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Licensing
You may have noticed that FastStream contains the following license.
Copyright © 2017-2024 Andrew S ([email protected])
All rights reserved.
The software is provided AS-IS with no warranties of any kind. This has been a hobby project of mine for the past six years. Don't expect my code to be great.
You must receive permission before using my code.
This means that you are not allowed to:
- Use FastStream's code in your own projects, whether it is proprietary software or open source.
- Redistribute the source code as-is or modified on any platform.
As this license is a restrictive license, FastStream does not qualify as open-source (instead, it is free source-available software). We are aware that FastStream has been mistakenly described as open-source by various third parties, and for that confusion we apologize. We rely on our users to share FastStream and grow our community, and we believe that it is important to ensure that there is no miscommunication between our users and the development team, hence the creation of this wiki page.
However, please note that this license is temporary. The current license was made in 2017 as a catch-all license to deter malicious copycats while FastStream was in active development. As the FastStream community has grown since then, we recognize that this license is too restrictive and are working to identify a license that would give more freedom while preventing the worst abuses.
Vast capabilities coupled with low entry barriers and subpar moderation make the extension ecosystem ripe for abusive behavior. Abusive extensions can collect your web history, inject ads on websites, exfiltrate passwords, and promote malware. One common tactic is to copy an existing extension with broad permissions, and modify it to include malicious code. This is why we have chosen to keep FastStream's restrictive license for the time being, so that we can legally compel extension stores, such as the Chrome Web Store, to take down malicious copies of FastStream.
We also do not want to give anyone the opportunity to sell parts of FastStream under a different name. FastStream is a free tool and we want to keep it that way for everyone. We also want to prevent the fragmentation of the FastStream community, which could happen if someone were to fork FastStream and create a competing version without contributing back to the main project.
We plan to institute a fair source licensing scheme once FastStream's active development period ends. Fair source licenses typically have the following features:
- Source code is publicly available to read
- Minimal modifications and redistribution is allowed with restrictions
- Will automatically turn into an Open Source license after a period of time
The specific license to be used will be determined in the near future. We are currently in the process of identifying the best license that balances the needs of the FastStream community with the need to prevent abuse.
If you see a violation of FastStream's license, please report it to us at [email protected]. Or you can make an issue request on the GitHub repository. We will take action to protect the FastStream community from abuse. Please note however, that we will NOT be taking action against users who have modified or forked FastStream for their own personal use. We will only take action against those who are violating the license in bad faith.
To ensure that we are transparent with our users, we will list all violations of the license which we have taken action against on this page.
- None :)