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FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

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Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#131

Post by hmottestad »

aembleton wrote: post #123
larodi wrote: post #95

this quite reminds of the openssl saga, but on a smaller scale, with single developer more or less responsible for world's encryption for decade. it's a pity, it's a shame that companies who use FOSS benefit, but do not understand (or do, but ignore) the idea of FOSS, which is to give back to community. this also includes other FOSS companies, etc as everyone uses openssl, zlib and sqlite. to base a project on FOSS r…

Why should companies give back when the code was licenced in such a way as to not require it? If a developer works on a project and wants commercial companies to give back then they can choose a suitable licence such as GPLv3; if they just want to get their code out there and don't really mind how it's used then BSD is more suitable.

Seems like the reason he changed it up!

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#132

Post by oefrha »

kalleboo wrote: post #73
oefrha wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like an entire valid use case of BSD-licensed code. If you don't like it you shouldn't have chosen the BSD license in the first place. Edit: Interestingly, from https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/blob/master/LICENSE.txt : > FUSE for macOS is a fork of MacFUSE. MacFUSE has been developed by Google Inc..

> If you don't like it you shouldn't have chosen the BSD license in the first place I mean he changed the license away from BSD now, so, that works too.

BSD -> closed source is kind of a nuclear option when other less drastic options exist, but sure.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#133

Post by hmottestad »

otikik wrote: post #78

I'm fortunate enough to have been paid to do open source code for the last ~10 years or so. I am thus a huge open source & free source advocate, and I am completely biased for it. I think everything done here seems legal, because BSD licensing pretty much allows for this (I am not a lawyer though, and I haven't examined how things were with third-party contributions for example). Morally, the only fault I can say on…

I'm very happy for you getting paid to contribute to open source. I wish I could find someone willing to sponsor me. My field is fairly narrow though with few users and not that much commercial action.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#134

Post by atq2119 »

deng wrote: post #79
atq2119 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I prefer the GPL and variants for personal projects that I don't intend to profit off monetarily. It's a conscious choice that I do want compensation, and I don't want to work for free"--but said compensation should be in code and not necessarily in money. It's why contributing to a BSD-licensed project as a hobby can feel a bit icky, and doing the same on a GPL-licensed project doesn't.

> That's why I prefer the GPL This is a pretty common misunderstanding. Google is using oxfuse internally and does not distribute it, so the GPL would not change anything here.

You conveniently left out the "and variants" in your quote.

I personally wouldn't mind this kind of internal use for the kinds of projects I'm involved in. For the kinds of software that is more likely to play a substantial role in customer-facing services, some people would feel differently. That happens to not be my cup of tea, but in any case there's the AGPL, as another commentor points out. And for yet other situations, there's LGPL.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#135

Post by DagAgren »

f1refly wrote: post #84
pjmlp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will keep going on, until FOSS community accepts that beyond university projects, someone pumping up their CVs, having a company sponsorship, or being able to pimp it up with some kind of subscription/consulting, there is little to no money to be made and everyone has bills to pay.

No, this wouldn't have been a problem if the software had been gpl licensed, as the companies would've been forced to give back whatever they changed themselfes, potentially helping him out a lot

FUSE is generally shipped as a separate executable, which requires no modifications.

So no, GPL would have changed nothing. Companies would still have been able to ship it unmodified for free without contributing anything.

They could have kept their own code that uses FUSE secret, but even if they had had to release that code, that code is often useless to anyone else. It would not have helped or supported the author of the original code in any way whatsoever.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#136

Post by fauigerzigerk »

hannob wrote: post #109
pjmlp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will keep going on, until FOSS community accepts that beyond university projects, someone pumping up their CVs, having a company sponsorship, or being able to pimp it up with some kind of subscription/consulting, there is little to no money to be made and everyone has bills to pay.

I'm really curious, what do you want the FOSS community exactly to accept and what would the outcome be? There are some FOSS business models. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. Overall there's more FOSS than ever before, it's an amazingly successful concept. It doesn't always work, some projects and companies fail or decide to stop being FOSS. That doesn't change the fact that it's an amazingly successful con…

I think the concept hasn't been as successful as some had hoped for when it comes to moving power and control over software away from big corporations towards users.

As an anti-capitalist movement/dream, open source has utterly failed. As a concept that has provided lots of opportunities for developers and startups it has been a great success.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#137

Post by II2II »

pjmlp wrote: post #69
hizanberg wrote: post #23

Likely the best outcome for the project barring company sponsorship that pays him to continue working on it as OSS. He's been the sole maintainer on the project since 2012 [1] and has never been compensated for it, he says it will always be free to end users but wants companies that are financially benefiting from it to help sponsor continued development [2]: > I will never ask end users for financial support. FUSE w…

This will keep going on, until FOSS community accepts that beyond university projects, someone pumping up their CVs, having a company sponsorship, or being able to pimp it up with some kind of subscription/consulting, there is little to no money to be made and everyone has bills to pay.

If the end goal is earning an income, sure. Yet there are other reasons to adopt an open source model. It is useful as a collaborative model. For that to happen, people have to be willing to submit code and the maintainer has to be willing to accept code. It sounds like that was not happening here.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#138

Post by eecc »

int_19h wrote: post #106
eecc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impl…

The discussion on GitHub strongly implies that it's more than effort, and that random people don't just get certificates regardless of effort, because Apple is being cagey and reluctant to issue them even to large and prominent companies. I wonder what the specifics of that are...

Well, compromising a kext would be a significant 0wn and quite difficult to explain away.

I can see how Apple would be cagey and reluctant: although it’s technically feasible to revoke compromised publishers imagine the hysteria “OMG Apple kernel got 0wnd!”, “Apple kernel phones home to spy your extensions!”, “Apple can remotely brick your Mac with key revocation!”

It’s bull of course...

... I guess FUSE is one kernel service Apple should just provide out of the box

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#139

Post by DagAgren »

pjc50 wrote: post #111
pjmlp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will keep going on, until FOSS community accepts that beyond university projects, someone pumping up their CVs, having a company sponsorship, or being able to pimp it up with some kind of subscription/consulting, there is little to no money to be made and everyone has bills to pay.

I think the developers generally understand that. No sensible person goes into FOSS for the money. It's the customers - consuming non-developers - who have a problem of expectations.

But every person, sensible or not, has bills to pay. When you say "no sensible person goes into FOSS for the money" you are saying "most people can't afford to actively maintain a FOSS project", and you really can't claim that is in any way good for FOSS.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#140

Post by stavros »

kakwa_ wrote: post #122
hizanberg wrote: post #23

Likely the best outcome for the project barring company sponsorship that pays him to continue working on it as OSS. He's been the sole maintainer on the project since 2012 [1] and has never been compensated for it, he says it will always be free to end users but wants companies that are financially benefiting from it to help sponsor continued development [2]: > I will never ask end users for financial support. FUSE w…

Well, in this specific case, I think the best outcome would be for Apple to merge the module in the MAC OSX kernel so it's there by default, FUSE is kind of a de-facto standard and is clearly a widely useful piece of code. But, big picture, yes a lot of OSS projects have the same issue. Funding is clearly one aspect, but another aspect is also to work on having less "single person projects" (and I'm not talking about…

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