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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

#241

Post by dmitriid »

laughinghan wrote: post #154
pjmlp wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donations don't allow for a sustainable business.

But they demonstrably can allow for a sustainable project , the obvious example being the Linux Foundation. And if you admit to the existence of donations, then do you admit that you were wrong to say "open source folks don't want to pay for anything"?

Linux Foundation is an obvious example of big corporations paying for the development of a project they rely on: most money comes from huge corporate membership fees, most code comes from salaried programmers at those corporations.

Most devs though would balk at the idea of paying for Linux.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#242

Post by saagarjha »

simias wrote: post #238
tssva wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two possible scenarios: The developer always thought that contributing back code or financial support should be a requirement of use but failed to reflect this in the license chosen and now is correcting this. The developer over time has changed their believe of what the requirements for use should or need to be. This change of thought may have been informed by the behavior of those using the code but is st…

In my system of value (which is of course subjective and you may not share) I do consider that these open source projects suffer a sort of tragedy of the commons where some companies benefit immensely from them (think how expensive it would be to build and maintain something like osxfuse from scratch) but don't contribute anything back to it. It's like big corporations managing to pay little to no taxes in the countr…

> think how expensive it would be to build and maintain something like osxfuse from scratch

Google did both for a while.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#243

Post by tobias3 »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #203
joking wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you sure? it's not using oxfuse on the google drive clients that the users download and install on their own machines?

Distributing it inside the client does indeed qualify as 'distribution' under the GPL and would require the client to then be licensed under the GPL.

As far as I understand this would be a "mere aggregation" since the application and the kernel module communicate at arms length through the kernel syscall interface https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#MereAggregation . So they'd have to make the source of the kernel extension available (as the GPL requires) but it would not be viral to the application using the kernel extension.

As the FAQ entry says this is a legal question "which ultimately judges will decide" and as far as I know that hasn't happend yet. Which is probably one reason many don't want to do it and err on the safe side and choose another project with non-viral license.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#244

Post by saagarjha »

jeltz wrote: post #226
baq wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personally I mostly associate GPL with capitalism, due to almost all projects controlled by a single for profit company using GPL while community and hobbyist projects more often tend to use BSD/MIT/Apache.

> almost all projects controlled by a single for profit company using GPL

Which ones? The two flagship ones I can think of for GPL, Linux and GCC, don’t really have one company in control of them. And on the flip side LLVM and the browser engines, which are arguably under reasonably strong control of one or two companies, are usually Apache or similar.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#245

Post by samatman »

pjmlp wrote: post #191
coldtea wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Like LLVM, which everyone is using to replace GCC, so that they are able to profit without contribution thanks MIT?

I would hazard that that main reason that many (by no means all) FOSS projects are migrating to LLVM is that clang is dramatically easier to work on, and at or over parity in efficiency of output.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#246

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR »

pjmlp wrote: post #186
laughinghan wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they demonstrably can allow for a sustainable project , the obvious example being the Linux Foundation. And if you admit to the existence of donations, then do you admit that you were wrong to say "open source folks don't want to pay for anything"?

Since you brought up the Linux Foundation as an example, the large pool of contributions are from Fortune 500 happy to use Linux instead of paying for UNIX licenses. Which in any case only a tiny part of kernel contributors can live from.

Most of the kernel is written by big companies?

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#247

Post by beefhash »

pjmlp wrote: post #191
coldtea wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Like LLVM, which everyone is using to replace GCC, so that they are able to profit without contribution thanks MIT?

They changed to Apache 2.0 recently, actually.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#248

Post by saagarjha »

DagAgren wrote: post #135
f1refly wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> They could have kept their own code that uses FUSE secret

If they had linked against FUSE they’d need to provide code.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#249

Post by ajnin »

I don't think going closed source is the solution to fight against others leeching off your work. The solution is more stringent GPL-style licenses that are more protective of the open-source community.

Overall BSD-style licenses are not protective enough for the open source community, in fact they open it up to predatory behavior by selfish entities with large commercial interests and which don't care about giving back to the community. BSD gives the most freedom to the developers (that includes companies making private use of the code), while GPL gives the most freedom to the user of the software (who can then chose to become a developer). BSD code is often higher in popularity but there's a reason for that. I think GPL is the better choice overall.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#250

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

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.

> It's the customers - consuming non-developers - who have a problem of expectations.

If FOSS zealotry wasn't a thing, then said expectations would be unreasonable. Sadly we live in a world where many people can withstand the cognitive dissonance of "You should use FOSS" and "You shouldn't complain about it because it is free".

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