An open letter to the open source community
Software freedom with labor accountability.
We believe in sharing software. The ability to inspect source code, learn from it, modify it, and redistribute it has made extraordinary cooperation possible. We also believe the people whose labor makes that cooperation possible deserve a sustainable livelihood and a meaningful share of the value they create.
The Fair Labor License makes source code available to inspect, modify, and redistribute under its terms. Free operational use depends on compensation eligibility. Those outside its eligibility conditions must purchase a license.
The Open Source Initiative’s definition of “open source” provides an established framework for sharing software. FLL takes a different approach to one question that framework leaves open: how the economic benefits of shared software reach the people whose labor creates them.
We reject the premise that equal permission alone ensures equitable freedom. Where economic power is unequal, unrestricted access to contributed software can disproportionately enrich those who already control capital, while providing contributors and employees no guaranteed share of the gains.
Equal permission is not equal power
We live in an economy shaped by capitalism, unequal wealth, and concentrated ownership. An independent developer, a worker cooperative, and a multinational corporation may receive identical permission to use software. Their ability to turn that permission into wealth is profoundly different.
Organizations with capital, infrastructure, market access, and control over employees’ labor can incorporate freely contributed software into profitable products at enormous scale. The contributors whose work makes those products possible may receive nothing.
Employees may benefit from better tools, but they have no guaranteed claim to the resulting profits, higher wages, shorter hours, or greater control over their work. In workplaces where employees have little democratic control and decision-making authority rests with owners and executives, productivity gains can strengthen those who already hold power.
Software can be freely shared while the economic gains from its use remain concentrated.
How unrestricted use can reinforce inequality
Open source can support cooperation, education, independence, and public infrastructure. Those benefits matter. They do not make every use beneficial or every distribution of the gains fair.
Uncompensated contributions can also subsidize organizations whose practices harm individuals, undermine workers’ rights, or perpetuate discrimination. Lower software costs can increase profits without improving compensation or working conditions. Gains retained by owners can finance further expansion and concentrate economic and political power.
Contributors and employees can face the same underlying problem: their labor creates value, while others retain disproportionate control over how that value is used and distributed.
These outcomes are not inevitable consequences of every open source project. They are risks created by the interaction between freely contributed labor and unequal economic institutions.
A blind spot in equal permissions
The Open Source Initiative’s definition protects the ability to use, modify, and share software across people, groups, and fields of endeavor. These protections provide common ground for cooperation among people and organizations with very different interests.
Its focus is on the permissions a license grants. How economic power shapes the benefits of those permissions falls outside that framework. We see a blind spot here: equal access to software can coexist with profoundly unequal power to profit from it.
Identical terms can operate within a discriminatory system and reinforce its effects. Differences in wealth, bargaining power, and control over production remain even when everyone receives the same permissions. A licensing condition that accounts for those differences can help address an inequality that equal permissions alone leave unresolved.
We believe a license’s ethical value depends on how it serves people. Meeting an established definition of “open source” does not, by itself, make a license more equitable than other forms of source-available licensing—particularly where the economic power imbalances described here remain unaddressed. Different approaches deserve consideration on the merits of the freedoms they protect, the livelihoods they sustain, and the outcomes they enable.
Open source communities already support maintainers through funding, paid work, and other forms of cooperation. FLL builds on that concern for sustainability by making compensation a licensing condition for users outside its eligibility boundaries.
That choice deliberately places FLL outside OSI’s definition. We use “source available” to make the distinction clear, while pursuing a shared interest in software that people can study, improve, and sustain. FLL adds labor accountability to the terms on which that cooperation takes place.
Unfunded maintenance creates shared security risks
Software being free to use does not make it free to maintain. Reviewing changes, updating dependencies, investigating vulnerabilities, and issuing security fixes require sustained, skilled labor.
When contributors cannot afford that work, the consequences extend beyond the project. Businesses, public services, and individuals can become dependent on software whose maintainers lack the time and resources to keep it secure. Commercial dependence can grow without a corresponding commitment to fund its upkeep. The 2024 Tidelift maintainer survey documents widespread unpaid maintenance and the need for financial support.
AI makes this imbalance more urgent. It can accelerate software development and vulnerability discovery, while generating additional code and reports that require careful review. Finding more potential problems does not create the capacity to investigate and fix them. The curl project’s security policy, for example, requires submitters to verify AI-generated findings and take responsibility for their reports.
A system that scales consumption without sustaining maintenance transfers costs to contributors and risks to everyone who depends on their work.
FLL seeks to make compensation an obligation for users outside its eligibility conditions. Payment alone cannot guarantee security, but expecting continuing maintenance without providing a sustainable livelihood undermines the foundation on which security depends.
What FLL changes
FLL connects free operational use to compensation eligibility.
Under FLL v1.2, individuals with a net worth below US$5 million qualify for free use. Organizations qualify when their CEO’s (or highest-paid executive’s) total annual compensation is no more than fifteen times that of their median employee, subject to the license’s definitions and documentation requirements. Those outside these conditions must obtain a paid license before operational use. Read the full license for the governing terms.
These conditions address a specific part of economic inequality. They do not certify every aspect of an organization’s labor practices, eliminate discrimination, or give employees democratic control of their workplace.
They offer a way to connect the commercial value of shared software with compensation for the people who create it.
Why “source available”
We use “source available” as a conventional description of FLL’s departure from OSI’s criteria. The license itself defines the rights and responsibilities: access to source, permission to modify and redistribute under its terms, and compensation conditions for free operational use.
Our purpose is to make shared software support a fairer economy. Software freedom should account for the people who create its value—and the power of those who capture it.
A different approach to sharing software
FLL offers one approach to connecting shared software with sustainable compensation. Its purpose is to give contributors a licensing option that accounts for the economic conditions in which their work is used.
The cooperation that makes shared software possible is worth sustaining. FLL extends that principle to the livelihoods of the people behind it.
Fair Labor License