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Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

src.sourcegraph.com

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Re: Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

#51

Post by sqs »

ultramancool wrote: post #46
durin42 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, a question that immediately arose for me out of reading that license: what's the definition of a user? If I wanted to use this to self-host my own projects, is everyone on the internet a user? Am I limited to 15 collaborators on my project unless I pony up? Is that 15 collaborators over all of time, or within some time interval?

I really do not like this license, it prevents usage with other licensing models near completely. Say I want to integrate their code intelligence into gitlab community (MIT licensed), I'm shit out of luck, even if I were to create a relicensed version of gitlab under the Sourcegraph license, it seems as though it'd be unclear who gets what fees and who counts as a "user" in this case. Would it force me as a devleoper…

Sourcegraph CEO here. Fair Source is intended to allow companies to distribute both the product and source code, and still charge for the product. Fair Source is not an open-source license. Just as with GPL, there are restrictions around your usage of the code that are intended to produce longer-term benefits (in our case, making sure we can build the best product and have a sustainable business).

We have had it reviewed thoroughly by multiple lawyers in several countries, and it was drafted by Heather Meeker, who is extremely well respected. I am not a lawyer myself, but the "hypothetical loophole" scenario you described would involve you making a derivative work of our code—kind of like photocopying Harry Potter and adding some doodles in the margins, and reselling that. That would not circumvent any license or copyright situation.

Re: Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

#52

Post by ultramancool »

sqs wrote: post #51
ultramancool wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really do not like this license, it prevents usage with other licensing models near completely. Say I want to integrate their code intelligence into gitlab community (MIT licensed), I'm shit out of luck, even if I were to create a relicensed version of gitlab under the Sourcegraph license, it seems as though it'd be unclear who gets what fees and who counts as a "user" in this case. Would it force me as a devleoper…

Sourcegraph CEO here. Fair Source is intended to allow companies to distribute both the product and source code, and still charge for the product. Fair Source is not an open-source license. Just as with GPL, there are restrictions around your usage of the code that are intended to produce longer-term benefits (in our case, making sure we can build the best product and have a sustainable business). We have had it revi…

> I am not a lawyer myself, but the "hypothetical loophole" scenario you described would involve you making a derivative work of our code—kind of like photocopying Harry Potter and adding some doodles in the margins, and reselling that.

So you're comparing someone who forked your project to add what could be major features, to someone doodling in the margins of Harry Potter? That's a really optimistic view of the open source community there. But I understand what you're saying, I'm just used to forks being a common practice in the FOSS community, so I expected them to be better accounted for.

You still haven't made it clear what would happen in the case of a fork. Even if they kept it under your license, who gets the money? How do they get paid? How are terms agreed to? Can it not be forked at all?

EDIT: This really applies to any modifications, essentially, say I make some modifications to your code, under what terms am I allowed to distribute them? Is the only way I can go to license them back to you without seeing any of this "fair" profit myself? What if you don't like them and decide not to use them can I redistribute them for free or fee on my own? Is there any way to make the forking and distribution of modifications as casual as it is with so many open source projects under other licenses today?

Re: Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

#53

Post by sqs »

0x0 wrote: post #26

Is it an unwritten rule that the CEOs of companies focusing on git hosting solutions prefix all their HN posts with " CEO here," :)

Sourcegraph CEO here. :) I saw the GitLab CEO doing it and liked it a lot! (I hope he doesn't mind.) Of course, I just want to make sure people know I am affiliated with Sourcegraph when I comment on it.

Re: Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

#54

Post by digikata »

beliu wrote: post #45
3ot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After comparing the features of Core and Enterprise, it looks like the Core package is not self-hosted à la non-enterprise github. And the source at https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph seems to be the Enterprise version – minus 24/7 technical support and automatic backups I'd say.

Sourcegraph CTO here. Sourcegraph Core is self-hosted and the source code for it lives at https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph . Sourcegraph Enterprise includes the additional features mentioned in the pricing section on https://sourcegraph.com that are specific to very large companies. Sorry about the confusion. Anything we can do to make that clearer?

Well if the intent is that Sourcegraph Core is "for teams of any size", and the code at https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph is the Core, then it seems like the LICENCE file in the source should be updated to reflect the intent and not say it's limited.

Inside https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph@master/.tree/LICENSE it has a line that says:

  "Use Limitation: 15 users"

Re: Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

#55

Post by bradrydzewski »

Somasis wrote: post #7
sqs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sourcegraph CEO here. :) We released Sourcegraph under the Fair Source License ( https://fair.io/ ), which we worked with a well-known open-source lawyer to draft. TLDR is that it lets us create the best product for developers by having a sustainable business. Full info at https://fair.io : > Fair Source allows companies to both share a product’s source code and charge for that product. Releasing a product’s source c…

You would be better off selling services akin to what GitLab does for sustenance.

