Co-operative Software Licenses

Technology Licenses
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I believe that co-operatives should be using co-operative software and that co-ops depending on services and infrastructure provided by big tech undermines the 4th co-operative principal of autonomy.

By co-operative software I mean software that is released under terms that either enforce co-operation and sharing and do not allow code to be privatised (made proprietary) or code that is released under terms that dictate that if the code is used to run a business the nature of the business must be a co-operative.

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NOTE: The diagram above doesn’t include software with a CLA, copyfarleft and copyleft software with a CLA that allows it to be relicensed as non-co-operative software wouldn’t fall under the description of co-operative software.

I’m only aware of one example of a copyfarleft code base being used to run co-ops, CoopCycle:

They developed and have released their code under the CoopCycle License.

The other type of co-operative software, of which there are a lot of examples, is copyleft / libre / free / GNU software:

our goal was to give people liberty, and to encourage cooperation, to permit people to cooperate… you’ve got to share and share alike. The changes that you make we have to be allowed to share. So, it’s a two-way cooperation, which is real cooperation.

Copyleft / libre / free software is open source software, however not all open source software is copyleft / libre / free software, much if it is released under permissive / libertarian terms for example the Apache / BSD / MIT / X11 licenses — this is the type of open source software that corporations love because they are allowed to privatise and make the code proprietary, this is the only type of open source software that corporations such as Apple will use.

I’d be interested in working with others to see if we can further develop and define co-operative software, this is also something that I intend to mention at Co-op Congress in July 2025 at the “Why aren’t we controlling our own tech?” session with Cory Doctorow.

The copyleft and copyfarleft licenses I’d consider as co-operative licenses are:

  1. GPL (copyleft)
  2. AGPL (copyleft)
  3. CC BY-SA (copyleft)
  4. CoopCycle (copyfarleft)
  5. Peer Production (copyfarleft)

Which licenses, that are in use, are missing from this list?

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Thanks for this Chris, I think there is something really powerful here.

When we were making Reclaiming Work about the work of CoopCycle and I learned about how their software model was reserved for co-ops I was crazy impressed. There is something very radical in prioritising your political outlook not only in the actual project aims but also in the code itself.

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I’m of the view that licenses / licensing that allows code to be removed from the commons shouldn’t be deemed co-operative — as far as I’m concerned this is akin to demutualisation, on this basis, the Cooperative Software License wouldn’t qualify as it:

Allows projects to maintain an open source base while negotiating separate commercial terms.

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big fan of the hippocratic license

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Are you aware of any projects that are in use that use the Hippocratic License?

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This looks like a decent attempt to tackle the long standing problem of developers not being adequately compensated for their work. Presumably any cooperative license worth its salt would seek to address this issue?

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we used it for the trans dimension!

in very small world things i did a talk last week in edinburgh with someone who turned out to be the authors’ partner - so im gonna hopefully have a chat with her soon about it

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I don’t think that the best way to ensure people are paid for their work is through licenses, if that is the aim then developing and charging for proprietary software is probably the answer? :woman_shrugging:

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Haha. You neatly avoided the question. So I’ll put it differently. If the option of producing software in multiple versions, as outlined in the article at Unveiling the Cooperative Commons License: A Holistic Overview of Fair Code, Dual Licensing, and Future Trends - DEV Community is not compatible with your take on what a suitable license should/should not allow, how do you address the challenge of effectively compensating developers for their work when they are engaged in creating cooperative software?
Also, if a developer is releasing both an open ‘community’ version of a product and a commercial version, that doesn’t necessarily mean that software is being “removed from the commons”. Indeed, it could well be the case that without the commercial product generating revenue for the developer, the software would never be in the commons at all?

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I’m personally not in favour of dual licensing. Projects that use a AGPL license without a CLA or dual licensing and which pay their developers includes Nextcloud — it is possible.

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