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I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

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Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#11

Post by tptacek »

iso1210 wrote: post #9
tptacek wrote: post #5

This is unusually insightful for a LinkedIn post. One question, though: towards the end, it suggests that GPL/AGPL products, which are more defensible against commercial competitors who simply resell the open source project, are "legally murky" and might be rejected by customer legal teams. But does that matter? Can't you just do what Sleepycat did, and offer commercial customers a clean commercial license?

Microsoft spent a lot of money and energy in the late 90s and 00s to convince the world - especially business and legal people - that the GPL was a "cancer" The GPL is one of the cleanest licenses out there. Use the code in your project, give the source of your project to anyone you give the binaries to, job done.

I mean, I agree, but isn't it a moot point? Isn't part of the reason you get all your contributors to sign CLAs so that you can put whatever license on your product you need to close a deal?

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#12

Post by api »

iso1210 wrote: post #9
tptacek wrote: post #5

This is unusually insightful for a LinkedIn post. One question, though: towards the end, it suggests that GPL/AGPL products, which are more defensible against commercial competitors who simply resell the open source project, are "legally murky" and might be rejected by customer legal teams. But does that matter? Can't you just do what Sleepycat did, and offer commercial customers a clean commercial license?

Microsoft spent a lot of money and energy in the late 90s and 00s to convince the world - especially business and legal people - that the GPL was a "cancer" The GPL is one of the cleanest licenses out there. Use the code in your project, give the source of your project to anyone you give the binaries to, job done.

All we would need to do is rename the GPL to something else. That’s it. It really is that dumb. Just don’t tell anyone it’s a renamed GPL and maybe rearrange some wording.

We abandoned GPL for the BSL for this reason. The GPL is in many ways better but there are a ton of companies that won’t touch it or anything that comes near it... though they tend to grandfather in Linux.

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#13

Post by joshklein »

tptacek wrote: post #5

This is unusually insightful for a LinkedIn post. One question, though: towards the end, it suggests that GPL/AGPL products, which are more defensible against commercial competitors who simply resell the open source project, are "legally murky" and might be rejected by customer legal teams. But does that matter? Can't you just do what Sleepycat did, and offer commercial customers a clean commercial license?

I suppose it would depend on what one takes “open source project” to actually mean. You’d have to reject contributions from your community if they weren’t interested in giving them back upstream in a way compatible with your commercial license, and you’d probably be forever open to claims you violated some individual’s GPL contribution of a feature you may or may not have seen if something similar makes its way into your commercial project.

There are obviously lots of open source projects that find a way to navigate this world via dual licensing, and I’m neither a lawyer nor an expert on the subject, but those projects don’t really fit my own personal definition of “open” (as I derive it from the Unix philosophy instead of the GNU is Not Unix philosophy).

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#14

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

iso1210 wrote: post #9
tptacek wrote: post #5

This is unusually insightful for a LinkedIn post. One question, though: towards the end, it suggests that GPL/AGPL products, which are more defensible against commercial competitors who simply resell the open source project, are "legally murky" and might be rejected by customer legal teams. But does that matter? Can't you just do what Sleepycat did, and offer commercial customers a clean commercial license?

Microsoft spent a lot of money and energy in the late 90s and 00s to convince the world - especially business and legal people - that the GPL was a "cancer" The GPL is one of the cleanest licenses out there. Use the code in your project, give the source of your project to anyone you give the binaries to, job done.

A lot of people wrongly assume that if you license the product under GNU GPL, you must publish source code on the internet. Many active proponents of free (as in freedom) software had very tense quarrells with me when I explained them that it's not exactly mandatory.

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#15

Post by marvinblum »

I'm working on an open-core product [0] right now, and an aspect I find missing in the article is that you can generate trust by showing how the internals work. This is especially beneficial if you work in an area like us. Of course, you need to make sure your license is set right and you need to think about where new features go, but it's a valid use-case.

[0] https://pirsch.io/ open-source core: https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#16

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

iso1210 wrote: post #9
tptacek wrote: post #5

This is unusually insightful for a LinkedIn post. One question, though: towards the end, it suggests that GPL/AGPL products, which are more defensible against commercial competitors who simply resell the open source project, are "legally murky" and might be rejected by customer legal teams. But does that matter? Can't you just do what Sleepycat did, and offer commercial customers a clean commercial license?

Microsoft spent a lot of money and energy in the late 90s and 00s to convince the world - especially business and legal people - that the GPL was a "cancer" The GPL is one of the cleanest licenses out there. Use the code in your project, give the source of your project to anyone you give the binaries to, job done.

This is a naive view. Most companies try to limit or restrict the scope of what they must open source. With the GPL, depending on the version, how the code interacts with your project (static linking, dynamic linking, IPC, etc.) you may or may not have to release your code under the same license.

In particular Google's strong anti-AGPL stance has caused a chilling effect for adoption of AGPL projects at companies, hence why commercial licensing is frequently an option.

Finally, you can believe whatever you want, but ultimately it's the lawyers who decide, and your ass (assuming you're an IC) isn't the one on the line when shit hits the fan. Lawyers don't like GPLv3 and they don't like AGPL.

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#17

Post by systemvoltage »

I always see FOSS to get super fast traction (Elastic) and userbase - hey, because its free - and then later the same people complain that their lunch got stolen. Elastic could have grown (or not) organically with closed source software but that's hard without community help and being able to hire top developers to build your product. FOSS seems like a great way to market/PR your name out there because free is popular. I compare this, perhaps not perfect analogy, to Uber. Offer cheap rides, gain popularity while burning investor cash and wipe out existing industry/competition. Then, investors complain they can't monetize it. No shit! In the case of Elastic, the rest of the world benefited from it atleast.

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#18

Post by mrkurt »

tptacek wrote: post #5

This is unusually insightful for a LinkedIn post. One question, though: towards the end, it suggests that GPL/AGPL products, which are more defensible against commercial competitors who simply resell the open source project, are "legally murky" and might be rejected by customer legal teams. But does that matter? Can't you just do what Sleepycat did, and offer commercial customers a clean commercial license?

GPL variants are more defensible but make open-source-as-a-marketing-tool way less effective. Developers know they can't use GPL software for work, and OSS companies need them to use tooling at work so they become leads.

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#19

Post by tommoor »

marvinblum wrote: post #15

I'm working on an open-core product [0] right now, and an aspect I find missing in the article is that you can generate trust by showing how the internals work. This is especially beneficial if you work in an area like us. Of course, you need to make sure your license is set right and you need to think about where new features go, but it's a valid use-case. [0] https://pirsch.io/ open-source core: https://github.com/…

Lovely landing page – there seems to be a sudden abundance of google analytics alternatives by small teams and indie hackers in the last year, any insight into why that is?

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#20

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #14
iso1210 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft spent a lot of money and energy in the late 90s and 00s to convince the world - especially business and legal people - that the GPL was a "cancer" The GPL is one of the cleanest licenses out there. Use the code in your project, give the source of your project to anyone you give the binaries to, job done.

A lot of people wrongly assume that if you license the product under GNU GPL, you must publish source code on the internet. Many active proponents of free (as in freedom) software had very tense quarrells with me when I explained them that it's not exactly mandatory.

This is a small point to argue. Even if you choose to distribute your source on-demand by CD in an envelope with postage stamps on it, the next logical step is for a customer to just put that code on github. So, what then is the difference?

Putting it on github (or a zip file on your website) is less of a hassle.

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