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Licensing

All software developed for Artconomy shall be Open Source. For new projects we spearhead, unless a strong reason is present, software shall be licensed under the AGPLv3 license.

Our preference is to select Open Source technologies and solutions whenever possible. Closed Source software should be used only as a last resort, and team members should be on the lookout for viable open source solutions to jump to. We aim to upstream changes to our dependencies where possible, contributing fixes so that others can benefit and maintenance is shared among the community.

Open Source, including copyleft licenses, are important tools for keeping the power of software in the hands of individuals and communities rather than making software a tool of coercive power. While it is possible to use open source tools coercively, the fact that strong open source licenses (such as AGPLv3) require contribution back in kind makes these tools less suitable for rent-seeking behavior as they can be copied and used to make new installations and solutions.

Our commitment to using licenses like AGPLv3, while eschewing the use of Contributor License Agreements1 acts as a check on power and is informed by our values of Openness and Freedom.

Examples of Open Source Usage at Artconomy

  • Artconomy.com itself is open source
  • Our servers are based on Linux.
  • We use OBS as a streaming service client.
  • We use open source software libraries and Databases like Django, PostgreSQL, Vue.js, and Vuetify.
  • We use Listaflow to handle recurring checklists. We have contributed to it heavily.
  • Our main repositories are hosted on GitLab (some historical repos are still on GitHub)
  • When we can, we break off elements of Artconomy as independent libraries that others might be able to use. For example:
    • Short-stuff, a library for URL shortcodes
    • Our line item code, while perhaps less generalizable, provides an example of fixed point calculations, which are counterintuitively complex.
  • We use deployment tools like Ansible, as well as Kubernetes, depending on our needs.

Additionally, we find ways to promote Open Source projects that are helpful to us, either recommending them, assisting with their use, or contributing to them. For example:

  • We recommend usage of Krita where we can
  • We keep running channels in the Discord to help those switching to Linux
  • We contribute to PostyBirb and assist with technical issues in their Discord.

Where Open Source Might not be Used

There are some cases where selecting Open Source is not practicable. Here are some examples where Open Source Software is not currently used at Artconomy:

  • Messaging Software: Discord is currently used as our main community communications hub. It is the main messanger used by the artistic community we serve, and network effects make choosing another solution non-viable at present.
  • Social Media Sites: Similar to messaging software, we don't get full control over whether social media or other platforms we engage in are open source. However, we do favor open source social media offerings, such as Mastodon and BlueSky.
  • Shared Canvas Software: Currently, we use Magma for our shared canvas drawing sessions. This is because it is the easiest to work with for this purpose. However, DrawPile could be used instead if Magma becomes unsuitable, and we periodically re-evaluate it to see if longstanding issues we've had with it have been resolved. It has hosted a few of the doodle sessions in the past.
  • Showcase Streaming Software: We currently use Piczel.tv for this. There is not a good open source alternative that we know of, and even if there were we probably couldn't host it well enough on our current budget.
  • Payment Processors: Things like Stripe or Authorize.net are black box payment processing software required to interact with credit cards in the real world.

  1. There are some contributor license agreements which focus only on things like indemnification. However, in practice most of these agreements assign copyright to the project owners, which is later used to 'rug-pull' a project-- the source is closed and contributions become locked away from those who contributed them. We view this as unethical. ↩