> So people can argue it doesn’t work, but so far we only have evidence to the contrary and Sentry is quite successful
So, RedHat has also been successful?
GP says that some companies don't find FSL aggressive enough, despite it having worked nicely for Sentry. And that's similar to the point Adam makes: That Open Source (per OSI not FSF) is a development model not a business model. Companies that don't want/need to prioritize collaboration tend to use FSL / BUSL / etc; but those licenses aren't really going to significantly change their development or business (other than prevent competition from using it as-is, but now the code is out there anyway [0][1]), and so they might as well go close source (and Lockdown the code, too).
> issue is these are mostly academic points of view
Both, commodotizing competition (through OSS) and using OSS as Go-To-Market aren't academic PoVs, I don't think.
I'm not talking about RedHat, I'm talking about the perspective that "FSL / BUSL aren't effective enough". They solve the problem. O'saasy is just freeware at the end of the day, FSL creates more open source, and BUSL often has (though unfortunately the license doesnt require it).
The idea that FSL ~= Closed Source is entirely wrong and misunderstands the value that an open distribution gives. We have 10s of thousands of customers that run Sentry self-hosted. We regularly get contributations back to our core service - both in code and (what we prefer) other artifacts like feedback.
We were "Single Origin Open Source", which is extremely common whether people like to believe it or not. Its the entire premise of the sustainability issue in the industry. Thats not just an issue for commercial entities, its also most of the big open source software people rely on. In our case though we have a great business model that makes it entirely sustainable, and now have built a solid licensing mechanism around it that protects that, while ensuring our community is still successful.
These same issues around single origin open source are why we started the no-strings-attached funding mechanism via Open Source Pledge (https://opensourcepledge.com), why we push Fair Source (https://fair.io).
Maybe others will find defensible models, but I'm skeptical. I also respect Adam, but last I understood it the model they were going after sounded pretty similar to trademark protection (which doesnt work).
Thanks for the links. I read those and some more from your blog. I've also been to a Chad Whitacre talk about Sentry's OSS approach at a conference this year.
I don't think we're disagreeing at all. I quoted Adam to drive the point that tech shops that value collaboration will tend to prefer OSI-approved licenses. That doesn't seem to be the case for Sentry:
[Sentry is] single-source. That is, [the Company behind it] are the authors and maintainers of the software, and [does] not expect the community to provide us with contributions. We still allow it, and are thankful, but we consider it our duty to develop our software.
At the other end of the "single-source" spectrum is SQLite which is closed to collaboration but is dedicated to public domain and requests a fee for "Warranty": https://sqlite.org/copyright.html
It does seem like Sentry wants control over distribution, but by the way of license? Adam proposes something similar (and I guess that's the reason he's okay with "Fair Source", like a few others too who want to unchain the idea and go beyond OSI / Open Source [0]):
[Sentry wants] to allow people to self-host our software.
> I also respect Adam, but last I understood it the model they were going after sounded pretty similar to trademark protection (which doesnt work).
A counter example: The Android Open Source Project is OSS, and is firmly gate-kept by Google via trademark and other collaborative arrangements like the Open Handset Alliance and Linaro. That said, this is the happy case. Sentry clearly had a different experience with bigger tech shops (GitLab?) trying to monetize its offering without contributing anything back, which (tbh) sounds super terrible.
To me, there seem to be pathways to both succeed & fail with OSI-approved licenses (probably you'd argue... one'd fail more than succeed), and these licenses on their own are neither the only condition nor a sufficient one for business build around them to stumble and falter. That said, I get your point that "Fair Source" gives "single-source" projects a fighting chance, like it did for Sentry. I'd also have thought that the OSI-approved AGPLv3 (your reservations about copyleft notwithstanding) is enough to keep big shops from leeching from other high-quality mostly single-source projects... but may be I was mistaken (given MongoDB / Elastic / Redis / CockroachDB didn't think so; even if, Elastic & Redis switched back to including OSI-approved license, specifically the AGPLv3).
Whereas, for example, trademark protections have shown to fail easily.
So people can argue it doesn’t work, but so far we only have evidence to the contrary and Sentry is quite successful.