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Some startups are going ‘fair source’ to avoid the pitfalls of open source licensing
New alternative category to 'closed source' could help companies monetize software in the open -- without going all-in on open source.
Image Credits: SentrySentry, an app performance monitoring platform that helps companies such as Microsoft and Disney detect and diagnose buggy software, was initially available under a permissive BSD 3-Clause open source license. Nonetheless, the episode sparked Adam Jacob, CEO and co-founder of DevOps startup System Initiative, to challenge someone to develop a brand and manifesto to cover the type of licenses that Sentry wanted to align itself with — similar to what the OSI has been doing for the past quarter century with open source, but with a more commercially attractive gradient. “Our governance at this point is scaled to the size of the initiative, so it’s myself and Zeke, our decision-making is public on GitHub, and anybody’s free to jump in,” Whitacre said, adding that there could be scope to set up independent oversight in the future — though it’s not a priority right now.
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