Pick a software license!

[ghost]

First priority before any designs are drawn up, or code is written, should be picking a software license.

This will help clarify ownership, copyright, and provide legal protection.

My personal suggestion is GNU GPLv3:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

You may copy, distribute and modify the software as long as you track changes/dates in source files. 
Any modifications to or software including (via compiler) GPL-licensed code must also be made 
available under the GPL along with build & install instructions.

Some resources to help explore options:
https://choosealicense.com/
https://tldrlegal.com/

[Macr0Nerd]

GPLv3 definitely seems like a solid choice. Mainly, let's stay away from MIT to prevent HFs from trying to commodify and sell our software and pass it off ac their own. Maybe we can use the Apache license so if they try to sell our software it's clear that it's ours and it's free!

[oscarwumit]

The 3-Clause BSD License is also a good candidate.
https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause
This license grants open-source access but requires permission from the creators if someone would like to promote derivative products in the name of original creators.

This website explains several popular licenses for open-source projects:
https://www.kiuwan.com/comparison-popular-open-source-licenses/

[DrewMcArthur]

here’s a good tool to look at options!

https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/

my only preference is that the license doesn’t allow privatization. anybody that uses this repo needs to do so transparently and sharing their derivative works.

imo we should find a way to democratize pull requests. my suggestion: set up a timeline for an issue, and once the options for pull requests are up and after a discussion period or whatever, whichever pull request has the most thumbs up gets merged in. we should get that process done first though, i’ll open a new issue for that.

[mikedonovan2011]

I don't know anything but can we have a custom license that explicitly bars certain entities from using code therein.

[Macr0Nerd]

That's not very F/LOSS tho

…

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[vito-c]

I think a really important part of this project is going to be picking your license. You are going to want to pick something that fits tightly with your goals. I am thinking your main purposes it to create a set of tools to help the everyday investor get a level playing field with the HF. So you want to make sure that the HF are not able to steal all of your hard earned work.

WE can protect the code that we write by the license that we pick. I do not know all of the specifics here but it's definitely worth sometime thinking about what exactly we want to achieve. Do we want to create an open source project that ANYONE (including HF) is free to use and incorporate into their tech stacks. Or do we want to create a dual license software where companies are allowed to purchase the right to use our software and everyday individuals are allowed to use our software freely.

Here are some links on licenses:
https://choosealicense.com/licenses/
https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/9805/can-i-license-my-project-with-an-open-source-license-but-disallow-commercial-use

I am not suggesting a choice but rather trying to start a discussion. I also think it would be best to figure out which license(s) to pick before writing too much code.

[DrewMcArthur]

@Macr0Nerd that’s the paradox of tolerance - i’m not against barring citadel from using our code for company purposes 🤷🏼

[Macr0Nerd]

@Macr0Nerd that’s the paradox of tolerance - i’m not against barring citadel from using our code for company purposes 🤷🏼

That goes against the idea of open source tho and free software

[joshgachnang]

Most of these licenses aren't going to do anything towards hedge funds using it, because they wouldn't be redistributing this code. You do something custom that bars them specifically from using them or something, but then you're likely going to need a lawyer. But adding some protection so they can't package it up and sell it is a good idea.

Personally I'd lean towards the Apache 2 license. It has some patent protections built in and is fairly permissive.

[DrewMcArthur]

@Macr0Nerd that’s the paradox of tolerance - i’m not against barring citadel from using our code for company purposes 🤷🏼

That goes against the idea of open source tho and free software

yes, hence the paradox.

[vito-c]

@DrewMcArthur @Macr0Nerd It's a great discussion to have. I think we should really discuss what the goal of our software is going to be. Is our goal to level the playing field and democratize data gathering for the everyday investor or is to create free open source tools for everyone to use?

I think our goal pretty clearly lies more in the democratization of data and leveling the playing field for the everyday investor.

The reason I think a dual license is optimal is because we are able to offer the tools free to our target audience. We could then decide how we want to manage the license for hedge funds. I understand that would mean we are no longer completely free and open source but that is the trade off we would need to make.

[mikestreb]

These guys were cool with effectively stealing millions of dollars from individuals, not sure they are going to give a shit about licenses.

I’m not concerned that HF would repackage and sell what comes from this. They would use it to steal more from us.

Honestly, this is 100% my biggest concern with this project. A ton of really great and smart people build a very powerful tool to level the playing field and then the HF get their hands on it and effectively get what they were going to pay Claire $250k a year for free. And now the playing field isn’t level again.

[vito-c]

https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/
lead me to here but this was just me clicking along:

RECOMMENDED LICENSE
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, for noncommercial purposes only. If others modify or adapt the material, they must license the modified material under identical terms.

I'm just copying this out of one of the links I pasted above because I think it's very relevant.

You can dual-license your software. This is a very common model: you offer your software, open-source, under the terms of a copyleft license. Anyone can use this, for any purpose, but since a copyleft license requires that the project developed around your software be distributed under the same (or similar) license, using a copyleft-licensed project for commercial purposes is often more difficult than with a permissive license.

At the same time, you advertise that you also offer your project under a closed-source license that offers the licensee more freedom (and the ability to not have to redistribute their software as open-source too). The catch? You sell these licenses, rather than giving them away. If someone wants to pay you to be able to use your software for commercial purposes, you sell them one of these licenses, and you both win.

