I saw this some time ago and wasn’t really sure how to feel about it. On one hand it’s good to make corporations compensate maintainers, but I also don’t want to be forced to ask for a fee because my project uses another project that uses this.
I saw this some time ago and wasn’t really sure how to feel about it. On one hand it’s good to make corporations compensate maintainers, but I also don’t want to be forced to ask for a fee because my project uses another project that uses this.
I immediately knew this was going to be from Microsoft users, and yeah… of course, it is.
Binaries distributed under this EULA do not meet the free software definition or open source definition.
However, unlike most attempts to dilute the concept of open source, since the EULA is explicitly scoped to binaries and says it is meant to be applied to projects with source code that is released under an OSI-approved license, I think the source code of projects using this do still meet the open source definition (as long as the code is actually under such a license). Anyone/everyone should still be free to fork any project using this, and to distribute free binaries which are not under this EULA.
This EULA obviously cannot be applied to projects using a copyleft license, unless all contributors to it have dual-licensed their contributions to allow (at least) the entity that is distributing non-free binaries under this EULA to do so.
I think it is extremely short-sighted to tell non-paying “consumers” of an open source project that their bug reports are not welcome. People who pay for support obviously get to heavily influence which bugs get priority, but to tell non-paying users that they shouldn’t even report bugs is implicitly communicating that 2nd and 3rd party collaboration on fixing bugs is not expected or desired.
A lot of Microsoft-oriented developers still don’t understand the free software movement, and have been trying to twist it into something they can comprehend since it started four decades ago. This is the latest iteration of that; at least this time they aren’t suggesting that people license their source code under non-free licenses.
Yeah I feel like this is the one instance of applying EULA’s to free software projects that I don’t disagree with on principle, because the source code remains free software (unlike FUTO, Commons Clause, and so on). For another example, Mozilla applies an EULA to Firefox binaries and still releases the source code under a free license, which is an overall good to the free software movement.
Maintainership of a free software project can be very taxing so it’s refreshing to see attempts to address that that aren’t intrinsically at odds with the free software movement. Remember that users of free software have no entitlement to anything other than source code. There is no requirement in any free software license that a project have maintainers, take bug reports, accept pull requests, offer support, etc.
Also remember there are avenues to obtain third party builds of free software projects (e.g. GNU/Linux distros, F-Droid, etc) and those third parties should be able to take up the support burden for their user communities.
Edit: From their faq, this is the most concerning thing to me:
This seems like an over-reach. Limiting participation in communities to fee-payers is understandable but attempting to restrict people from even reading in these communities is a bit too far (and I am not even sure if it can be enforced, but I am not a lawyer).
This proposal could totally backfire though. There will be users paying 5 Euro per month and then demand on the issue tracker that major changes get implemented overnight. Or people who contribute with good bug reports that are unable to pay money, so problems remain unfixed. There might be a way to balance things so it works out, but that will take time. In any case its worth experimenting with different approaches to get open source betterfunded.