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How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

jarinheit.posterous.com

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Re: How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

#51

Post by tomjen3 »

tptacek wrote: post #43
lnguyen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the AGPL doesn't prevent you from competing with a fork, as long as that fork is also open. Also as far as the contract goes, it's only if you want to contribute code back to Diaspora project and have it become part of canonical codebase. There's nothing to prevent you from making those contributions available on your fork and have them remain open.

Sorry, meant, "commercial fork". But you're right.

Actually it should properly be proprietary fork, since if it ends up with one company being like Red Hat, they can still sell (with added services) what give away for free.

Re: How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

#52

Post by Qz »

baddox wrote: post #45
lnguyen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about making sure that if you build upon the work that others have made openly available, that you contribute back. If you want to keep your code closed, then you're more than welcome to do that. Just honor the choice that others have made with their code.

I'm not saying that's a bad policy necessarily, I'm just saying it isn't exactly what I would call "free" software.

It's not about being completely free for you, it's about being mostly free for everyone.

Re: How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

#53

Post by jarin »

tingley wrote: post #25

Reason #2 ("they make you sign the contributor agreement") is basically a declaration that the author doesn't understand US copyright law. If you are serious about keeping your code free, up to and including the ability to enforce its license in court, there are legal reasons to do this. At least, so says the FSF (and so do the IP lawyers I've talked to about it): http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AssignCopyri…

Actually, the contributor agreement is about getting the open source community to contribute a large percentage of the work and aggregating the copyright so they can sell it to other companies via dual-licensing, without giving the contributors the right to do the same thing.

Re: How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

#54

Post by jaekwon »

I'm not familiar with the AGPL. Does this mean that I cannot modify the Diaspora source code to run on my server for my business needs, without giving join ownership of my modifications to Diaspora? / without releasing the modifications to the public?

OK that's a letdown.

Re: How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

#55

Post by limmeau »

moe wrote: post #29

Do we really need to reach out to the license to declare this project DOA? This is a hacker community, right? For me the technical "architecture" did it. A rails-app, of all things, to serve as some sort of "superpeer" for what cries to be a P2P system? Really? And their answer to their stated goal of "privacy aware, personally controlled" is to store the data not in one opaque box (facebook) but to distribute it ove…

I don't think social networks need the same architecture as file-sharing networks. I want the data I publish on my social network node to be available 24/7 to my network friends. Since neither I nor most of my friends have a server at home, that means hosting the data on some server in some hosting center. So Rails isn't a necessarily stupid idea for a social network consisting of people like me.

Re: How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

#56

Post by forensic »

jarin wrote: post #5
guelo wrote: post #4

I can't stand anti free software zealots like this guy.

I'm not anti-Free Software. I'm all for it. I make my living off of it, and I contribute regularly to open source projects. I'm anti-Overly-Restrictive-and-Innovation-Stifling-Licenses. You'll note that I recommended that the BSD license would be way more appropriate for this project.

BSD license is such a failure from the perspective of the copyright holder. It's a bunch of OSS guys working for free to enrich parasites who don't give back to the original developers.

Society benefits, sure. Those who use the code benefit, yes. But the guys who initially develop the software get little back. Charity work should be for poor people.

Re: How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

#57

Post by jarin »

forensic wrote: post #56
jarin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not anti-Free Software. I'm all for it. I make my living off of it, and I contribute regularly to open source projects. I'm anti-Overly-Restrictive-and-Innovation-Stifling-Licenses. You'll note that I recommended that the BSD license would be way more appropriate for this project.

BSD license is such a failure from the perspective of the copyright holder. It's a bunch of OSS guys working for free to enrich parasites who don't give back to the original developers. Society benefits, sure. Those who use the code benefit, yes. But the guys who initially develop the software get little back. Charity work should be for poor people.

See the problem in this case is that Diaspora was open sourced in such an immature state that it's almost certain that a large chunk, if not the majority of the development will be done by people other than the initial developers. Large portions of the codebase are already being rewritten by outside contributors, because of all of the security holes.

Now add to that the Contributor Agreement, which assigns joint ownership to Diaspora, Inc. (who is free to license their work to other companies under any agreement of their choosing), compared to the contributors (who are bound by the AGPL).

So who's doing the charity work, and who are the parasites getting enriched here?

Re: How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

#58

Post by prodigal_erik »

jarin wrote: post #47
mathgladiator wrote: post #46

It seemed to me that Diaspora is trying to hold the code and project together, and the open source community isn't exactly the best for holding code together. We have forks all over the place. I've got a fork, you've got a fork; we all have forks and no spoons. Is it better for the world for the open source community to fork left and right and ultimately risk fragmenting the market to fail to compete against facebook…

I totally agree, and I think the best way to get the community to work together and prevent forks is with a less restrictive license and no contributor agreement.

During the Unix Wars, we lost about a decade of progress entombed in parasitic forks as Microsoft ran away with the whole market. Is there any reason to hope that applying the BSD license to Diaspora would not give it the same Achilles' heel?

Re: How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

#59

Post by forensic »

jarin wrote: post #57
forensic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSD license is such a failure from the perspective of the copyright holder. It's a bunch of OSS guys working for free to enrich parasites who don't give back to the original developers. Society benefits, sure. Those who use the code benefit, yes. But the guys who initially develop the software get little back. Charity work should be for poor people.

See the problem in this case is that Diaspora was open sourced in such an immature state that it's almost certain that a large chunk, if not the majority of the development will be done by people other than the initial developers. Large portions of the codebase are already being rewritten by outside contributors, because of all of the security holes. Now add to that the Contributor Agreement, which assigns joint owne…

That's a fine point. Personally I favour the GPL and am not really sure what to think about this Diaspora license scheme.

My post was really targeted at BSD style licenses and how they are awful.

The entire principle of pro bono work is as a civil service - improving society by engaging with the disadvantaged in your community.

Software professionals are still new to the professionalism thing. We haven't learned the lessons that lawyers and doctors learned a long time ago. Do pro bono work - it's an important part of life - but choose your beneficiaries wisely.

BSD licensed software is just handing free cash over to the advertising industry. Re-brand it, market it, make easy cash, and destroy the popularity of any GPL competitors which then stifles innovation for that particular type of product.

Re: How Diaspora killed itself before it even launched

#60

Post by mfukar »

mathgladiator wrote: post #46

It seemed to me that Diaspora is trying to hold the code and project together, and the open source community isn't exactly the best for holding code together. We have forks all over the place. I've got a fork, you've got a fork; we all have forks and no spoons. Is it better for the world for the open source community to fork left and right and ultimately risk fragmenting the market to fail to compete against facebook…

It seemed to me that Diaspora is trying to hold the code and project together, and the open source community isn't exactly the best for holding code together. We have forks all over the place. I've got a fork, you've got a fork; we all have forks and no spoons.

AGPL was written to address this exact issue. If it does not accomplish it (as is the case the original article is arguing for) then it's a problem with the license and not the Diaspora project.

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