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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

#161

Post by tinus_hn »

steeleduncan wrote: post #153
saagarjha wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacFUSE requires deep hooks into the kernel to work correctly. Do you think the File Provider API is sufficient for this purpose?

It's API is not very clear, but it does seem to have roughly equivalent functionality to FUSE. The only obvious restriction is that there must be a physical file on disk rather than doing everything in-memory.

The restriction is that the FileProvider api is only used by desktop applications for user files. You can’t for instance run the application itself from there.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#162

Post by coldtea »

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.

That said, the FOSS community has created bigger companies and made bigger money than some of your favourite commercial projects (proprietary compilers, etc).

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#163

Post by syshum »

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.

the Libre Software community understands this, which is one of the reasons we push for the Use of Copy-Left licenses, and not Permissive licenses.

So something like what happened here is not even possible. If the FUSE project on OSX would have been GPL from the beginning this person would not be able to change the licensing since he originally forked it, unless he rewrote all of the GPL code in a clean room rewrite which is not really realistic

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#164

Post by tinus_hn »

koolba wrote: post #94
yborg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be forking 2 year old code, he hasn't updated the repo in the last 2 years, knowing that the next OS release would leave commercial users at his mercy. Apple also doesn't just hand out kernel extension signing certificates to everyone that signs up for a developer account, you'd have to be someone with some reputation. It was a well-executed fake punt, he'll get people to pay; Catalina is out now and if you wan…

I’m impressed with the business savvy applied here. Well played!

It all sounds clever but obviously Catalina was not released yesterday, it was released some time ago and if a companies software required changes for Catalina they should have noticed many months ago while testing on the beta releases.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#165

Post by tspiteri »

kjksf wrote: post #115
znpy wrote: post #114

I am afraid there's nothing people can do about this issue: according to https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/blob/master/LICENSE.txt the project is BSD licensed and AFAIK closing the sources of a BSD-licensed project ("re-licensing") is allowed. Yep, he's allowed to do this and people basically have to suck it up. This couldn't have happened if the code was GPL-licensed. This might be a good occasion take a moment to…

Cursory look at recent checkins seems to indicate that he wrote all the code. As the copyright holder of the code he could re-license it the same way even if it was GPL.

If he wanted to switch to GPL, he wouldn't have to relicence all the code; just the code that is by him alone. The contributions by others are in a permissive license that is compatible with the GPL, so they could remain in their current state; but the whole project would contain GPL code so anyone redistributing the project would have to do abide with the terms of the GPL.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#166

Post by ksangeelee »

dspillett wrote: post #150
progval wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am afraid there's nothing people can do about this issue There is: offer the maintainer a decent (probably part-time) wage for working on this while keeping it open source.

A key problem is getting people to pony up. People are all for "the community" and the maintainers doing right by "the community" when that means they (as a member of the community) get the benefit of the code. They are often less vocal about being part of the community then the project maintainers ask for financial assistance, generally assuming that other people will chip in so it'll be OK if they don't. This isn't…

I don't see this as idealism vs a selfish human nature, not directly at least. The maintainer has been delivering a low level open-source product within a proprietary operating system. That's got to be tough, and as the article states, it's the main source of hurdles to others taking up the project.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#167

Post by gdfasfklshg4 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #155
gdfasfklshg4 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not publicly[1] but it could be on given day. Closed source code can't be. [1] Google presumably audited it when they used a fork.

So probably not then.

The potential for audit is powerful on its own.

Do you remember the shareware days? Installing something you wanted meant getting a bunch of browser toolbars etc.

The potential for forking is also powerful.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#168

Post by diffeomorphism »

huhtenberg wrote: post #141
diffeomorphism wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "instead"? Commons Clause is closed source.

I know exactly what you mean, but this is incorrect. CC is not "closed source". CC makes a license incompatible with the OSI definition of "open source", which is one of the interpretations of the term. There's a persistent confusion over the difference between OSI's definition and the casual understanding of it. To the laymen, if you can _see_ the source, then it's an _open_ source. And if you can _use_ and _change_…

No, that is completely wrong.

If you can _see_ the source, then it is _shared_ source (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Initiative). If you can _use_ and _change_ it, then it's a _open_ source.

Are you going to tell me next that "free speech" means not paying for the radio? And that everything else is just one interpretation of the term? Or that freeware and free software are interchangeable terms?

CC is not open source and does not get to pretend it is. Come up with your own marketing name.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#169

Post by baq »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #136
hannob wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. The GPL has been a great success, so much so it's been banned by capitalists in their organizations with the result of dying pretty much everywhere except the kernel, GNU userland and an occasional dual licensed fully enterprise-copyrighted software. BSD with its take it and run with it approach enables people to make a living by modifying (or selling unmodified) software. The situation is dire especially in the internet non-core-router infrastructure.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#170

Post by syshum »

dmytroi wrote: post #149
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.

Maybe. What we know factually at this point in time: osxfuse was BSD licensed, Google used it and haven't contributed back. osxfuse is popular project. If it was GPL licensed, do you think Google would bother to use it? Or would they write their own instead? Would we even know about osxfuse then? MIT/BSD is amazing on bootstrap phase, when getting code used and building user base is top priority. Monetization always…

MIT/BSD is in a kill free software phase, where commercialization of SAAS and other services are king.

MIT/BSD is turning open source software, in to open source dev tools and libraries, no longer is should the end user software be free and open, no just the tools, frameworks, languages, and libraries used to create the end user software

I would not call this trend "amazing"

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