Gitlab graduated from Ycombinator and raised a 4MM series A round. While these are both tremendous accomplishments and important milestones for any startup, it may be a bit premature to declare their business model a success.

Re: Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

#56

Post by nickpsecurity »

detaro wrote: post #42
nickpsecurity wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source is about the source being open plus certain benefits. Free and open source software, a la Richard Stallman, is a totally different thing with a philosophy akin to how a virus operates. A glance at fair.io shows an interesting attempt to provide OSS under a proprietary model. Many businesses are fine with whatever gets the job done with main benefits of OSS being reviewing, extending, or just fixing things…

Additional counterpoint: Even FAQ below their license explicitly states that it is not an Open Source license... So even its creators don't consider it to be one. from https://fair.io/ : > We invite the entire coding community to adopt our simple, standardized, proprietary license. > No. Unlike open source, Fair Source has a Use Limitation built into the license

It would just be their opinion on the term. They are probably saying it because they know many potential users will have assumptions about what open source means. They wisely avoided going head-to-head with those assumptions to reduce number of negative reactions like seen here in other comments.

I contend that open-source has always been a mix of philosophies which originally included commercial variants. The reason those disappeared probably had a lot to due with the greed of the dominant companies in IT. More utilitarian owners or charters might have had different results. However, there's still companies doing proprietary w/ source code and dual-licensing of proprietary + OSS.

Re: Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

#57

Post by kh_hk »

sqs wrote: post #47
porker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the examples listed @ https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph I'm struggling to 'get' how this differs from GitHub? E.g. the "Better code reviews" example looks very similar to GH. What am I missing?

Sourcegraph CEO here. Thanks for this feedback. I would recommend watching the demo video at https://sourcegraph.com . The TLDR is that Sourcegraph has the same understanding of your code that an IDE has, and integrates that into every part of the code host experience. After watching the video (or anyone else following along), what could we say to make that clearer in the README?

An idea, maybe it makes sense to cut the key video parts into gifs and put it there to have a visual feedback on what "Code Intelligence" actually means.

Just my opinion. Code Intelligence and smart search are just too vague and a bit buzz sounding so my in-brain buzz-blocker ignored it.

Once you see the video, all is clear. This looks awesome.

Re: Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

#58

Post by sqs »

digikata wrote: post #54
beliu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sourcegraph CTO here. Sourcegraph Core is self-hosted and the source code for it lives at https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph . Sourcegraph Enterprise includes the additional features mentioned in the pricing section on https://sourcegraph.com that are specific to very large companies. Sorry about the confusion. Anything we can do to make that clearer?

Well if the intent is that Sourcegraph Core is "for teams of any size", and the code at https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph is the Core, then it seems like the LICENCE file in the source should be updated to reflect the intent and not say it's limited. Inside https://src.sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph@master/.tree/LICENSE it has a line that says: "Use Limitation: 15 users"

Sourcegraph CEO here. Thanks for the feedback. We are working on making this smoother/clearer, but the way it works is that the license refers to the posted pricing. The posted pricing on Sourcegraph.com says $0 for teams of any size for the non-enterprise features. When you exceed 15 users, there is also a license you'll receive that explicitly says that, but we wanted to keep it simple when you are just getting started (and not require people to click through a EULA).

Re: Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

#59

Post by jordanlev »

I think it's great that there are self-hosted options like this. But what's with the blatant copying of github's design? (Especially the icons... they're not even good icons, just kind of randomly chosen by github for various actions)

Re: Sourcegraph: self-hosted Git service with semantic code navigation/search/review

#60

Post by nickpsecurity »

yarrel wrote: post #38
nickpsecurity wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The key intent of OSS is the right to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. The source code is just a prereq for that ability." No, the key intent of open-sourcing software is to let one see the source. That's it. Additional intents are added with licensing terms. This goes back to academic and even proprietary (eg Burrough's 1960's MCP) examples that did this. Many models of it f…

This is not Open Source, and trying to ignore the historical meaning of the term doesn't make it so.

I just cited history rather than ignored it. That included Burrough's and LISP machines as examples past my linked essay in this thread. However, your side is ignoring all historical examples of proprietary OSS and even how non-proprietary OSS operated then vs now. Old model of academia varied from MIT/BSD-style to paid w/ source model.

So, your rendering of open-source history is false both in academia and commercial sector. It's always been a mix with proprietary favoring closed source due to financial incentives, especially lock-in. Nothing precluded more paid OSS strategies aside from culture of organizations involved. As dual-licensed projects and proprietary w/ OSS benefits like this one show.

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