Newer
Older
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
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
- uses its self-rolled _"Delayed Open Source Attribution License"_
- [license file on GH](https://github.com/ChildMindInstitute/mindlogger-applet-builder/blob/master/LICENSE.md)
I (Seth) think there's a distinction to be made between these three cases:
* "automatic": 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
* "manual": 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".)
* "post-hoc" / "unscheduled": proprietary software that eventually was
relicensed under an open source license, without a public statement of
intent to do so at the time of its original publication, or without a
published schedule for the conversion
I would include the former two in the scope of the report but not the
latter one (except to explain how it's different). Some people have been
suggesting some of these cases (which can be fairly famous, like Netscape
Navigator!), but I think these should be thought of as more of a one-time
"change" than a "delay".
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
# Resources to check
* Free Software Business (fsb) mailing list archives at https://web.archive.org/web/20210000000000\*/http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi/0/
# 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
# Sources / Acknowledgements
* Simon Phipps
* Stefano Maffulli
* Nick Vidal