He describes his vision for "post open source" license, which he is currently developing. His goals seem to be to to empower software developers to take back power from megacorps which have in his view subverted the nature of open source and turned it into a "resource extraction" scheme.
For open-source projects that are the top level (e.g., PostreSQL) and being paid to work on it... it's often useful to have an enterprise market and support model.
Side note, open source works better business model wise when things are more distributed. More centralized with megacorp clouds is harder for open source based businesses.
For libraries that can be used by many projects, open source is a great way to go. I've done semver, vcs, and other libs this way. They aren't the business thing being sold but enablers of other things being build.
Interfaces are great and we need more standard interfaces. They make is possible to have open source and proprietary solutions that work with the same stuff. Businesses can compete and work with more freedom to do so with open interfaces.
Businesses trying to have an open source software SaaS that they run in public clouds are always going to be at a disadvantage. The public cloud provider can always do it cheaper and undercut the business. Businesses that try to go that route will end up having business issues.
Physical products are another space all together. It's the thing (hardware + software) that make it work. Open source software is great there, too. I see it in the car I drive.
Where we license things as open source should be coupled to our thought out business models. It's not an open source or post open source world. It's about the right tool for the job in front of us. We need more thought and talk on that.
We already have some copyleft licenses that prevent the kinds of proprietary SaaS usage that have prompted recent complaints. People and projects don't use those licenses; they use permissive licenses, and then get surprised when companies use their software under those permissive licenses. I've even seen people complain that if they use copyleft licenses, large companies won't touch their software. That's entirely the point! If you want companies to pay for an alternative license or an exception, you have to choose an Open Source license that they're not already willing to work with.
Before we even consider giving up on the Schelling point that is Open Source, perhaps we should make better use of the full spectrum of Open Source licenses we already have.
And he's going to achieve that with a software license?
I'm not sure if that's a fair statement because the notion of 'resource extraction scheme' is entirely subjective.
If people are using the software in accordance with the license that you afford it, then that's it, there's nothing more you can ask.
If it turns out that 80% of the value is going to be captured by 'Big Corps', well, then that's what it is and it's entirely up to the Open Source developer to contemplate why they would want to do this or not. To each their own.
I suggest however, that there should be a better 3rd option that frankly doesn't exist, which is to allow devs to get paid commensurate with the popularity of their software, which would technically be commercial, but wherein the terms would actually be fairly open by any reasonable measure.
I suggest this dichotomy between 'Stallman/GPL vs. Evil Corps' is completely false and that it's mostly grey in between. It's just that there's a little bit of a cliff between the more open license and harder commercial terms which make things quite difficult for everyone aka imagine your corporate lawyer asked to review every one of the weird commercial terms of the 300 or so Node.js packages you're using ...
Maybe there is a lesson there regarding human behaviour, and attitudes regarding the need of income in capitalist societies.
With the difference that demo versions are no longer time limited, and even with the demo version there is code available instead of being an option on the commercial product.
Companies just call it open source instead, regardless of what is stated at OSI website as definition.
Actually, I like people to do more than the bare minimum that's legally required of them. Unfortunately corporations usually don't do that.
Starting a new movement with a new license could be a way to escape the current dynamics.
(For non-English speakers, "scratch" was formerly popular slang for money in the US.)
That's certainly true, but that's not a good reason to declare bankruptcy and throw away the whole movement.
> Starting a new movement with a new license could be a way to escape the current dynamics.
A new movement seems more likely to end up worse, by not maintaining compatibility with the definition of Open Source; that definition exists for a reason, and its requirements don't just facilitate participation by megacorps, they facilitate participation by everyone. Just about every new license proposal I've seen has failed to actually be an Open Source license. "Hey, as long as we're changing the requirements, let's just go full 'non-commercial use only'", or "Hey, as long as we're changing the requirements, let's try to define ethics in a legal document". All the same mistakes over again that people had to fight to reject the first time around.
We don't need a new movement. We might need an improved license that's still Open Source, and a better marketing plan around that license.
Naturally with a license that only allowed its use on the context of understanding the product, e.g. source code for the C and C++ libraries of a compiler for use in debugging sessions.
Corporations legal departments just found out a way to use non-copyleft licenses for the 2nd coming of shareware/demoware, while cutting down development costs in the process.