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

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#171

Post by laughinghan » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:09 AM UTC

hapless wrote: post #65

The heart of the matter is that a fairly small number of people on a proprietary UNIX are mad that they have to pay money to continue to be free riders on the Free Software movement. Mr Fleischer has done a huge amount of unpaid work so a narrow segment of wealthy software workers can avoid the choice between paying for proprietary software and supporting Free Software, after spending thousands of dollars on a MacOS…

I fail to see how that is in any way the heart of the matter. The articles mentions someone being mad completely in passing, in a quoted tweet. If anyone in this HN thread is mad, they're a tiny minority because I haven't seen any.

Instead it seems more like the heart of your comment is that you view everything in terms of an ideological battle between the Free Software movement and everyone else. So when you came upon an article and HN thread calmly discussing a maintainer's decision to change their project's license for understandable reasons but in a somewhat underhanded way, you immediately sorted everyone into heroes and villains and self-righteously took a stand.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#172

Post by deng » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:10 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #97

deng wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

GDrive Enterprise is a publicly available product with a Mac client so the footnote doesn't seem to line up with what you're saying.

I wasn't aware that osxfuse is distributed by Google. If that is the case then I am sorry for spreading false information and indeed, the GPL would apply.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#173

Post by BurningCycles » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:10 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #98

f1refly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lie, lots of people donate voluntarily for their favorite free software every day. If you decide to be a leech that's fine too, but don't try to convince yourself others are that way as well.

Donations don't allow for a sustainable business.

Blender, Krita are notable FOSS projects being sustainable through donations.

I'm not saying it's easy, just that it's not impossible.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#174

Post by angry_octet » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:14 AM UTC

We need something like carbon credits for open source. As in, if you contribute to open source you earn credits. If you make lots of use of open source but don't contribute back you need to buy open source credits.

How we would value open source is a tricky question. Would AWS owe a gazillion credits for all the hours of linux and apache they've burnt? Probably doesn't make sense. Maybe a logarithmic scale. But the real value of open source isn't dollars but people time (which, if you've had a pile of dollars and tried to spend it to employ people to do something, you will know is not the same thing). How many people hours is there in producing something like FUSE, and how many hours saved by end users? Maybe that determines the utility.

Until we have a value and a currency for open source there won't be an open source economy.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#175

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:21 AM UTC

BurningCycles wrote: post #173

pjmlp wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donations don't allow for a sustainable business.

Blender, Krita are notable FOSS projects being sustainable through donations. I'm not saying it's easy, just that it's not impossible.

Blender was a commercial product and has some big studios doing those donations, as far as I remember.

And I bet only a lucky few of the contributors get to see the money.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#176

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:22 AM UTC

DagAgren wrote: post #139

pjc50 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Most people can't afford to actively maintain a FOSS project" has always been true. It has been a hobby for some, a privilege allowed by the workplaces of others, and in a few rare cases companies have been built that charge for consulting and manage to fund a distro or other project that way. Or dual-license tech like Trolltech.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#177

Post by tambourine_man » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:23 AM UTC

I think the issue is lack of user interest.

I’ve tried using FUSE for the Mac many times throughout the years, mostly for curl_fs and ssh_fs.

Believe it or not, I’m not happy with the FTP alternatives on the Mac. Transmit is beautiful but buggy and lacks features such as general purpose SOCKS proxy. FileZilla is ugly as sin. Cyberduck is neither pretty nor feature packed.

Although it got better recently, FUSE for the Mac has always been incredibly slow and buggy, no matter how many command line flags I added.

So between native NTFS read, ExFat read/write and decent for most people remote disk apps, there are probably very few users who care about FUSE on the Mac.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#178

Post by diffeomorphism » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:23 AM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #159

adrianN wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forbidding users from doing dangerous stuff with the machines they own is not good imho.

But is it allowed for users to choose a machine that forbids this?

This clothing is made with slave labor.

"But is it allowed for customers to choose to buy this?".

"allowed" is irrelevant here.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#179

Post by fierarul » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:25 AM UTC

angry_octet wrote: post #174

We need something like carbon credits for open source. As in, if you contribute to open source you earn credits. If you make lots of use of open source but don't contribute back you need to buy open source credits. How we would value open source is a tricky question. Would AWS owe a gazillion credits for all the hours of linux and apache they've burnt? Probably doesn't make sense. Maybe a logarithmic scale. But the r…

FWIW nobody donates their BitCoins. And very rarely their USD.

So it's not for the lack of currencies or ways of showing support. People just don't value these projects until they get abandoned.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#180

Post by fierarul » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 11:27 AM UTC

hapless wrote: post #65

The heart of the matter is that a fairly small number of people on a proprietary UNIX are mad that they have to pay money to continue to be free riders on the Free Software movement. Mr Fleischer has done a huge amount of unpaid work so a narrow segment of wealthy software workers can avoid the choice between paying for proprietary software and supporting Free Software, after spending thousands of dollars on a MacOS…

+1

> after spending thousands of dollars on a MacOS system

Note how much the developer also pays in hardware and in subscriptions like the Apple Developer account.

Apple does not give free certificates for open source projects. Everybody must pay!