Episode description
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/