Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

src.sourcegraph.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 137 posts

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

#101

Post by davexunit »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #96
davexunit wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Former is philosophical meaning with strings attached, the latter is a literal definition with many forms. I'm using the latter. You can't just change the meaning of the term and expect everyone to know you mean this alternate definition. "Open Source" is as defined by the OSI, and not whatever loose definition that you use that includes proprietary software. >I've been calling it "proprietary OSS" or "paid OSS." "P…

"You can't just change the meaning of the term and expect everyone to know you mean this alternate definition. "Open Source" is as defined by the OSI, and not whatever loose definition that you use that includes proprietary software." I've already agreed with you and dragonwriter on that. dragonwriter suggested "shared source" as a start. Might go with that temporarily. ""Proprietary OSS" does not make sense given th…

>Especially one that captures the spirit of OSS with change that distribution/use is paid to some degree in some way

This illustrates yet another confusion about FOSS. There's nothing in either the Free Software or Open Source definitions that says that a fee cannot be charged for software. You can charge money for free software!

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

#102

Post by jrpt »

Titanous wrote: post #75

This looks neat, but the license is fatal. It is not "just like an open-source license." First, what is a "user"? It is not defined anywhere in the license. I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? The worst case scenario if you did thi…

Accepting contributions with a license like this is a solved problem. You just require the contributors to sign a contributor license agreement. In case the contributor is working somewhere, you also have them sign a corporate contributor license agreement. This is the same process used by companies like Gitlab.

They aren't claiming to be open source. It's similar in certain ways to open source, but different.

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

#103

Post by nickpsecurity »

dragonwriter wrote: post #94
nickpsecurity wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All evidence is to the contrary. The companies making the most profit on software are licensing it somehow while others that are at least successful are using plenty venture capital with SaaS. So, both are the best choices and the use of a proprietary license preserving FOSS-style freedoms is interesting. Strange how much negativity proprietary OSS gets on HN vs cool, proprietary, closed tech.

> Strange how much negativity proprietary OSS "Proprietary OSS" is an oxymoron, like "four-sided triangle".

I retract my statement for any given commenter that was purely concerned with my misuse of the OSS phrase, which I'm fixing in future comments. However, there's often an overly-negative reaction to anything that involves payment and shared source w/ OSS-like benefits. If they were reacting to that, then it still stands if they don't do similar for cool, closed-source stuff here. Just seems hypocritical to me. That's where I was going with that comment.

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

#104

Post by nickpsecurity »

davexunit wrote: post #101
nickpsecurity wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can't just change the meaning of the term and expect everyone to know you mean this alternate definition. "Open Source" is as defined by the OSI, and not whatever loose definition that you use that includes proprietary software." I've already agreed with you and dragonwriter on that. dragonwriter suggested "shared source" as a start. Might go with that temporarily. ""Proprietary OSS" does not make sense given th…

>Especially one that captures the spirit of OSS with change that distribution/use is paid to some degree in some way This illustrates yet another confusion about FOSS. There's nothing in either the Free Software or Open Source definitions that says that a fee cannot be charged for software. You can charge money for free software!

Both OSI link I was given here and FSF require free redistribution and derivatives. That's contrary to paid, shared-source without qualifiers that ensure flow of money. Reason being, the first to pay for it could give it for free to everyone and leave them with no reason to pay. Defeats the whole concept.

The payment has to be mandatory, done with licensing, and increase with use somehow to maintain few advantages of proprietary software. Open to any models that can leave off one or more of these with consistent effectiveness as my goal is exploration.

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

#105

Post by coherentpony »

davexunit wrote: post #87
coherentpony wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the Sourcegraph page links to another page describing the benefits of a Fair Source Licence. In the interest of a balanced discussion, would you care to provide a list of points describing the drawbacks of using such a licence? As it stands, your comment may successfully describe your opinion but it doesn't attempt to contribute to a healthy discourse.

It's a sneaky license, and I think deliberately so. It's meant to look as much like a free license while still being proprietary. When you read the title, the "Fair Source License", it's only natural to think that it's a new FOSS license, and then once you start reading the terms you realize that it's misleading. Sure, the authors say that it isn't a free license, but the comments in this thread show that many people…

If I'm understanding you correctly, your only issue is the title?

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

#106

Post by dragonwriter »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #103
dragonwriter wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Strange how much negativity proprietary OSS "Proprietary OSS" is an oxymoron, like "four-sided triangle".

I retract my statement for any given commenter that was purely concerned with my misuse of the OSS phrase, which I'm fixing in future comments. However, there's often an overly-negative reaction to anything that involves payment and shared source w/ OSS-like benefits. If they were reacting to that, then it still stands if they don't do similar for cool, closed-source stuff here. Just seems hypocritical to me. That's…

> However, there's often an overly-negative reaction to anything that involves payment and shared source w/ OSS-like benefits.

I think you miss that the biggest and most important benefits of open source are tied to the freedom to fork, which is both the source of the greatest security against divergence in interest between the original copyright holder and the user community and the enabler of community-driven innovation.

Put simply, shared-source does not have "OSS-like benefits".

> If they were reacting to that, then it still stands if they don't do similar for cool, closed-source stuff here.

