Original discussion:

Gumroad’s source is available - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43580103 (380 points | 9 hours ago | 185 comments)

What a lovely and radioactive mess. While there's a definition for "your company," edge cases like contractors, consultants, or complex organizational structures might create ambiguity about who is bound by the limitations. The immediate termination for any patent claim could be overly broad, potentially triggering even for legitimate patent disputes tangentially related to the software. The prohibition on sublicensing could create problems for legitimate business arrangements, particularly for development agencies or consultancies.The provision allowing licensees to cure violations within 30 days is vague about what constitutes "practical steps" to correct past violations. The license doesn't clearly address the status of derivative works or modifications. While the license mentions adjusting for inflation using the CPI, it doesn't specify how often this should be calculated or who determines the adjusted thresholds, creating potential interpretation conflicts. There's no clear mechanism for monitoring or enforcing revenue thresholds. Good luck!

Note that the HN submission's title was changed to "Gumroad’s source is available" after it was screenshotted for this post.

The way the license is written is similar to https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/

Open source licenses as they exist today aren’t sustainable to run a business. We’ve seen with the cloud providers how easy it is to launch a competitor if you don’t have protective licensing. Gumroad’s licensing is still small business friendly and protects another Gumroad clone from being launched.

If you want to use something that is currently approved by the OSI, but at the same time is crafted to drive revenue, you can use the AGPL.

It seems to me what they are really doing is offering a free self-hosting license to businesses that make less than a given amount in sales.

This allows them to offer a free "plan" without incurring the hosting costs of providing the service.

IMO this is a losing battle. Regardless of good intentions, the term "open source" is simply not descriptive enough to carry connotations about licensing. To the layman all it means is that the source is open (accessible to the public). IMO the OSI would be better off coming up with a more clear term and popularizing that rather than trying to convince everyone that their restrictive definition of "open source" is the one true definition.

Don't get me wrong. I think OSI's approach to open source is admirable. I think there should be a useful term to describe what they currently call "open source" and I think projects which use those licenses should be celebrated. I just don't think they're going to win the battle for the term "open source" in the long term.

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