One of the problems is that if your target market is other devs, there is a knee jerk demand that your software should be foss and free (as in beer).
I hope that we'll see a move away from foss licensing to source available licenses over the next few years and an increased acceptance of this model in more areas.
Dropping the non discrimination clauses in open source licenses while giving licensees the right to view and modify the source and integrate it with their own software, but not the right to redistribute, is to me a good middle ground for a lot of projects. This would allow developers to charge different rates (or not charge) depending on the licensee and ensure that they can capture more of the value from their work if they need to do so in the future, or if their project becomes popular. It works for Epic with Unreal Engine and more generally in the game industry where it is common to have source available licenses.
While free software has its place in certain areas (academia, government, hobby projects), and I agree you should be able to audit and fix the software that runs on your own devices, it also has downsides and I don't think foss licensing should always, or even usually, be the default outside of these cases.
"...giving licensees the right to view and modify the source and integrate it with their own software, but not the right to redistribute, is to me a good middle ground for a lot of projects."
Licensees have that right with (most) free software licenses.
The downside of this is that, if the owner, Epic say, is not interested in changes you need, then you cannot distribute those changes no matter how valuable they are to you or anyone else. Further, you will have to maintain those changes in the face of whatever architectural differences the owner decides to introduce.[1] You are in the same position as the good old days of proprietary software (Believe me, you could absolutely pay IBM to make changes its OS's. If you were, say, Ford.) except that you get to see the source. Yay.
[1] Yes, you should be expected to maintain your own changes if the original maintainers don't want to. However, that's significantly more difficult if the owner is uninterested in your features or is actively trying to break you. (Microsoft waves in the distance.)
> One of the problems is that if your target market is other devs, there is a knee jerk demand that your software should be foss and free (as in beer).
Another popular strategy is to open source just enough bits, but not all of it: Previously named "open-core", pioneered by Elastic (who have since moved to SSPLv1) and GitLab, but is now accepted as open-source, anyway. Tailscale falls in this category. https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/commercial-open-sourc...
> I hope that we'll see a move away from foss licensing to source available licenses over the next few years and an increased acceptance of this model in more areas.
Nouveau open source strategy is to have a strangle hold on the software itself (think Chrome / Android) by keeping the development tightly guarded along with the business interests of the original sponsor. Typically, these projects are open sourced to commodotise competitor's advantages (Symbian/Blackberry in the case of Android, IE in the case of Chrome): https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
Open source, in particular FOSS (free-as-in-beer), in itself is a business strategy (but not a business model) if one knows how to use it to their advantage (as the author points out, many startups doing so these days): https://a16z.com/2019/01/22/what-comes-after-open-source/
I hope that we'll see a move away from foss licensing to source available licenses over the next few years and an increased acceptance of this model in more areas.
Dropping the non discrimination clauses in open source licenses while giving licensees the right to view and modify the source and integrate it with their own software, but not the right to redistribute, is to me a good middle ground for a lot of projects. This would allow developers to charge different rates (or not charge) depending on the licensee and ensure that they can capture more of the value from their work if they need to do so in the future, or if their project becomes popular. It works for Epic with Unreal Engine and more generally in the game industry where it is common to have source available licenses.
While free software has its place in certain areas (academia, government, hobby projects), and I agree you should be able to audit and fix the software that runs on your own devices, it also has downsides and I don't think foss licensing should always, or even usually, be the default outside of these cases.