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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

#341

Post by solidasparagus »

pjmlp wrote: post #333
bagacrap wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a large software company had to pay 0.1% of its profit (revenue?) to each foss dependency they wouldn't have any left. And contributing back is not as easy as lobbing code over the wall, you have to spend a lot of time and energy coming to agreements on what makes sense to share and how to organize it. It would probably be a full time job for Mr Benjamin to vet external contributions even if everyone could agree t…

Why? That is how everyone else does business, paying their suppliers and tooling.

And choosing their suppliers based on prices... This is like a supplier offering their services for free and then bitching that no one is paying.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#342

Post by kgwxd »

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…

We lived in that world a few decades ago, it sucked for users, and where it's still common practice, it still sucks for users, and the only players really allowed to play that game are a few big names.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#343

Post by donatj »

cr0sh wrote: post #318

I find this to be yet another example of why the GPL (in general) was created, and why licenses like or similar to the BSD license are flawed. The way I see the GPL is that by modifying and publicly releasing the modified version of the binary, the payment for being able to do that is paid, at a minimum, in the code that should be released to accompany those changes. You want to use my code, and not pay me for it wit…

I honestly didn’t see the need for GPL until a project I had sunk a lot of time into contributing to changed their license from Apache to Proprietary and started charging more than I could possibly afford for a license.

I feel tricked and betrayed, it has been a year and I am still upset. The whole thing feels like I got robbed. I donated my time to a project I thought was for the good of the community, turns out I was just doing free work on a proprietary product others stood to make money on.

It’ll be a long time before I sign another CLA on something I care about.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#344

Post by chipotle_coyote »

robocat wrote: post #338
marcus_holmes wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I think that owning a tiny shareholding in a business is more hassle than it's worth for everyone involved. Options is more of a possibility, but again, more hassle than just cash. And involves more explanation to non-techies who won't understand, and will possibly intervene. I can just put "software licence" as a budget line item and make a payment, and everyone's happy, no questions asked.

What's the legalities of donating ownership for smear campaigns? What prevents me from making Microsoft a 1% shareholder of my company Cockwombles Inc? Or giving them a specific exemption in my license for the cockwomble software library?

> What prevents me from making Microsoft a 1% shareholder of my company Cockwombles Inc?

I don't see the mechanism by which this would be possible. Companies (and individuals) are not under some legal obligation to accept donations.

> Or giving them a specific exemption in my license for the cockwomble software library?

I've seen licenses over the years that say things like "this software cannot be used by companies or contractors working in the defense industry" or "this is free except when used by FrombleCo, which will need to pay me $500 per user." I suppose it's a way of expressing your disapproval of FrombleCo (or the defense industry), although I'm not sure how I really feel about that approach personally.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#345

Post by driverdan »

fierarul wrote: post #179
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.

I used to only donate in BTC. It reduced fees and promoted the use of BTC as a currency. Unfortunately that's not longer the case. Fees have increased significantly and complexity has increased, reducing the number of non-profits that accept it.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#346

Post by asveikau »

earonesty wrote: post #262
marcus_holmes wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a startup tech founder, benefiting massively from FOSS code. I realise there is a debt here, and the plan is definitely to repay that debt once we're cash-positive. Being able to have that plan, and not having to pay for software licences up front, is awesome. But I totally understand TFA's point of view. Maintaining a FOSS library is hard work, and those benefiting from it should contribute. If he's not seeing t…

"Small companies don't have the resources"... that's some backward thinking right there. By failing to contribute, small companies cost themselves money very quickly. How can a small business afford to live in a world of un-maintainable forks, patches and tech debt? Only large companies can afford to maintain private forks of FOSS. Small companies have to give back, or they will simply disappear.

I think it more accurately depends on the nature of the project and the nature of the patch. Not every patch is "technical debt" [itself a term that often encourages incorrect conclusions due to the debt metaphor not fitting perfectly] and not every amount of maintenance is scary. People react this way in fear before they understand the work.

But sure, it's a good idea to send patches upstream.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#347

Post by trasz »

chinesempire wrote: post #234
syshum wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

If it was GPL from the beginning, wouldn't it be a "ZFS on Linux" like situation? I don't think you can legally distribute GPL kernel modules for non GPL kernels. Even if you linked the module to the Darwin code, which is released under an OSS license (APSL), the two are not compatible and it's not clear if redistribution is fine (see "Darling: macOS compatibility for Linux" )

Sure you can. FreeBSD has been doing it for ages.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#348

Post by pjmlp »

solidasparagus wrote: post #341
pjmlp wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? That is how everyone else does business, paying their suppliers and tooling.

And choosing their suppliers based on prices... This is like a supplier offering their services for free and then bitching that no one is paying.

From the amount of people complaining here, it seems to me more like everyone is now pissed off that the supplier decided to go elsewhere and stop offering gratis services, as means to pay their bills.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#349

Post by pilif »

adrianN wrote: post #192
tinus_hn wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's a difficult question because it might limit supply of open machines for users who want the freedom to hack their own stuff. I think it's okay to offer computers that are basically Facebook appliances, but there should always be a toggle somewhere that allows people who know what they're doing to do whatever they please.

Macs do have such a toggle. You can boot from the recovery partition, launch the terminal and issue the `csrutil disable` command.

This will turn off all the security features that have been added over the years, including the “Catalina Vista” prompts people were complaining about in September.

The reason this requires booting from the recovery partition is to make it impossible for malware to flip the switch and to make it convoluted enough that even the most gullible of users will question their actions when pushed to do these steps by malware.

(Apple has stated publicly and in very clear language that they fully intend for the Mac to continue to be able to run unsigned code, so I believe this toggle isn’t temporary)

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#350

Post by pjmlp »

laughinghan wrote: post #297
pjmlp wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tiny part? Your immediate preceding sentence observes that the large pool of kernel contributors live on salaries provided to them by Fortune 500 companies. Is that a roundabout way of admitting that you're wrong and open source can be sustainable?

Not even close, because those developers are employees from Fortune 500 companies in one way or the other, they are not being paid by other developers paying to use Linux based software as such.
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