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.

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

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/