Following Campsite's acquisition by Notion and subsequent winding down of operations, the team has released their codebase to the public. However, this release has ignited a significant debate within the developer community regarding licensing and the true meaning of open source.
License Controversy
The release of Campsite's codebase under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license has drawn criticism from the developer community. Despite being labeled as open source, the non-commercial restriction conflicts with traditional open source definitions. Many developers point out that Creative Commons licenses are not typically recommended for software projects, creating confusion about usage rights and implementation.
If the source code is publicly available, that is open source. What you mean is that it is not FOSS (Free and Open Source Software).
Acquisition Context
The release comes in the wake of Campsite's acquisition by Notion, occurring just five months after their initial Show HN launch. The quick transition from launch to acquisition has raised questions in the community about startup trajectories and business sustainability. Some speculate that the restrictive licensing terms may be tied to the acquisition agreement to prevent potential competition.
Community Response and Future Development
The developer community has expressed mixed reactions to the codebase release. While many appreciate the educational value of accessing such a comprehensive workplace collaboration tool's source code, concerns have been raised about the practical limitations of the non-commercial license. Several developers have suggested that adopting a more permissive license, such as GPL or AGPL, would better serve the community and ensure the project's potential for future development.
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| Exploring the Campsite application builder interface reflects the potential future development tools made available through their open source codebase |
Technical Implementation
The codebase reveals a sophisticated technical stack, including integration with services like S3 for storage, Pusher for real-time updates, Imgix for CDN, and 100ms for video conferencing. While the code is available for study and non-commercial use, the extensive third-party service dependencies highlight the complexity of modern web applications and the challenges of self-hosting such systems.
In conclusion, while Campsite's codebase release represents a valuable learning resource for developers, the licensing choice has sparked important discussions about the meaning of open source and the balance between commercial interests and community benefit in software development.
Reference: Campsite: A Guide to Setting Up and Running the Open Source Version