What’s up with these new not-open source licenses?
This article takes a purist stance driven by a rigid adherence to ideology. Let&#x27;s look at this another way...<p>Open-source and proprietary licenses are at two ends of the software development spectrum. The open-source model maximizes ease-of-adoption but doesn&#x27;t provide much incentive for the developers. Proprietary software provides a lot of incentive but adoption can be slow and burdensome.<p>Let&#x27;s assume that a good goal for society is to maximize the rate of innovation in software. To do that, you need a mix of BOTH ease of adoption and suitable development incentives. Source-available licenses are an attempt to accomplish this.<p>Is this a perfect solution? Probably not. I think better licensing models are still waiting to be discovered.<p>However, my sense is that these new licenses will accelerate the development of software with limited downside for the user. After all, they are designed only to impact companies attempting to sell a SaaS.<p>In addition, they have the potential to weaken the tech monopolies which, in my mind, is a Very Good Thing.