If you just want to disallow any commercial activity using your software, no matter whether they're paying or not, you have two options:

Use a license that disallows commercial activity, and accept that you can't truthfully call your project open-source or free software.
Use a copyleft license (such as the GNU GPL) and accept that although it'll be more difficult to use your software for commercial purposes, it may still happen.

but I don't think even GNU GPL is good enough for our public license. I think we should use something that specifically prohibits commercial use.

[DrewMcArthur]

I’m not concerned that HF would repackage and sell what comes from this. They would use it to steal more from us.

Honestly, this is 100% my biggest concern with this project. A ton of really great and smart people build a very powerful tool to level the playing field and then the HF get their hands on it and effectively get what they were going to pay Claire $250k a year for free. And now the playing field isn’t level again.

they can’t sell it if it’s already free. the hardest part will be organizing everyone in a way that’s effective.

[vito-c]

they can’t sell it if it’s already free. the hardest part will be organizing everyone in a way that’s effective.

If they have access to utilize the source then it removes any leveling of the playing field.

[DrewMcArthur]

@vito-c, i know there’s one license that prohibits profiting from the repo; i wonder if there’s a way to require profit (or some proportion, sliding scale like taxes, etc) be redirected back to this project? (mastodon has a fund that pays for merged pull requests, for example)

i’m looking for creative solutions to the problem that @mikestreb lays out. they’re totally right it’s something we need to consider and be wary of

[mikestreb]

they can’t sell it if it’s already free. the hardest part will be organizing everyone in a way that’s effective.

The hardest part will be making sure we don’t build something the HF can use to become bigger/faster/stronger.

[mikestreb]

@vito-c, i know there’s one license that prohibits profiting from the repo; i wonder if there’s a way to require profit (or some proportion, sliding scale like taxes, etc) be redirected back to this project? (mastodon has a fund that pays for merged pull requests, for example)

i’m looking for creative solutions to the problem that @mikestreb lays out. they’re totally right it’s something we need to consider and be wary of

Will definitely need to be creative (I am drawing blanks). A license won’t stop HF. $100 million fines don’t stop them.

[ghost]

I can see for-sale dual licensing potentially causing conflicts / headaches:

• Who decides who is allowed to buy a license?
• Who gets the money from sales?

@mikestreb

were going to pay Claire $250k a year for free. And now the playing field isn’t level again.

But you can only extract so much useful information from a data feed. A HF could still pay Claire $250k, but they will be up 10% an additional profitablity instead of 30%. The comparative monetary gain between retail raders and the HF would decrease.

Then the beauty of copyleft is that the HF would be legally obligated to give us any improvements they made to the software.

[ImmaZoni]

I think this will be our best bet. Gives open opportunity to modify as you wish but also prevents privatization

[vito-c]

@mikestreb the license is our first defense. I realize it won't stop them at all but it will be a deterrent. And any future legal battles we are able to win to hurt them will help our end cause.

@divine-taco

I can see for-sale dual licensing potentially causing conflicts / headaches:
Who decides who is allowed to buy a license?

We decide by committee.

Who gets the money from sales?

We setup a foundation that gets the money that then invest that money using our software. Eventually making enough money to fund our own hedge funds so that we can sell our software to ourselves as we have now become the bad guys. But instead of being the bad guys we take our hedge fund money and use it to fund cancer research or pay for America's health care or feed the poor...

The way we really need to look at this license is do we want HF using and contributing to our software? Or do we want to cut out all commercial usage?

[zoox101]

Hello everyone,

I am a member of the mod team on the Discord channel and I am temporarily overseeing the GitHub repository as everything is getting settled. The leadership team will be meeting over the weekend to go over the survey results and plot a direction forward for this project. It is my intention to voice the concerns of the GitHub community in those discussions.

Getting a license in place for this project is my personal top priority, so I am choosing to start here. As soon as I get the approvals from leadership, I will put one in. I intend to advocate for GPLv3 for the following reasons:

1. Copyleft is an absolute must. My nightmare scenario is someone taking this project, slapping on a few extra features, and selling it to big name firms for a handsome profit. This project is meant to be built by the people for the people. I think copyleft is the best way to keep those intentions pure.

2. I don't want this project to become a business. The longer money stays out of it, the better. I would rather not have people worrying about selling licenses, warranties, or anything else. I would rather not involve lawyers to the furthest extent possible. Linux has made it pretty far on GPL. We can too.

3. My controversial opinion: Many of us are concerned about hedge funds taking this software and using it themselves, and for good reason. If everything goes well, they definitely will. However, I am not convinced that Wall Street using this software is a threat; on the contrary, I think it might actually be a goal. If hedge funds starts ripping out their multi-million dollar suites of proprietary software for something my Grandma can download off the internet for free, we will have done our jobs. Our goal is to level the playing field. Forcing Wall Street to begrudgingly embrace open source software might be the most level we can possibly get.

Those are my thoughts. They are not set in stone, and I am happy to keep the discussion going. There are lots of brilliant minds here, and I am hoping we will have the chance to build something great together.

Cheers

[vito-c]

@zoox101 where are these surveys?

[zoox101]

@vito-c they are in the README now