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

"The BUSL license adheres to the spirit of what many open source licenses are about: Users can self-host and modify the code without paying the creator a dime. They just can’t commercialize the product as a competing service....

For now, the main recommended fair source license is the Functional Source License (FSL), which Sentry itself launched last year as a simpler alternative to BUSL. However, BUSL itself has also now been designated fair source, as has the all-new Fair Core License (FCL) which was contributed by Keygen, both of which are included to support the needs of different projects....

all fair source licenses should have three core stipulations: It [the code] should be publicly available to read; allow third parties to use, modify, and redistribute with “minimal restrictions“; and have a delayed open source publication (DOSP) stipulation, meaning it converts to a true open source license after a predefined period of time. With Sentry’s FSL license, that period is two years; for BUSL, the default period is four years...."