The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source • Hacker News Board

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#211

Post by vinceguidry » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

antidesitter wrote: post #208

vinceguidry wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overblowing the potential for offense and committing the sin of assuming it's other people and not you that will get offended. If some religious person is offended by the characterization, I welcome them to articulate why. I'm highly spiritual myself and have interacted with many very religious people, and I can say that most of them relish the opportunity to think about worldly things using religious…

> I'm highly spiritual myself and have interacted with many very religious people, and I can say that most of them relish the opportunity to think about worldly things using religious framing. Would they “relish” your using the term “theological” in the way you did in your original comment? Be honest.

Well, they certainly wouldn't take offense to it like a atheist / materialist would at the idea that a debate they care a lot about might be framed that way.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#212

Post by nemo44x » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #203

zapita wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree, and it's disheartening to see so many voices here ignore this reality. It's like there's more passion for the ideal of open-source than for the reality of how open-source practitioners actually struggle to make the model work in practice. Whether Commons Clause is the right solution or not (and I have my opinion on that), at least the Redis people are trying something to fix the problem of unstustainabl…

They're just doing the open core model, with a tweak on the licensing of their proprietary add-ons to exclude cloud providers. I don't have a big problem with that, so long as there's a clear delineation between the open source and proprietary offerings. The only thing they're doing "differently" is the deceptive messaging. For this, I blame the Commons Clause initiative. Redis Labs could take these same actions unde…

They should call it the "Redis Labs License".

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#213

Post by pdonis » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #101

DannyBee wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What changed? Do developers no longer have the time to volunteer to work on this stuff? The desire? Is the demand for tech in The Valley/West Cost changing the dynamics of how much time people have to contribute. Were the earlier efforts way less commercial and new efforts moving much faster and requirement more maintenance/resources? " What's changed is that once open source started getting serious VC's, people bel…

Some are seeing that corporations are the ones making all the money on the back of open source software. It's hard to want to contribute to something like open source infrastructure tooling, when it's use case is purely commercial, for example. I imagine some also feel that it's setting an unrealistic value on digital products, at least I do. Why would I want to build a tool for corporate infrastructure if they take…

> Some are seeing that corporations are the ones making all the money on the back of open source software.

But the value those corporations are creating is embodied in much more than just the software. It's the whole infrastructure they build, which integrates the software into a complete solution that meets users' needs.

> Why would I want to build a tool for corporate infrastructure if they take it and make millions while I run support for free?

If someone is using a corporation's cloud infrastructure that happens to rely on open source tools you made, they're not going to call you for support when something goes wrong; they're going to call the corporation. If the corporation comes asking you about it, you are perfectly free to set the price of your services to them.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#214

Post by kjeetgill » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

kup0 wrote: post #77

Regardless of whether or not it is harmful to open source, I find the choice to use two words beginning with C (thus CC as an acronym) flawed, as that abbreviation is typically used to refer to Creative Commons, and Commons Clause and Creative Commons sound quite similar too since they both use the word Commons. I would hope this was not an intentional choice to sow confusion. Edit: obvious spelling error :)

I agree. I think this is my biggest objection with it. Aside from that attempt to hijack mindshare (consumer protection and trademarks anyone?) I couldn't care less about the license. Proprietary licenses are a dime a dozen.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#215

Post by gpvos » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #2

> including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software Wow! That seems like a mistake. This casts too wide a net and catches more than it should. > ... product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software... Ugh. Instead of unambiguous freedom-granting terms, this leaves it up to a court to help determine this vague…

For hosting, I can see how that may be a useful clause.

But for consulting or support? That's even worse than the usual terms for proprietary software. As far as I know, I can offer consulting services for Microsoft or Apple software without breaking any license.

Similarly for software that builds upon proprietary software. As far as I know, this is commonly allowed without any additional license.

Or am I missing something?

