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87 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
87 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
ArtCraft License (WIP)
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======================
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(**Warning**: This isn't a real lawyery license full of legitimate legalese yet, but we'll take care of that ASAP.)
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ArtCraft is a form of "fair source" software. It's like [free beer](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/free_as_in_beer)
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in that we give you the code, but there are a few small limitations on what you can do with it.
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First, what you *can* do with ArtCraft:
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> 1. You do not have to pay us to use ArtCraft. It's free.
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>
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> 2. You can back up, copy, modify, compile, and use the code for your own private personal purposes.
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>
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> 3. You can do anything you want with the media you create with ArtCraft. Generated assets are yours.
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What you *can't do* with ArtCraft:
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> 1. You cannot sell the ArtCraft software commercially (eg. as your own software).
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>
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> 2. You cannot use the ArtCraft code to develop a competing business or product (eg. selling AI image and video tools).
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>
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> 3. You cannot fork ArtCraft and remove ArtCraft community, donation links, or paid model services. We intend to
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> make money to improve ArtCraft for everyone.
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>
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> 4. You cannot use the ArtCraft name, logo, or mascot characters to promote your business without permission.
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This license means you can see what we're doing and not be at risk of having the rug pulled out from under
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you (eg. if our founders die, if our business collapses, if zombies or space aliens invade). It also gives
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you a really great way to customize the software or lend a hand in reporting (or even fixing) bugs.
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Our desire is to support artists, designers, and filmmakers. We want to help you build your own creative studios
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and businesses. We want to give you creative software you can use forever.
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ArtCraft is free. We do offer models available through us where you can pay us and support our development, but we also
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offer the ability for you to use other providers - and we'll keep adding more options so you have maximum flexibility.
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## Our Promise
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- All development and business plans will be communicated openly with the community.
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- Except for minor test scripts or a few small places where we might need to use licensed 3rd party code, all of
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our engineering efforts will live in a single publicly available monorepo. You can see everything we do and even
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benefit from using it for personal use. We plan on building a lot more than what you see today, and you'll get
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all of it.
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- We will not "rug pull" our users. If our business shuts down, gets acquired, or otherwise changes, the tools
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we create will always continue to function in the same way.
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- If the business ends and our founders quit working in this space, we'll make it so the software transitions
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to an OSI-approved open source license. (We don't intend to quit!)
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## Why not OSI Open Source?
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Philosophical answer: The OSI is an industry body led by hyperscalers. They poach from open source all the time, yet
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hyperscaler systems and code (AWS, GCP, YouTube, etc.) remain closed source. The tiniest nuggets are open, but the vast
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machinery surrounding it - systems, user behaviors, funnels, at-scale moneymakers - is totally closed.
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Practical answer: OSI licenses make it exceptionally challenging to grow big things commercially. And many of
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the licenses leave room for hyperscalers to reach in and cherry-pick pieces for themselves that they can better
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commercialize than the original authors.
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Then there's completely open source software that doesn't even attempt to be a business.
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We love software like Blender, but (1) developing ArtCraft is our full-time job, (2) we want to build something at scale
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that is much bigger than what you presently see, and (3) this will eventually become much more capital intensive than
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just writing code - we want to train novel models that work directly in conjunction with the user interface.
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If and when we do get to scale, we intend to keep every bit of our work in the open, including the models. Available
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for use, inspection, learning, fitting onto consumer GPU hardware, and more.
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Not having a way to make money is unfortunately what killed Stability.ai. Stability.ai walked so that others could
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eventually run. (Black Forest Labs, et al.) We're not egotistical enough to count ourselves in that party yet, but we
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believe in the original Stability.ai ethos and that their model can work with a few tweaks.
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We want to build big and incredible tools the world hasn't seen before. We want to keep them free and entirely source
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available. You don't have to pay us, but if you do, all of your investment goes right back into the engineering
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and the tools. We're writing code you can clone and keep.
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## Inspiration
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We took inspiration for this from [Fair Source](https://fair.io/), [Fair Code](https://faircode.io/),
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the [Defold License](https://defold.com/license/), and Hacker News discussions. The folks at Obsidian
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have some pretty good thoughts on this as well.
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~ Brandon Thomas
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