There are more and more open source DevTools startups. I’ve interviewed dozens. But I am still confused about open source licenses. So I decided to ask questions to two people who actually understand them: my friends Eric and Matt - founders of open source background jobs tool Trigger.dev.

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What we discuss:

Two Key Questions for License Selection
What are the benefits of permissive licenses?
What are the main licenses?
Why shouldn’t you write your own (open source) license?
What is Copyleft?
Post Open Source" Movement

(00:50) - Open Source Licensing
(18:18) - Protective Licensing
(23:12) - Copy Left Concept
(43:30) - Wordpress

Trigger:

Eric Allam - https://x.com/maverickdotdev
Matt Aitken - https://x.com/mattaitken
Trigger.dev https://trigger.dev/
JSON Hero https://jsonhero.io/

Licenses

MIT License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License - Matt’s “most permissive license”
Apache-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_License - “Like MIT but with trademarks”
FSL / Fair Source License https://fair.io/ - created by Sentry
Heather Meeker - Open Source Licencing expert https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathermeeker/
A practical guide to Open Source Licencing https://www.amazon.co.uk/Open-Source-Business-Practical-Licensing/dp/1544737645

References

Sentry https://sentry.io/welcome/
Redis https://redis.io/
Valkey https://valkey.io/
Clickhouse https://clickhouse.com/
Background to Continue.dev and PearAI https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/30/y-combinator-is-being-criticized-after-it-backed-an-ai-startup-that-admits-it-basically-cloned-another-ai-startup/

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Episode description

How not to do Open Source Licensing, with Trigger.dev founders Matt Aitken and Eric Allam

Episode description