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#216

Post by pdonis » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

zapita wrote: post #196

halbritt wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS started offering SaaS products based on open source software without contributing anything back to the original projects. Combined with that, and wholesale cloud adoption over the last decade, revenue streams for "enterprise" editions, services have dried up. In the 90s and 2000s, OSS project were more grass roots efforts. In the past decade, there have been a series of primarily commercial OSS projects like Redi…

> there have been a series of primarily commercial OSS projects like Redis and ElasticSearch that have gained a fair bit of traction. They really aren't grass roots efforts I think that's very unfair. Both Redis and ElasticSearch are definitely grassroots projects - both Salvatore (Antirez) and Shai worked on their projects for years, with minimal support from the outside world, grew their community organically, and…

> both Salvatore (Antirez) and Shai worked on their projects for years, with minimal support from the outside world, grew their community organically, and managed to build something useful for thousands of grateful developers. Later, they looked for ways to make a good living

In other words, making a good living from the product was an afterthought. So they shouldn't be surprised that they're not getting as much value for themselves out of the product as they would have if making a good living from it was a fundamental part of the project from the beginning.

That's not to say that there aren't ways to monetize open source products, just that doing it as an afterthought isn't one of them. If it's a business, it's a business, and you have to treat it that way from day one. Otherwise you will be out-competed, as a business, by others who do.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#217

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

The D programming language uses the Boost license, the least restrictive license we could find. We aren't going to switch to a more restrictive one.

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#218

Post by erik_seaberg » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

dustingetz wrote: post #32

Cloud infrastructure (like DynamoDB) is already closed source and nobody seems to care, so this might not even matter

AWS doesn't want a monopoly on DynamoDB consulting. At most they encourage certification, probably to motivate people to notice their endless roster of new services.

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#219

Post by chaostheory » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #93

XiZhao wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Clause was drafted as a reactionary move to solve against specific bad behavior. I'm not entirely sure it's my place to call out these actors (I'll leave that to the users of the Clause), but our job was to open up an option that isn't quite "screw this, let's go full closed source". See the commons clause FAQ for answers to your other questions: https://commonsclause.com/

>The Clause was drafted as a reactionary move to solve against specific bad behavior. I'm not entirely sure it's my place to call out these actors Still frustratingly vauge. Without this information I can't assume The Commons Clause is working in good faith. At least you can speak to the types of behaviors, rather than the specific actors, which led to this? >See the commons clause FAQ for answers to your other quest…

I don't know why he doesn't comment on it when it's already written on the Commons Clause FAQ. He thinks the "bad guys" are the cloud providers.

https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/

"However, today’s cloud providers have repeatedly violated this ethos by taking advantage of successful open source projects and repackaging them into competitive, proprietary service offerings. Cloud providers contribute very little (if anything) to those open source projects. Instead, they use their monopolistic nature to derive hundreds of millions dollars in revenues from them. Already, this behavior has damaged open source communities and put some of the companies that support them out of business."

Re: The Commons Clause is an existential threat to open source

#220

Post by zapita » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 10:03 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #216

zapita wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there have been a series of primarily commercial OSS projects like Redis and ElasticSearch that have gained a fair bit of traction. They really aren't grass roots efforts I think that's very unfair. Both Redis and ElasticSearch are definitely grassroots projects - both Salvatore (Antirez) and Shai worked on their projects for years, with minimal support from the outside world, grew their community organically, and…

> both Salvatore (Antirez) and Shai worked on their projects for years, with minimal support from the outside world, grew their community organically, and managed to build something useful for thousands of grateful developers. Later, they looked for ways to make a good living In other words, making a good living from the product was an afterthought. So they shouldn't be surprised that they're not getting as much valu…

> That's not to say that there aren't ways to monetize open source products, just that doing it as an afterthought isn't one of them.

Says who? You are entitled to your opinion on the matter, but this is a very contested issue and your opinion is just one of many. If you’re going to argue that Redis and Elastic are “doing open-source monetization wrong”, maybe you should back up your claim with arguments.

> If it's a business, it's a business, and you have to treat it that way from day one. Otherwise you will be out-competed, as a business, by others who do.

You seem very knowledgeable about what is and is not a good monetization strategy for open-source. What do you propose as an alternative to what Elastic and Redis are doing?