Subsonic Forum

Hi, I've just discovered this promising app. It looks great
However, while I was browsing the website I noticed the text for license:

Subsonic is open-source software licensed under the Creative Commons Noncommercial license.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

I don't think CC-by-nc-sa can be considered open-source. Unless you mean "open source" as "having the source code available". But not in the OSI/FSF meaning.

NoCommercial clause conflicts with "freedom 0" of the Free Software Definition from the FSF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose

It also conflicts with the clause 1 of the Open Source Definition from the OSI: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Also it conflicts with the clause 1 of the Debian Free Software Guidelines (based on OSI): http://www.debian.org/social_contract.en.html

1.Free Redistribution
The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

OSI doesn't list CC licenses as "open-source".
FSF and Debian only list CC-SA as "free software" (Debian lists CC-SA-3.0 and FSF lists CC-BY and CC-BY-SA):

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/
http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicense

Even Sourceforge, where you host this app, lists it as "Other/Proprietary License" http://sourceforge.net/projects/subsonic

Don't take this as a rant. You are the author, you can license as you wish. I just wanted to warn you just in case


By the way, CC licenses were created with creative works in mind (images, sounds, texts, ...) although they can be used for code, it's uncommon.

You are absolutely right, and I'm happy to announce that the license will change to an OSI-approved open-source one starting with the next release, 3.6, most likely GPL.

Cheers,
Sindre

Hi Sindre.
Sorry for reviving a really old thread, but I thought continuing on the same topic might be better than starting a new thread - at least I searched the forums!

Back to the topic then..
I could not find an existing thread or page on subsonic.org that states what software license subsonic is under now, and I got curious and I thought I just as well could ask?
As your response in a earlier post in this thread:

Postby sindre_mehus » Mon Dec 15, 2008 6:01 pm
You are absolutely right, and I'm happy to announce that the license will change to an OSI-approved open-source one starting with the next release, 3.6, most likely GPL.

Cheers,
Sindre

you indicated that the license would change to GPL. Did you ever make the switch or does the software use a license compatible with GPL(LGPL,v2,v3 etc)?

The software is GPL up to 5.2, *maybe* 6.0beta1. It became closed source in 6.0b2 and beyond, partly due to the need to embed a commercial product within it (the video player, I think).

There was a thread over it (in Announcements, I think), and several weren't happy about it.

The 5.2 remains public on github, I think, for anybody to fork. There is a fork (libre-sonic), that is at least stable last I saw, but hasn't gotten much other attention.

I think if Subsonic stay open-source and in github without that video player, the people will help fixing bugs and adding new features (I think subsonic is better for music, there are better video players out there, like Streama or Plex)

In explaining his decision, Sindre said he almost never takes PullReqs from the outside. This was how he justified being able to change the license without having to inform other contributing developers and getting their permission first. In other projects that can be a major pain: i know one project that is trying to move from MIT to Apache 2.0 and they have to somehow locate some 342 developers from around the world to get their sign-off. I'll wager some are off the net, other probably have no recollection of even working on a project that old and large.

In an ideal world, everybody contributes good code that moves the project forward.

In the real world of OpenSource, being an OpenSource manager is a royal pain in the arse. One can spend so much time having to code review others' stuff that you never actually get around to building what you really want to build. You cease being a developer and turn into a manager...and most of us do open-source projects on the side because we want to stay sharp as developers. Meanwhile, those that contributed and get ignored or rejected just walk away from the project entirely, in spite of how much they liked using it. Bitter feelings on all sides.

So I can't blame him, or any OS team, for not wanting to have that happy-go-lucky "CONTRIBUTING.md" file.

acroyear wrote:In explaining his decision, Sindre said he almost never takes PullReqs from the outside. This was how he justified being able to change the license without having to inform other contributing developers and getting their permission first. In other projects that can be a major pain: i know one project that is trying to move from MIT to Apache 2.0 and they have to somehow locate some 342 developers from around the world to get their sign-off. I'll wager some are off the net, other probably have no recollection of even working on a project that old and large.

In an ideal world, everybody contributes good code that moves the project forward.

In the real world of OpenSource, being an OpenSource manager is a royal pain in the arse. One can spend so much time having to code review others' stuff that you never actually get around to building what you really want to build. You cease being a developer and turn into a manager...and most of us do open-source projects on the side because we want to stay sharp as developers. Meanwhile, those that contributed and get ignored or rejected just walk away from the project entirely, in spite of how much they liked using it. Bitter feelings on all sides.

So I can't blame him, or any OS team, for not wanting to have that happy-go-lucky "CONTRIBUTING.md" file.

Oh, I see :/ I'm not a dev so I don't know how it goes on the other side.