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No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

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Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#291

Post by solatic »

3pt14159 wrote: post #63
ganafagol wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but this is not the right reaction. It won't improve anything. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? You are free to adjust the license to prevent this. But then tomorrow everybody comes and rants about that the GPL is too restrictive. That's the price we pay for this. It's the license that keeps…

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

As the person who wrote the software and owns the copyright, nothing prevents you from dual-licensing your software. You can release your software as GPL on GitHub, with a notice that you're willing to also license your code under a paid proprietary license; interested parties may send an email to sales@example.com at their leisure.

Do note that this effectively prevents other people from collaborating with you, since their contributions would be GPL-protected and you may not sell them. So it's not a good model for larger open-source projects. But if you're an independent open-source developer who works as a sole contributor and feels exploited, then it's probably a better model.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#292

Post by BlueTemplar »

ajuc wrote: post #240
krasin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unreal Engine license is along these lines: it's free if you are small / no significant revenue, and it's 5% of your revenue otherwise. That said, not every shared-sources project would be used, if its license requires to pay royalty.

Games using UE wouldn't work without desktop client so it's easy to licence it. A lot of business code can just as well run on server, and that works around basicall all the open source licences.

Except AGPL if I'm not mistaken ? So combine both I guess ?

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#293

Post by C19is20 »

enriquto wrote: post #130
tlarkworthy wrote: post #25

I am not religious but labourers in the vineyard stuck with me from school: The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble(D) against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they…

> Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? No. Money is a collective construct and strictly subject to collective norms (e.g., taxes). Paying selected people money for not really working is the cornerstone of corruption.

I just bought a TV from a shop selling the same as in another store, but cheaper. Should I return it and go and pay more? I've paid my taxes, the rest is mine.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#294

Post by BlueTemplar »

roenxi wrote: post #244
wodenokoto wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the parent is asking for is inherently not open source.

For a moment I disagreed with this, so I'll add a link to the OSD [0] for anyone else who wants to quibble. Also a choice quote about Stallman [1]: "Richard Stallman argues the obvious meaning of term "open source" is that the source code is public/accessible for inspection, without necessarily any other rights granted" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ope…

Stallman is about Free/Libre Software.

Eric S. Raymond is about Open Source.

There are somewhat subtle, but very important differences between their philosophies.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#295

Post by pietrovismara »

solatic wrote: post #291
3pt14159 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

As the person who wrote the software and owns the copyright, nothing prevents you from dual-licensing your software. You can release your software as GPL on GitHub, with a notice that you're willing to also license your code under a paid proprietary license; interested parties may send an email to sales@example.com at their leisure. Do note that this effectively prevents other people from collaborating with you, sinc…

It's not what OP meant at all. He's asking for a license that lets regular devs use your project freely, but require fortune 500 like companies to pay.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#296

Post by erinnh »

andi999 wrote: post #214
ricardobeat wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not correct, those are not considered OSS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition

I am not really happy that a string of words which have an understandable meaning ('open' and 'source' leading to 'open source') has been hijacked by some foundation. I mean how would you phrase it if your customer wants to source to be open, but without the freedom of redistribution (because he doesnt want to pay for it).

It wasnt hijacked, it was invented by them.

Source available is very much a widely accepted moniker for what you describe.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#297

Post by richrichardsson »

avhception wrote: post #216
kome wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I've been noticing more push back against the open source bargain lately." it's open source vs. free software open source = free labor for private profits.

I think the term "free software" is a marketing failure because you'd always have to add "as in free speech, not free beer". In German you can differentiate that, "frei" vs. "gratis".

I'd go as far as saying that the term "free software" is a complete an utter fail. In my mind "free speech" is speech that is entirely unrestricted. Almost all FOSS licenses come with "restrictions", such as you must leave the copyright notice in place, you must add the "PROVIDED AS IS" spiel somewhere the end user can read it, you must release your derivative work's source code under the same license etc., so it is by definition no longer "free".

WTFPL is probably the only real "free" license.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#298

Post by pietrovismara »

dehrmann wrote: post #140
arthurcolle wrote: post #102

On Twitter, he claims that he was recently made homeless due to an apartment fire, and asks the community to send funds to help him avoid homelessness, which seems reasonable enough. He later goes on to describe "fake news written by the NY Post." I searched for this, and found an article that might be the article he describes (timing fits) [0] Pretty crazy story, all in all! He seems to be in some pretty dire strait…

This looks like a pretty popular project, so I assume he's decently talented. How does he not have a day job? Passion projects are great and all, but they're not known for paying the bills. Especially for solo maintainers, it's almost like playing a gig at a coffee shop for tips. Want to make a career out of it? You need talent, marketability, and be ready to compromise on your vision.

This is wrong. If someone works a day job, they won't have time to work on their OS projects. Corporation should pay contribution to the OS projects they use to make billions/year. We should have license that requires only high income companies to pay for usage.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#299

Post by tubularhells »

rorykoehler wrote: post #125
echelon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spotify You don't own the music. You can't share it, use your own software to analyze, shuffle, remix it, etc. > Netflix subscription But now there's Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, Showtime Anytime, Peacock Premium, etc. Except now instead of one easy to use interface to access it all, it's spread out all over the place and inconsistent as hell. And more expensive!

I just stopped watching things. Kind of a strange outcome but I'm also more happy with it than expected.

I haven't watched a lot of things the past 10 years. A couple movies with friends, but I can count those on one hand. I don't really miss it. Some friends find t weird and try to push recommendations still, and I thank them and tell them I'll put it on the list. Then I promptly forget what they talked about, but they seem to have been satisfied with this. No harm done, right?

On the other hand, they seem to be all about audio books while I tell them they are not the same as sitting down with a real one. They tell me they don't have time for books, and listening to them while working our, jogging, cycling is how they 'read'. I don't think they are getting the same thing out of it that I do actually reading the physical book in a single tasking way, but then again, I shouldn't be bothered by other people's habits.

Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

#300

Post by rglullis »

3pt14159 wrote: post #63
ganafagol wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but this is not the right reaction. It won't improve anything. What's the point of open source if companies just steal it, build billion dollar industries on top, and then lock everything down? You are free to adjust the license to prevent this. But then tomorrow everybody comes and rants about that the GPL is too restrictive. That's the price we pay for this. It's the license that keeps…

I don't want GPL. I want a license that prevents unpaid use by any entity that has any stakeholder worth more than a billion USD. That's it. That's all I want. MIT-Billionaires. Want to take funding from A16Z? That's a million a year for the license or something that maybe scales with a market cap just to level the playing field between a funded startup and Apple Computers. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but I don…

Apple doesn't love you back. Amazon doesn't love you back. Any company that seems oh-so-awesome, but makes their software proprietary, does not love you back.

You are never going to fix the problem of centralization of wealth if you keep thinking that is a matter of "unfairness". (Much like Socialism and central planning), as long as people give in their freedoms to big central entities for the immediate benefit they offer (shiny hardware, low TCO, whatever) economies of scale lock-in and then it becomes almost impossible to get these entities back under control.

As long as there are people that think that it is okay for us to spend our resources creating private software we will get companies exploiting trying to extract value from software developers, and especially so from those that work on FOSS

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