Fair Source Definition
Fair Source is an alternative to closed source, allowing you to safely share access to your core products. Fair Source Software (FSS):
- is publicly available to read;
- allows use, modification, and redistribution with minimal restrictions to protect the producer’s business model; and
- undergoes delayed Open Source publication (DOSP).
The intention is for the first point to be a bright line, and for the second to invite exploration. We expect Fair Source licenses to emerge and evolve and shake out into a few clear winners over time, as companies apply Fair Source within their own particular business context.
Delayed Open Source Publication (DOSP) is the practice of distributing or publicly deploying software under a proprietary license at first, then subsequently and in a planned fashion publishing that software’s source code under an Open Source license.
The third point is also intended as a bright line, and a key differentiator of Fair Source from Open Core and other approaches. Delayed Open Source publication (DOSP) is a concept established by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). It is in keeping with OSI's public-benefit mandate to "persuade organizations and software authors to distribute source software freely they otherwise would not distribute." DOSP ensures that if a Fair Source company goes out of business, or develops its products in an undesired direction, the community or another company can pick up and move forward. Will this be meaningful in practice? Again, time will tell.
Why Fair Source?
The purpose of Fair Source is to legitimize the practice of companies meaningfully sharing access to the code for their core software products while retaining control of their roadmap and business model, without confusing this with Free and Open Source Software. Fair Source companies value user freedom and developer sustainability. Quite often, we maintain and contribute both financially and in other ways to genuine community-governed FOSS projects alongside our commercial Fair Source offerings.
Who is behind Fair Source?
Fair Source began as an initiative of Sentry in 2024, in response to a 2023 call-to-action from Chef co-founder Adam Jacob. Fair Source is managed on GitHub. Governance and process documentation is in the README.