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What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

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Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#21

Post by jnbiche »

reitanqild wrote: post #19
drdeca wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that work? I guess, I hadn't much considered whether that was a thing one could do.

I guess you can take code under a permissive license, fork it and release it under a less permissive license yes. IANAL though. That is my whole point: MIT and BSD code is free-er than GPL and AGPL because you can go from MIT and BSD to AGPL but not the other way around.

No, you can't relicense someone else's MIT or BSD code, only code you've written. Only a copyright holder can license his/her code, or someone to whom the copyright holder has given explicit permission to do so.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#22

Post by lotyrin »

RKoutnik wrote: post #11

"Do not start an open source project if you need praise, warmth and love from your fellow human beings." Ugh, very true. Folks forget that most FOSS work is volunteer & berating the hackers who make it won't help one bit. Worst is the issue reports about a fixed bug, followed by "What version do you have?" aaaaand silence. At the very least come back and close the issue.

Yeah. Open source seldom realizes it needs the same infrastructure as a commercial product: separate project management issue queue and support issue queue.

What are we doing next, what version did we fix Y in, what VCS branch are we working on Z in, who is working on X, etc. are separate from Who reported problem, what version of the product do they report having used, what did they expect and what did they get, is that part of the design of the product, did they ever get back to us, etc.

The other problem is ill-defined roles. If everyone's a developer is a support volunteer, is a user, then you can have people be pretty shitty and reflect on the project in a way that they shouldn't be allowed to.

Random users should be able to file support tickets, but only to view project management tickets.

Only designated volunteers should be able to respond to existing support tickets and create project management tickets from them, these people speak as the public face of your project, that's really really important to have a handle on.

Support tickets probably shouldn't be public, for that matter.

Now of course this is all unpaid, volunteer -- I'm not saying any of these queues should have a defined SLA or anything. By all means keep project a bazaar -- let support queue handle outside feature requests and feedback and everything -- continue to have a public repos, roadmap and changelog, etc.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#23

Post by reitanqild »

kuschku wrote: post #20
reitanqild wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you can take code under a permissive license, fork it and release it under a less permissive license yes. IANAL though. That is my whole point: MIT and BSD code is free-er than GPL and AGPL because you can go from MIT and BSD to AGPL but not the other way around.

But that’s exactly why it’s less free. With BSD code, the majority of devs can always sell out, and make sure all future modifications are purely proprietary. We’ve seen that happen on Android. Nowadays neither the launcher, nor the keyboard, nor the dialer, nor the contacts, nor the calendar, nor the device search is open source anymore.

Could equally well happen if the code was released under GPL as long as all copyright holders agree?

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#24

Post by brbsix »

I've noticed some cultures tend to have unusually high standards for open source software and an expectation of personalized support. Perhaps because of the pervasiveness of "freemium" business models, I think a lot of people are really oblivious to the realities of open source. E.g. That they are not customers, nor are they owed anything in particular.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#25

Post by cyphar »

reitanqild wrote: post #2

> You can choose the most permissive software license, and people will still argue with you about your choice. The irony of people getting annoyed because of "missing restrictions".

I wish people would take the time to realise that the Linux kernel would not be anywhere near as reliable or widely used if Torvalds had used a more permissive license. The GPL means that all users of the software have freedom, no matter who packages the software. As a result, you end up having a single point of reference for Linux rather than 1000 proprietary forks that are all equally shit.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#26

Post by cyphar »

lotyrin wrote: post #22
RKoutnik wrote: post #11

"Do not start an open source project if you need praise, warmth and love from your fellow human beings." Ugh, very true. Folks forget that most FOSS work is volunteer & berating the hackers who make it won't help one bit. Worst is the issue reports about a fixed bug, followed by "What version do you have?" aaaaand silence. At the very least come back and close the issue.

Yeah. Open source seldom realizes it needs the same infrastructure as a commercial product: separate project management issue queue and support issue queue. What are we doing next, what version did we fix Y in, what VCS branch are we working on Z in, who is working on X, etc. are separate from Who reported problem, what version of the product do they report having used, what did they expect and what did they get, is…

If I used your software, I would totally fork your project and have a less totalitarian view of the project's leadership. You're free to think you "own" your community, but as Oracle and many other examples have told us, that's not the case and the community will make sure you learn your lesson.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#27

Post by cyphar »

jnbiche wrote: post #21
reitanqild wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you can take code under a permissive license, fork it and release it under a less permissive license yes. IANAL though. That is my whole point: MIT and BSD code is free-er than GPL and AGPL because you can go from MIT and BSD to AGPL but not the other way around.

No, you can't relicense someone else's MIT or BSD code, only code you've written. Only a copyright holder can license his/her code, or someone to whom the copyright holder has given explicit permission to do so.

Yes you can. The MIT and BSD licenses explicitly allow sublicensing. That's part of their whole schtick and why free software people don't particularly like them (you can sublicense them to be proprietary).

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#28

Post by cyphar »

reitanqild wrote: post #23
kuschku wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that’s exactly why it’s less free. With BSD code, the majority of devs can always sell out, and make sure all future modifications are purely proprietary. We’ve seen that happen on Android. Nowadays neither the launcher, nor the keyboard, nor the dialer, nor the contacts, nor the calendar, nor the device search is open source anymore.

Could equally well happen if the code was released under GPL as long as all copyright holders agree?

In theory yes, in practice you couldn't even hope to get all of the copyright holders' permission. You'd have to surgically remove the code of everyone who didn't consent to the relicensing (good luck) and everybody would hate you for it.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#29

Post by skybrian »

anc84 wrote: post #4
reitanqild wrote: post #2

> You can choose the most permissive software license, and people will still argue with you about your choice. The irony of people getting annoyed because of "missing restrictions".

It's about missing guarantee of future freedom rather but I am sure you know that.

It's kind of funny how people want guarantees about the licenses of future releases that don't actually exist.

There's no guarantee that a random open source project will have any new releases at all. In that case, what good is a promise about its license?

Or if they do happen, the code might change in a way that's backward-incompatible so you can no longer use it.

The only guarantee you can count on is that if the code you actually have doesn't suit your needs, you can change it yourself.

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