FUSE for macOS is no longer open source • Hacker News Board

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#51

Post by eecc » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 7:37 AM UTC

Epskampie wrote: post #21

vosper wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we read the same article? Seems like Apple has been happy for this guy to have a signing certificate for his kernel extension for years. And he has been using it, and everything has been fine. Now the guy decides (not unreasonably, IMO, though it clearly impacts a lot of people who're used to getting the benefit of his efforts for free) that he wants to make some money... and the conclusion is "fuck Apple"?

Well, they allow one blessed developer to have a cert, only for historical reasons, leading to exactly this situation. That doesn’t seem like something to cheer about to me. Like it said in the article, a fork is impossible because they won’t get a cert. Also, my complaint is mostly that apple keeps changing their API’s, as you can also read in the article. All together this kind of stuff makes life needlessly hard o…

Uh no. There’s nothing that says Apple only allows 1 kext developer. The article only says that getting the dev cert is such a significant pain in the ass that only one has ever gone through the effort. Anyone motivated enough to fork MacFuse can apply.

On a tangent: wouldn’t it be nice if all packages were signed? It would do the community a great service if an organization like Brew negotiated an agreement and implementation with Apple (and something that no one could unilaterally retract).

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#52

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 7:38 AM UTC

Epskampie wrote: post #33

ixtli wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what happened with VLC? I didn’t realize they ran afoul of the “Cathedral”

apple kept changing/breaking Api’s to try to kill vlc so that they could try make money of the paid version of the QuickTime player which then existed. I must admit it was just comments made by VLC devs, so it’s anecdotal.

VLC is on Apple’s “must not break list” and gets special checkfixes in the OS, FWIW.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#53

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 7:44 AM UTC

chenzhekl wrote: post #46

yegle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, MacFUSE was open sourced by Google: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2007/01/taming-mac-os-x-file-s...

It's no longer being maintained according to the README. https://code.google.com/archive/p/macfuse/

The original author left the company long ago, so I guess they never felt the need to continue updating it.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#54

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 7:44 AM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #41

mike_d wrote: post #13

It is buried in the footnotes of the post, but the ultimate reason behind going closed source is that Google built their enterprise GDrive syncing client for mac off a fork of osxfuse. The original author of osxfuse feels entitled to some compensation for that and is doing his damnedest to make it happen.

The footnote says Google are using their own fork. Now we don't know when they forked and how much they diverged, but it's quite possible that were going to maintain their own fork, anyway. It's also noteworthy isn't the "original author of osxfuse". In fact, Google is. So while I can empathise with the general complaint about commercial use, one doesn't get to make that complaint against the one company that origina…

[deleted]

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#55

Post by Jerry2 » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 7:44 AM UTC

Danieru wrote: post #18

Let's all wait for BSD license apologists to insist true freedom is the freedom to blackmail your users. Props to the OS Xfuse maintainer, he does deserve a fat payout so begrudging him. Still, it paints the clear picture of how BSD is an inferior license when it comes to freedom for users. Maybe this comment is too slashdot 2006 era, but still, licenses matter.

> Let's all wait for BSD license apologists to insist true freedom is the freedom to blackmail your users.

You assume that the author would have continued working on it if the code was GPLed. If you look at the list of contributors, you'll notice there's only 4 people (besides him) who have contributed any code [1]. That means that had he not continued working on it, the project would have died long ago. GPL doesn't somehow make code write itself. Unless there are incentives for programmers, all projects can perish regardless of what license they use.

In this case, you could also argue that the sole reason why OSXFuse still exists and is being updated is because it's BSD and the author continued releasing it because it was a binary-only release.

[1] https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/graphs/contributors

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#56

Post by Semaphor » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 7:48 AM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #49

Good for him. I hope we see more of this in the future: developers realising that the work they do has value and that they’re not required to spend their lives giving it away for free. So they take control of their work product and start capturing some of that value for themselves. It’s a shame that the article is written in this tone, as it mirrors the dominant sentiment among open source folks. There is still a lot…

> It’s a shame that the article is written in this tone

The article seemed pretty neutral excluding the slightly shady stuff like not mentioning the license change properly, timely or even in expected locations

> the dominant sentiment among open source folks

The dominant sentiment of open source folks is that they want open source instead of proprietary software? That seems expected, it’s after all the whole point.

edit: positive -> neutral; shady -> slightly shady

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#57

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 7:49 AM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #11

When a FOSS project closes itself off this way, the proper response is to treat it as abandoned and continue development from the last-good version with source available. In particular, MacPorts should not be distributing the binary-only versions. Total disengagement.

MacPorts does not distribute binary-only versions.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#58

Post by pacifika » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 7:52 AM UTC

thayne wrote: post #45

I'm surprised it doesn't say anything about security concerns with depending on a single individual to develop a kernel module without any ability to audit the code.

Let’s assume that is because when commercial companies contact him they pay for being able to audit the source?

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#59

Post by shmerl » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 7:53 AM UTC

> Isn’t there a better way?

There is. Ditch Apple and use sane systems without some control obsessive entities constantly hovering over you and dictating you how to (or not to) use them.

Developers abandoning Apple should be the taste of their own medicine for them.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#60

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 7:54 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #59

> Isn’t there a better way? There is. Ditch Apple and use sane systems without some control obsessive entities constantly hovering over you and dictating you how to (or not to) use them. Developers abandoning Apple should be the taste of their own medicine for them.

That’s not the issue.