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What comes after open source

words.steveklabnik.com

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Re: What comes after open source

#21

Post by combatentropy »

What I liked about Linux was that it was better while being cheaper, in fact free of charge. Higher quality yet less money. It sounded too good to be true.

Did I even care that the source code was visible? I have yet to contribute a patch to any of my favorite projects: Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL. A big reason is that I don't even know C or C++. But yes, come to think of it, the source-code publicity gives me comfort. At least some people are out there checking for bugs, backdoors, etc. (Right?)

Copyleft always struck me as a little weird. This article has helped me realize why. Copyleft is still based on the idea of intellectual property, and I don't believe in intellectual property. If we translate the phrase from its Latinate words to Old English, its meaning, as usual, becomes clearer: thought ownership.

In my own little projects on Github, I usually ended up going with Public Domain. It accomplishes what I want: that I and others can keep using what I wrote free of charge, that it can remain visible forever so that others might learn from and build upon it. I don't really care if a company wraps it in their little package and never lets anyone know. Also, being prior art, it should prevent someone from getting a patent on it.

Re: What comes after open source

#22

Post by steveklabnik »

alvalentini wrote: post #19

You know, sometimes I wonder if this whole conversation really isn't just meant for developers. I ask myself what is the sentiment across the larger population and realise no one really cares. They love free beers. They'd do anything not to pay 0.99 for an app, seeing that as an incredible amount of money to pay for something they expect nowadays to be free. There's a lot to unpack here and I don't think I am in the…

Thanks!

I didn't get into it, but I do think that the user/developer distinction plays a part here. That is, one way to think about the Free Software/Open Source divide is that copyleft ensures freedoms for users at the expense of restricting developers, and permissive licenses ensure freedoms for developers at the expense of restricting users. As developers gained some power, we directed it towards helping ourselves.

I don't think that's the whole story, exactly, but I think it's an interesting way to think about it.

Re: What comes after open source

#23

Post by steveklabnik »

sevensor wrote: post #18

I think the certification proposal basically comes back to licensing, if I read it right. "We'll extend you a license if you have the proper certificate." I have a hard time imagining a way of enforcing good behavior that doesn't hinge on restricting some parties' ability to use the software.

Yes, I tried to say that in the piece. Sorry if that wasn't clear!

> I have a hard time imagining a way of enforcing good behavior that doesn't hinge on restricting some parties' ability to use the software.

Absolutely, but I think this problem is inherent. There is no such thing as "no restrictions," so doing so is impossible.

Re: What comes after open source

#24

Post by steveklabnik »

combatentropy wrote: post #21

What I liked about Linux was that it was better while being cheaper, in fact free of charge. Higher quality yet less money. It sounded too good to be true. Did I even care that the source code was visible? I have yet to contribute a patch to any of my favorite projects: Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL. A big reason is that I don't even know C or C++. But yes, come to think of it, the source-code publicity gives me comfort.…

Glad you liked it :)

You should consider something like CC0, given that public domain does not exist in many important jurisdictions. That said, the OSI hasn't approved it for interesting reasons https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC...

Re: What comes after open source

#25

Post by astazangasta »

>What I am saying is that refusing to use a wifi connection on your laptop because there aren’t free drivers helps basically nobody, and only harms yourself.

This is wrong. Doing this forces you to confront the deficiencies of free software, the lack of available free software, and strongly encourages you to support development of alternatives. Just like being vegan encourages the growth of a market for vegan products.

Re: What comes after open source

#26

Post by scoutt »

dwheeler wrote: post #5

"Projects could then submit for certification... who would do this certification, and how would they determine the criteria?" There's already something that takes a stab at this, the Linux Foundation's CII Best Practices badge: https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/ If you run an OSS project, I encourage you to try to get a badge. Full disclosure: I lead the project. Hopefully it'll be of use anyway :-).

For hardware there is the Open Source Hardware Association (https://www.oshwa.org) and they have a certification program.

It is an interesting fact the company where the first listed member of the board works for (https://www.oshwa.org/about/board-members/).

Re: What comes after open source

#27

Post by homarp »

StavrosK wrote: post #20
Townley wrote: post #16

I recently wrote a piece of software and wanted to make it open source. GitHub's helpful dropdown of license choices gave me more pause than I expected as I struggled to choose between MIT and GPL. "I definitely want someone to be able to modify, fork, and publish better versions of this code. Do I also want them to be able to commercially license their derivatives?" On one hand, this code was contributed to the publ…

Isn't a Creative-Commons-style license good for that? You could choose attribution-sharealike-noncommercial or something like that and be done with it.

Creative-Commons-style license is usually not recommended for code

https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm...

"We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available."

Re: What comes after open source

#28

Post by jrochkind1 »

Certification isn't going to work for the very reasons Klabnik revealed in this same post.

> Even if you are the kind of person who thinks boycotts work, there just aren’t enough free software diehards to form a large enough boycott. And even then, you’d want to do the boycott together, simultaneously, to send the message.

A licensing regime is the only way I know to _prevent_ someone else from taking your software and doing whatever they want with it. So without a licensing regime, they'd do that, it just wouldn't be certified.

The whole idea of certification relies on enough people insisting on using certified software. And I think the same reasons that didn't work, as Klabnik explained, for Libre vs OSI, it's not going to work for certification. In the end, people will use whatever is cheapest/easiest (and legal, or perceived-to-be-low-risk-for-them illegal) regardless.

I do see the issue's he's talking about and think they are real. I don't see any solutions. (I also think he conveniently avoided one of the reasons we're seeing license/open source splintering -- because of attempts to find ways to _make a profit_ off open source. See the Amazon/ElasticSearch dispute. This is a real thing going on in the landscape he's talking about, with maybe more impact than the ideological concerns he talks about, but is inconvenient for what he wants to talk about. I still have no solutions to it.)

Re: What comes after open source

#29

Post by StavrosK »

homarp wrote: post #27
StavrosK wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a Creative-Commons-style license good for that? You could choose attribution-sharealike-noncommercial or something like that and be done with it.

Creative-Commons-style license is usually not recommended for code https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm... "We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available."

That's Creative Commons itself, by "Creative-Commons-style" I meant "something like, but not exactly CC itself".

Re: What comes after open source

#30

Post by steveklabnik »

astazangasta wrote: post #25

>What I am saying is that refusing to use a wifi connection on your laptop because there aren’t free drivers helps basically nobody, and only harms yourself. This is wrong. Doing this forces you to confront the deficiencies of free software, the lack of available free software, and strongly encourages you to support development of alternatives. Just like being vegan encourages the growth of a market for vegan product…

I also was strictly vegan for a while, and lost that religion too. For sort of similar reasons! I think it's too focused on the ethics of one part of the situation, and misses the whole.
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