notes.md

This file contains free-form notes.  Anyone working on this project,
please feel free to reformat this (including to something other than
Markdown) if you want.

# Examples

Note that some of these examples are still just pointers that will
need followup.

* The license now named the "Boostrap Open Source License" (BOSL) was
  formerly known as the "Transitive Grace Period Public Licence"
  (TGPPL).  

  The 2020 blog post [Introducing BOSL, a radically new type of
  open-source
  license](https://electriccoin.co/blog/introducing-tgppl-a-radically-new-type-of-open-source-license/)
  discusses the license and gives some examples of its use.

  An earlier (2010) writeup about TGPPL from Ted T'so is
  [The Transitive Grace Period Public Licence: good ideas come
  around…](https://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2010/01/20/the-transitive-grace-period-public-licence-good-ideas-come-around/).

  [Tahoe-LAFS](https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/tahoe-lafs) seems to have
  a somewhat complicated (though still open source) licensing
  situation, but it appears to be also published under the TGPPL?

  And Zooko might be using BOSL or TGPPL for other things as well.
  (See also https://github.com/zooko/tgppl -- note that Richard
  Fontana is in the commit history there.)

* Aladdin Ghostscript

* Sleepycat and BerkeleyDB?

* [Sentry](https://github.com/getsentry/sentry/blob/master/LICENSE)
  (Business Source License (BUSL)).

* Codecov (also from Sentry) is also BUSL.

  See https://blog.sentry.io/lets-talk-about-open-source/.

* The post [Why Open Source
  Matters](https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2023/08/03/why-opensource-matters/)
  from RedMonk (Aug 2023) points to some other examples.  (Also, it's
  a really good post, in Karl's opinion, not that anyone asked him,
  but hey, if you're editing the notes file then you get to insert
  your opinions.)

* Hashicorp and BUSL
  - https://www.hashicorp.com/license-faq#Why-is-HashiCorp-making-this-change
  - https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-adopts-business-source-license

# Categorization question

Is there a distinction to be made between these cases?

* licenses that are not open source licenses but that state (in the license
  text somewhere) that they automatically convert / automatically permit use
  and redistribution subject to a specified open source license after a period
  of time
* publicly announced practices of manually relicensing old codebase snapshots
  on a particular schedule, which depend on a person at the company explicitly
  making a delayed open source release

(In some sense, this is a potential distinction between a "delayed open
source licensing business practice" and a "delayed open source license".)

# Threads where we have posted

Look in the follow-ups in these threads (and subthreads thereof) for
more examples.  Please add other threads here too.

* https://kfogel.org/notice/AZSlnFS0GBe2x7Rd6u
* https://twitter.com/kfogel/status/1699104095976423795
* https://chat.opentechstrategies.com/#narrow/stream/2-general/topic/DOSP/near/172793

# More people to contact as we're gathering examples

If your name should be on the list below but isn't, please [let us
know](https://code.librehq.com/ots/dosp-research/-/issues/new)!

* Deb Bryant
* Danese Cooper
* Heather Meeker
* Abby Kearns
* Sam Ramji
* Your Name Here...

# Sources / Acknowledgements

* Simon Phipps
* Stefano Maffulli
* Nick Vidal