry, we are leaving this post as-is to keep the record clear and we’ve followed up in a new post.

In other words, the so-called "Codecov kerfuffle" is what led to Adam's CTA, which launched us on the whole story arc that has led up to Fair Source. This is explained in the description on this ticket, let me know if there's a way we can make it clearer.

[ddevault]

Wonderful. I figured as much, but just checking in to be sure. Thanks!

[chadwhitacre]

I am on PTO next week, @selviano is out the week after.

We might get some light illustrations but we are basically moving forward with the website design we've got today in Figma. @elijames-codecov is out this week but we're scheduled to sync up on Monday for the handoff, he is building out the site for us.

Our goals by the end of next week should be a) to have a rough draft of the site done and b) to get acknowledgement from all of our launch partners on the email I sent around setting the launch date as August 6. @ezekg has acknowledged so far and has a blog post ready (🙏). I also let @janober know, he has some questions about eventual Open Source, I have questions about SUL, aiming to pick up with that on Monday. 🤞

[chadwhitacre]

Oh! @selviano and I had a call with RedMonk to get an outside perspective on website copy and Sentry's blog post. I mostly incorporated changes into the website copy, need to finish revising the blog post so that is also on my plate for Monday and it's in a bit of a ruffled state atm.

[ezekg]

The Fair Source website design looks great, @chadwhitacre. I still need to look over the copy you shared via the doc, but will let you know if I have feedback. For those interested, the FCL v1.0 is drafted and the website for the FCL is up at https://fcl.dev. I'm open to feedback on that if anybody has thoughts on how the website or license could be improved.

[ezekg]

Some early feedback on the FCL, and in turn also Fair Source, from a thread on Lobsters. The FCL wasn't ready to be shared this early, but what can you do since the FCL repo and website are public (albeit still a WIP). I'm not sure if the users there just had their pitchforks ready, or if our messaging surrounding Fair Source can be improved. The Fair Source website would've likely helped here, so the pitchforks being drawn may just be a result of missing context since nothing is actually launched yet.

[chadwhitacre]

Things are coming together! Heads up for you @ezekg since it affects FCL (and also for the room): we're getting strong pushback in the context of our FSL SPDX submission on using the word "Apache" in the license name and identifier, due to trademark concerns. We're still playing out a conversation with ASF but I wanted to let you know.

[rohitpaulk]

Just jumping in to say we'll have the CodeCrafters blog post ready in time for launch!

[chadwhitacre]

Awesome, thanks @rohitpaulk!

[ezekg]

This made me smile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41032331. Looks like HN is warming up to the FSL!

[chadwhitacre]

Nice! Good to see this get out as well:

The short answer is that FSL was designed as an evolution of BSL that doesn't allow for as much variance in what the license means in practice, i.e. it got rid of the "additional grants" and mandates a shorter, fixed expiration date.

[chadwhitacre]

Here's the second draft of Sentry's blog post for August 6. 🙌

And here's a couple explorations of incorporating more engaging illustration in the hero images:

[ezekg]

Some interesting discussion here: https://lobste.rs/s/mzksfr/historical_case_for_fair_source. On the Fair Source website, do you think it'd be valuable to address the argument that Fair Source is attempting to solicit free labor, or should we wait and see how the conversation develops? I've seen this argument more than a few times now where somebody accuses me of trying to exploit people for free labor to directly profit off of their contributions. I'd assume most Fair Source projects are or will be also "single source", so the argument doesn't really hold water, but it's still frustrating to see the misunderstanding i.r.t. goals.

To quote a commenter from that above post:

… the actual reality of “fair” source is either:

1. Nobody contributes to the project, in which case what did you gain from this weird licensing, or
2. People do contribute to the project, which means the original creator’s business got to reap the benefits of unpaid labor

I think it's a misunderstanding of how Open Source and Fair Source differentiate; a benefit of Open Source is a diverse community contributing to the commons, so I think those deeply involved in Open Source think Fair Source wants to exploit that. There is a vast array of benefits outside of free labor for both the producer and the consumers of Fair Source software.

[selviano]

@ezekg thanks for flagging, and for your thoughtful comments.

IMO addressing the issue of exploiting free labor on the website is bending over backwards too far to satisfy those who don't care to understand what Fair Source is. To put that argument on the site is dignifying it with too much credibility.

Creating a viable business, free-rider defense, sharing code with the community, letting people host, modify; these are all fundamental to what Fair Source is about. Contributions are accepted of course, but that's never been the point, and we haven't been vague about that not being the point. So if someone doesn't get that from all the prior work on this, I don't really know what to say to them.

[dcramer]

@ezekg thanks for flagging, and for your thoughtful comments.

IMO addressing the issue of exploiting free labor on the website is bending over backwards too far to satisfy those who don't care to understand what Fair Source is. To put that argument on the site is dignifying it with too much credibility.

Creating a viable business, free-rider defense, sharing code with the community, letting people host, modify; these are all fundamental to what Fair Source is about. Contributions are accepted of course, but that's never been the point, and we haven't been vague about that not being the point. So if someone doesn't get that from all the prior work on this, I don't really know what to say to them.

Agreed, this is just people refusing to learn anything about how the world works. I skimmed the thread and theres plenty of the same argument things like "I contributed, I should be able to sell the software". That's a backwards thinking from where we are - if you want that, and thats your belief system, dont contribute. Lobsters also seems similarly full of the edge-case persona that says they'll refuse to use software with these licenses, and we have ample data that they dont represent the majority.

[chadwhitacre]

Heads up for this thread: we are live with the draft site(!) and are using #19 for the punchlist. T-7 days to launch!

[chadwhitacre]

We might want to add an FAQ about the legacy Fair Source License, I've fielded a couple questions about it.

[chadwhitacre]

Today is the day! Launching in T-22 minutes. 😮

[ezekg]

[chadwhitacre]

Gonna call this done. I've updated the ticket description with launch links.

Great work, everybody! Congratulations! Fair Source is aliiiiiivvveeee!!! 😍 👏 💃