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Sweetr is Fair Source

Sweetr is Fair Source

You've probably seen the pattern. A developer tool launches as MIT or Apache 2.0. It gets popular. Grows a community. Raises funding. Then one day, the license changes. The community feels blindsided. Heated GitHub issues follow. Blog posts explaining "why this is actually good for everyone" get published. Trust takes a hit.

We didn't want to go through that. So we didn't.

Born fair source

Sweetr has been fair source since day one. We picked the Functional Source License (FSL) ↗ before writing our first line of code. The same license used by Sentry ↗. No relicensing drama. No bait-and-switch.

We never called ourselves open source because we aren't. We're fair source. The distinction matters.

Open source means anyone can use, modify, and redistribute the code for any purpose, including building a competing product with your own work. Fair source means the code is public, you can read it, run it, modify it, self-host it. The only thing you can't do is use it to compete with us.

That felt like the right deal from the start.

Why not just go open source?

Because we've seen what happens.

A company releases a tool as open source. It gets traction. Then a cloud provider takes the code, hosts it as a managed service, and captures all the value without contributing anything back. Or a well-funded competitor forks the project and outspends the original creators on marketing and sales.

The original team is left with the maintenance burden and none of the revenue. Eventually, they either relicense (and break the community's trust) or run out of runway.

We didn't want to play that game. We wanted to build something sustainable from the beginning, without having to change the rules later.

What this means for you

If you're using Sweetr to improve your team's delivery, nothing about the license affects you. You can:

  • Self-host for free, forever. Run Sweetr on your own infrastructure at no cost.
  • Read every line of code. The entire codebase is public on GitHub ↗. Audit it. Understand exactly what it does with your data.
  • Contribute. Open issues, submit PRs, suggest features. We build this with the community, not behind closed doors.

The only restriction: you can't take our code and build a competing product with it. That's it.

And after two years, every release automatically converts to Apache 2.0. So even that restriction has an expiration date.

Sustainability without compromise

The FSL lets us stay true to what we care about. Code that's public and auditable. A product the community can self-host for free. Pricing that doesn't require a procurement process. And a business model that doesn't depend on locking you in.

We think more developer tools should consider this path. You don't have to choose between building in the open and building a sustainable business. Fair source gives you both.

Try Sweetr

We're building the open platform for engineering performance. Fair source, free to self-host, no surveillance, no $50/seat price tag.