Scapegoating free software’s failures • Hacker News Board

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#121

Post by _frkl » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #110

_frkl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, it's not really proliferation if the license addresses issues no other license addresses. Just because it adds one or more licenses to the number of existing licenses, doesn't mean those licenses should not exist. Also, as a developer I think choice is good. If users have to do a bit more work to figure out whether they can or want to use code because of its license then that is unfortunate, but not too much t…

It might benefit the author, a little, but it imposes new costs on everybody else.

I guess that's where we disagree. I think the existence of such a license might be -- in some cases -- the one thing that motivates the author to create a project in the first place (its for me, anyway). And I don't think open-source has any obligation to come with 'no cost' for its users.

Reading (and respecting) its license is the least one can do when using somebody elses code. If that takes time, then one just has to factor that in when deciding whether to re-use someone elses code or not.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#122

Post by twic » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 11:29 AM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #108

twic wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually don't think SaaS is a good way to sell services. It's rent seeking. Big yikes. That is a really intriguing idea. Rent-seeking to me means that the seeker has exclusive control over some asset that they did not themselves create, and uses that to extract rent from people who want access to it. Amazon selling free software SaaS doesn't seem like rent-seeking, because Amazon don't have exclusive control ove…

For me the best example of "rent seeking" is actual rent ;-) You build a building and you rent out rooms in it. It's the initial outlay of capital that you turn into a steady income stream without having to put any more work into it. This is in contrast with selling a service where you charge for your labour. My objection to rent seeking with regards to SaaS is similar to what happens with rental properties without r…

With actual rent, most of what you're charging for is the location, not the building. That's why rents for flats in London or San Fransisco are astronomical, but those for much larger and nicer houses in Chelmsford or Fresno are a fraction as much. The rentier did nothing to create the value of the location, they just bought a slice of it.

It's not immediately clear that there is an analogue of location for SaaS.

Which is why ytur point about lock-in is interesting. It's not so much that lock-in is part of rent-seeking, so much as that lock-in creates the analogue of "location" needed for rent-seeking (maybe?). Once people are stuck in AWS, Amazon can charge higher prices for shittier services, because people have a reason to be there over and above value for money.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#123

Post by api » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #43

api wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought this for years: the aggressive defense of super liberal OSS licenses with no sort of "SaaS clause" or other limits turns FOSS into free labor for SaaS companies. SaaS is more closed than closed: you control nothing, not even your data, and can trivially be spied on and monetized in other questionable ways. The fact that some of the pieces of a SaaS site are open source is meaningless and changes nothing.…

Just as a side note, "free labor" is common and not necessarily a bad thing. Whenever you give someone a gift, whatever work you did on it is effectively free labor. You could also think of donations to charity that way when you fund them out of your salary, not to mention volunteering. It's true that often people don't want to do that, though, and this is certainly understandable.

I don't want to give free gifts to surveillance capitalist companies.