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What comes after open source

words.steveklabnik.com

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Re: What comes after open source

#31

Post by RexM »

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.

> On the other hand, giving people an MIT license and saying "You can do whatever you want! Go nuts! Innovate!" is a boon to creativity. If some startup took my weekend project and made $1 billion off of it, good for them! That's the innovation that open-source is meant to encourage!

How does attribution-sharealike-noncommercial fit this case?

It sounds like he doesn't mind if some people (small startups) make money using his project, he just doesn't want anyone (large companies) to be able to.

Re: What comes after open source

#32

Post by zubspace »

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.

There are 2 problems with this license.

1) Sometimes it is hard to tell, if an entity is regarded to be commercial or not. Is a hacker, who receives ad-money and donations a commercial entity? What about a university? It's unclear and therefore many won't touch your code.

2) The license may not be fully compatible with, MIT, BSD, Apache, etc license which also hinders integration.

Anyway, I would also welcome a license opening up your code for hackers and non-profits alike... Maybe someone knows?

Re: What comes after open source

#33

Post by steveklabnik »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #28

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 a…

> (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.)

Yep, I didn't want to get into the details of what people are caring about here, because I don't think it's necessary to make the broader point. And I also mostly want to get people thinking about this, and priming them on specific things isn't as useful as just providing broad strokes.

I do think that the relationship between capital and labor is a huge aspect here, along with the cycle of "thick client, thin client, thick client" that we currently see with the move to the cloud. As you say, those are other essays :)

Re: What comes after open source

#34

Post by Townley »

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.

I'm unfortunately even more conflicted than that. I can't answer the question "If someone wants to take my crummy code and commercialize it, am I okay with that?"

If it's a kid in his basement with an amazing idea, absolutely. I'll watch them ring the closing bell at the NASDAQ from my couch and feel nothing but pride.

If it's Google or Amazon... maybe still yes, but less so? It'd depend on my subjective perception of the net benefits to societal innovation, which is 1) more wishy-washy-subjective than I'm comfortable with, and 2) seems like it would make for a really bad license: "MIT-Unless-I-Dont-Like-You"

Re: What comes after open source

#35

Post by justincormack »

steveklabnik wrote: post #24
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...

Zero Clause BSD is the closest that is generally approved.

https://opensource.org/licenses/0BSD

Re: What comes after open source

#36

Post by osullivj »

paddy_m wrote: post #9

In response to the first quote "Today’s developers have never learned about this history" I agree. I would love to see more CS history classes. I know that star schema were a thing, and hierarchical databases were a thing, but I know nothing about them. I don't know what their failings were that led to dominance of RBDMSes. I'm very curious to know how similar they were to mongo or other current schemaless databases.…

Strongly agreed. Exposure to a History & Philosophy of Software course might reduce the amount of wheel reinvention that plagues our industry.

Re: What comes after open source

#37

Post by dooglius »

StavrosK wrote: post #29
homarp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I've looked around before, but I couldn't find anything like this (other than DIY-style licenses that may or may not have sufficient legalese to be enforceable)

Re: What comes after open source

#38

Post by craigsmansion »

> "card-carrying"

> "I used to see Stallman lecture."

I see this more often. Is this somehow to indicate the level of engagement you felt? Because Free Software is about the 4 software freedoms, everything else is maybe your own romanticised version of what that should mean, and you somehow felt let down by those expectations. And that's regrettable, but ultimately very much your own experience, and mentioning it lends no credence to any argument.

> I started noticing that these beliefs weren’t really actually helpful, and were frankly, mostly harmful.

No, not "these beliefs", your beliefs, as reality likely didn't quite pan out as you expected it would.

> even though I was a passionate Free Software advocate, I found myself near-exclusively building Open Source software.

Maybe you're not the best person to write about "Free Software" vs "Open Source", or what would or should come "after Open Source".

Re: What comes after open source

#39

Post by Retra »

Townley wrote: post #34
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.

I'm unfortunately even more conflicted than that. I can't answer the question "If someone wants to take my crummy code and commercialize it, am I okay with that?" If it's a kid in his basement with an amazing idea, absolutely. I'll watch them ring the closing bell at the NASDAQ from my couch and feel nothing but pride. If it's Google or Amazon... maybe still yes, but less so? It'd depend on my subjective perception o…

You should probably just retain those rights then and encourage people to contact you for permission to use it commercially under a more specific license. No harm in mentioning that you'll probably allow people to use your work if they aren't in a position to pay for it or working for someone you don't like.
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