With the perennial tensions between proprietary and open source software (OSS) unlikely to end anytime soon, a $3 billion startup is throwing its weig

Some startups are going ‘fair source’ to avoid the pitfalls of open source licensing

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2024-09-23 01:30:05

With the perennial tensions between proprietary and open source software (OSS) unlikely to end anytime soon, a $3 billion startup is throwing its weight behind a new licensing paradigm — one that’s designed to bridge the open and proprietary worlds, replete with new definition, terminology, and governance model.

Developer software company Sentry recently introduced a new license category dubbed “fair source.” Sentry is an initial adopter, as are some half dozen others, including GitButler, a developer tooling company from one of GitHub’s founders

The fair source concept is designed to help companies align themselves with the “open” software development sphere, without encroaching into existing licensing landscapes, be that open source, open core, or source-available, and while avoiding any negative associations that exist with “proprietary.”

“Open source isn’t a business model — open source is a distribution model, it’s a software development model, primarily,” Chad Whitacre, Sentry’s head of open source, told TechCrunch. “And in fact, it places severe limits on what business models are available, because of the licensing terms.”