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

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/