Unlike shared-source stuff like the Fair Source License here, simple closed-source proprietary software generally doesn't try to pretend to be Open Source-like (and, when it does, it is attacked in the same way.)

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

#107

Post by dragonwriter »

jrpt wrote: post #102
Titanous wrote: post #75

This looks neat, but the license is fatal. It is not "just like an open-source license." First, what is a "user"? It is not defined anywhere in the license. I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? The worst case scenario if you did thi…

Accepting contributions with a license like this is a solved problem. You just require the contributors to sign a contributor license agreement. In case the contributor is working somewhere, you also have them sign a corporate contributor license agreement. This is the same process used by companies like Gitlab. They aren't claiming to be open source. It's similar in certain ways to open source, but different.

> They aren't claiming to be open source.

They are claiming to be essentially identical for small organizations: "The Fair Source License works just like an open-source license when the usage is below the Use Limitation."

This is, however, false given the lack of ability to redistribute modified copies (even under the same license). Its not "just like an open-source license", even before considering the Usage Limitation.

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

#108

Post by dragonwriter »

sulam wrote: post #27
vitno wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://fair.io/ It's made by them as well. It most certainly is not libre/free software. I'm guessing it has minimal legal ability to stand up in court. It is a bastardization of what open source is about... really it's more of a disclosed source setup.

It's definitely not GNU OSS. If that's your ideology, this is not going to appeal to you. IANAL, but my understanding of the license is that it's trying to build a new economic model for OSS contributors. I'm pretty excited to see if it takes off, since I think OSS could use some new thinking in this area.

> It's definitely not GNU OSS.

"GNU OSS" is not a thing. GNU is a project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which publishes (and applies) the Free Software Definition.

The Open Source Definition is created (and applied) by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). "GNU OSS" is kind of like "Catholic Protestantism".

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

#109

Post by chriswarbo »

bradrydzewski wrote: post #91
Titanous wrote: post #75

This looks neat, but the license is fatal. It is not "just like an open-source license." First, what is a "user"? It is not defined anywhere in the license. I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? The worst case scenario if you did thi…

> I did not look at the source code, because of the potential IP issues. What would happen if you looked at the source code and then later worked on another open source project and implemented a bit of code that looks similar? Could this also be an issue with the GPL? What happens if I look at GPL source code and then author similar code under a non-GPL license? I wonder if a precedent has been set that could be appl…

> What happens if I look at GPL source code and then author similar code under a non-GPL license?

In that case it could be argued that your similar code is a "derived work", and hence you are violating the copyright of the original.

Whether that original is GPL'd or not doesn't actually matter from a legal point of view; it could be under a different FOSS licence, or proprietary, the result is the same: if you breach the terms, you're in violation. That's the point of copyleft: it's power comes from exactly the same source as that of proprietary licenses.

In the particular case that your "non-GPL" license just so happens to be similar to the GPL, e.g. it's FOSS, possibly copyleft, etc. then the original author might be feeling generous and be willing to come to some arrangement, e.g. by retroactively granting you permission for your derived work, or by negotiating a licence change with you (changing the license of either your code, theirs or both). Note that this would be orthogonal to the legalities; it's a matter of whether the owner is willing to cooperate. This might be difficult if there are many owners though (e.g. imagine trying to negotiate a license change for the Linux kernel!)

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

#110

Post by nickpsecurity »

dragonwriter wrote: post #106
nickpsecurity wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I retract my statement for any given commenter that was purely concerned with my misuse of the OSS phrase, which I'm fixing in future comments. However, there's often an overly-negative reaction to anything that involves payment and shared source w/ OSS-like benefits. If they were reacting to that, then it still stands if they don't do similar for cool, closed-source stuff here. Just seems hypocritical to me. That's…

> However, there's often an overly-negative reaction to anything that involves payment and shared source w/ OSS-like benefits. I think you miss that the biggest and most important benefits of open source are tied to the freedom to fork, which is both the source of the greatest security against divergence in interest between the original copyright holder and the user community and the enabler of community-driven innov…

"I think you miss that the biggest and most important benefits of open source are tied to the freedom to fork, which is both the source of the greatest security against divergence in interest between the original copyright holder and the user community and the enabler of community-driven innovation."

I agree that's a major benefit. It's why a form of it is on my list. :P

A non-profit maintaining a shared-source software requiring a mere $1 a year wherever it was used would have enough for a full-time developer plus the website by time it hit 20-20k users whether in original or forked form. Plus could take contributions from others while giving them credit and/or a pass on the money. Whereas many OSS projects get used all over the place with about nothing in return and depend on goodwill of occasional volunteers or sponsored developers. So, there's definitely a benefit here with similar innovation, even community driven if a membership fee model.

"Unlike shared-source stuff like the Fair Source License here, simple closed-source proprietary software generally doesn't try to pretend to be Open Source-like (and, when it does, it is attacked in the same way.)"

Nah, shared-source stuff gets attacked more than proprietary or even shoddy OSS when it shows up. I was happy to see some exceptions considering the license a nice evolution in OSS direction from a proprietary angle or just better than most proprietary licenses.

Post reply on HN