37
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by paequ2@lemmy.today to c/programming@programming.dev

Source First License 1.1: https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md

This is a non-open source license. They were claiming to be open source at one point, but they've listened to the community and stopped claiming they were open source. They are not trying to be Open Source™.

They call themselves "source first". https://sourcefirst.com/

They're trying to create a world where developers can make money from writing source first software, where the big tech oligarchy can't just suck them dry.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] kazaika@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Im pretty sure the objective is not to get contributions. You talk like contributions could actually replace actual full time maintainers of the software. They cannot. If a payment of corpB is large enough to completely buy out the software, then the objective is completed in the sense that this should provide enough money to maintain the software by paying maintainers or even hiring new ones, there is no need to beg for corpo contributions then.

The objective is not to make the most community friendly licence, it is to pay the people who do the actual work.

[-] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

A lot of my response was already rendered further down the thread. So I'll only comment on this part:

The objective is not to make the most community friendly licence, it is to pay the people who do the actual work.

If this is the singular or main objective that Futo has, then the basis of OP's post is entirely dead. The title of the post is very clearly "FUTO License, an alternative to Open Sourd". But if we take your submission as fact, then there is no comparison whatsoever.

Open Source -- whether using OSI's definition or including FSF's -- has almost never focused on the financial aspect, for better or worse. It's why commercial entities like Canonical and Red Hat are so rare, because software engineers prefer spending their free time working on great things rather than doing admin.

Futo sounds like they want to be a commercial entity like Red Hat but without the limitations that Open Source or Free Software would impose on them. And they're welcome to do that, but that endeavor cannot honestly be called comparable to the mostly community-driven projects like BSD, GNU, and Linux, or commercial ventures like RHEL and whatever cloud-thingy that Canonical is selling now.

If the goal is to pay for professional talent, with revenue from B2B sales, and only non-commercial users get a free-bee, then that's just a shareware company with more steps. Futo trying to dress themselves up like Red Hat remains as disingenuous as when they tried to misinform open-source folks about what open-source is.

I'll be frank: my interest in software licensing is about finding licenses that strike a sensible balance. It's about distributing rights and obligations that are equitable and sustainable, while perpetuating software uptake and upkeep. It's a tough cookie. But I think the Source First license alienates too many potential audiences and its financial model falls apart under any game theory analysis. So I'm not keen on looking down this avenue anymore.

this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
37 points (87.8% liked)

Programming

19982 readers
156 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS