FSFE position on "open core"

[Florian Weimer]

* Torsten Grote:

> On Sunday 05 January 2014 23:13:04 Florian Weimer wrote:
>> Does FSF Europe really think that this model is a good way to fund free
>> software development, absorbing the leftovers from proprietary software?
>
> No it absolutely does not! There's real Free Software companies and
> they show that it is possible to earn money without going Open Core.

Thanks for your clarification.

> This is a special and complicated case and no general position should be 
> derived from that, especially not from a third party statement.

The background appears to be this: Some contributors entered
contradictory contracts with both FSFE and the Bacula maintainer, and
in order avoid placing them in legal jeopardy, FSFE and the Bacula
maintainer reached an agreement that attempts to resolve this
conflict.

> Here's an original source:
>
>     https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/bacula-agreement.en.html

This web page does not reflect well what's actually in the agreement,
but that's probably unavoidable due to its complexity.  But I think
you should really qualify "This includes the possibility to create a
non-free version of their project to stand beside the free version, if
they choose." with "providing that all previous contributors agree to
such a relicensing of the project".

What I find most surprising is this: The agreement gives the Bacula
maintainer permission to use "under other licenses" (i.e. proprietary
ones) contributions that were previously covered by the FSFE FLA (item
B.1), even if they were *not* covered by a FLA with the Bacula
maintainer.  The agreement is also extremely broad: interpreted
literally, it applies to *all* copyrights transferred to FSFE under
*any* FLA, not just the one for Bacula; section B.1 talks about
"software" in general, not "Software" (the Bacula code base), and the
term "Beneficiary" is not restricted to Bacula project contributors.

So while I believe that you had the goal of resolving this conflict in
the best possible way, the effect is rather disastrous as far as your
role as fiduciary is concerned.