Startups Embrace Fair Source Licensing as Alternative to Open Source
A growing number of startups are adopting a new "fair source" licensing model to share their core code without the commercial restrictions of traditional open source licenses.
A three-billion-dollar startup named Sentry leads a growing movement of companies adopting a new software licensing paradigm called "fair source." This new category aims to bridge the gap between fully open and proprietary software, offering a distinct definition, terminology, and governance model. Alongside Sentry, several other startups, including GitButler, embrace this approach to align with the open software community without using traditional open source licenses.
The fair source model emerges as a direct response to the commercial limitations of open source software. Sentry's head of open source, Chad Whitacre, points out that open source serves primarily as a distribution and development model rather than a business model, placing severe restrictions on how companies monetize their work. While many highly successful open source projects exist, they usually serve as lower-level infrastructure components rather than core products, forcing companies to either adopt restrictive copyleft licenses or abandon open source entirely.
With the fair source license, companies carve out a safe space to share access to their core products rather than just basic infrastructure components. Sentry itself previously transitioned from a permissive open source license to a more restrictive source-available license in 2019 to protect its commercial interests. The fair source approach allows businesses to maintain control over their hard work while still providing valuable transparency and code access to users and developers.