Discuss the license here

[haf]

...if you have an opinion on it. Keep it friendly.

License as its stands in master/beta:

• Logary as a library when used on IIS/Kestrel costs money; how much depends on how much you use it; quotes via e-mail.
• Logary together with other non-commercial OSS is free.
• Logary Facade v1-v3 is plain Apache 2. This is what all my OSS projects use.
• Logary Facade v4 I haven't decided yet, but it's tentatively the same as Logary proper. I'm considering changing this; because I want F# to have a happy path logging drop-in for Hopac libraries as well.
• Expecto accidentally used a Facade v3 that had changed header but not implementation; this was a mistake.
• Suave has never been involved in any changes; we've updated the repo to make that explicit.

Motivations for the new license is:

• if you use it on an obviously commercial stack, it costs money.
• if you use it together with open source, it's free.

GNU has a tendency to lock you in, it's extremely viral and can generally not be used with corporate software. I don't want that. I want people to be free to choose. I want the effect it aimed to bring: increased open source cooperation, but with a clean alternative.

Resulting TODOs:

• Clarify license / decide for Facade v4
• Clear CLA for contributions
• Improve wording away from "general design" in license.
• Clarify that Logary is free of charge unless it tells you otherwise while running, so just try it out
• Add license FAQ to README or similar.
• Consider changing the license to commercial=BSD, OSS=Apache?
• Idea: let people vote on the license at a cost of a caffe latte per vote?

[sergey-tihon]

The question that I cannot understand is "Why such license? Why not GNU v3 for example?"

Could you explain it to me? Thx

[haf]

Of course, I've updated the initial post and will continue doing so.

[kunjee17]

Personally I didn't get the Microsoft part. There are many libraries which might using Microsoft library underneath and I may not be knowing that. Should I go and check everything?

I'm in favour of license. As I know how much it cost to run a business. But little advance notice would be great and also detailed explanation why and what and how part of it in blog...

[haf]

There are many libraries which might using Microsoft library underneath

This isn't about MSFT, it's about the commercial web servers on .Net, and they are all Microsoft. Also, it's not about Suave; you're free to use any web server. I want to encourage people to do OSS and learn to be better software engineers.

and I may not be knowing that

Logary does a check, so it'll tell you.

Should I go and check everything?

No, you probably already know if you're using Kestrel is IIS as they are web servers, not libraries.

[MangelMaxime]

First thanks for clarifying the situation.

I think you will also need to make people accept some terms when contributing to Logary.

[haf]

Yes, maybe that's true. What would that look like? How is that different from what's implied by contributing today?

[isaacabraham]

I'm still confused by the term "commercial" web server. Kestrel is open source as far as I know - what's the distinction?

[haf]

I'm still confused by the term "commercial" web server. Kestrel is open source as far as I know - what's the distinction?

In this case it's that I want people to continue innovating in F#, and from experience, if you have a server/library written in another language you tend not to peek under the hood. I want people peeking under the hood.

[MangelMaxime]

@haf I don't know what it should looks like.

The difference is that you will probably make moneys from people contributions. When I am contributing to a project I am ok to do it because I know it's free for all the usage.

Here I think this a special case.

In general, when I made a contribution to a project that was going to gain monney from it I needed to sign a paper stating that I was giving right to XXX to use my contribution as they wanted.

[haf]

It is FOSS if you use it with FOSS though.

I don't think Swedish law requires you to sign anything since you contribute with your eyes wide open to the license. But I could add that as a jurisdiction to the license.

I'll consider it for sure, but I'm not sure what such a document would look like. "Please check this box to make explicit that you've read the license and agree to release any and all claims for monetary remuneration based on your contribution"?

[eugene-g]

Non-standard license hurts adoption. Companies don't have experience with that license and would avoid the risk of misusing library by not using it. Have you considered another dual-license options?

[isaacabraham]

@haf So this isn't about commercial web servers or open source at all - it's about F# vs C#. And the only web server you can use this on for free is an F# one, of which there happens to be only one..

Even though all .net web stacks compile to IL and other F# Web stacks that sit on top of Kestrel are written in F#? Really?

[haf]

@isaacabraham It's about having a vision for where F# is going and sticking to it. I'm sad there's only one web server in F# land; would have loved more innovation there. 2015 I asked Andrew to contribute Freya's model, 2016 there was the whole debacle about GC and I asked for help. I'm trying to make people cooperate rather than go with ready-made components by a large company; else they are abdicating the knowledge to do systems programming, which hurts F# in the long run.

Whether that company is Apple, Microsoft or Oracle doesn't matter. Do you understand where I'm coming from? How would you solve that?

[haf]

@eugene-g Yes, I've considered Apache 2.0 for non-commercial and BSD 3-clause for commercial. But I miss the upside of having people make PoC and tinker and improve existing OSS in the F# world. What would you suggest?

[isaacabraham]

@haf Even if that is the case, I'm sorry that I don't agree, because this adversely affects other certain F# web stacks that are built on top of MS tech, which to me is what this is really about.

You say this isn't about MS, yet that's exactly what is referred to in the license. You say it's about commercial stacks but haven't explained what that means. You then say it's about F# stacks - which has nothing to do with whether the server is managed by Microsoft or commercial.

I can't even debate this effectively because the rationale seems to be changing from day to day - and at the moment it makes no sense to me.

Sorry - I don't want to be negative about this or to someone who is creating lots of F# libraries but I don't know how else to understand this.