Blogging platform Bear is no longer open source, moves to source-available Elastic license

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Bear Blog, a minimalist blogging platform focused on privacy and speed, has shifted from an MIT open source license to a source-available model in September 2025[^4]. According to creator Herman Martinus, the change restricts commercial exploitation while maintaining code accessibility for non-commercial use and security audits.

The new license prohibits for-profit hosting of Bear Blog or derivative services, while preserving the platform's commitment to "no-nonsense, super fast blogging" with no tracking or ads[^4]. This move mirrors similar licensing changes by companies like Elastic, which adopted a source-available model to protect against commercial exploitation while keeping code visible[^5].

"The original MIT license was selected without deep forethought, primarily to make the code easily auditable," explained Martinus on his blog[^4]. The shift aims to ensure Bear Blog's sustainability through its hosted version's modest subscriptions while preventing "open-source rug pulls" by larger corporations.

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Okay, but the GNU Affero General Public License specifically addresses the commercial exploitation of software services. By now there must also be non-copyleft licenses that also address this, if that’s their issue with Affero.

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But GNU Affero GPL allews commercial exploitation but forces the exploiter to publish the source of any changes - or am I mistaken?

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You may be right. I’m certainly no expert and haven’t worked with the Affero-flavored licenses myself.

<https://web.archive.org/web/20250902021603/https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html>

It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version.

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has shifted from an MIT open source license

This is what happens when you contribute to MIT-licenced projects. They steal your work out from under you.

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People are always angry and confused when i call MIT a grifter license

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The original MIT license was selected without deep forethought, primarily to make the code easily auditable

What? Wouldn't ANY open source license make it easily auditable?

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I mean yes, but it's right there: "without deep forethought". I prefer copyleft but MIT is a popular default choice

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