Reason for working on a PRIVATE repo?: Committing code to side-projects during work hours.
Commit locally. Push in the evening.
Open Source (Almost) Everything
41–50 of 85 posts
Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything
#42Tom, I agree with everything but the "core business" stuff and the MIT License. The same principles apply to your core business - independent of what it is (not only GitHub). By opensourcing all of your business, you will gain all the synergy you mentioned (i.e. libgit2) within your core . Your competitors will benefit from it, but they won't be a challenge to you as long as they don't have the passion and insights f…
so you think Google should open source their search algos?
Yes, I think so - especially with algorithms: math can't be owned.
On Google's implementation of them, yes, of course! This would have tremendous impacts and benefits for all.
I think your sarcasm came from "What happens with Bing? They are hungry!", and you can't understand the point inside that reasoning framework.
If Goog releases their algos, the would gain even a better position in the market.
All the society would benefit of controlling what makes you exists for others (if you can't google it, it doesn't exists), a storm of commits improving it would come (even fixing what makes that disgusting SEO practices) and you will have a viable alternative to Google: you will be able to choose.
Can Microsoft manage an infrastructure as big and efficient as Google - tuned over the years for a SE, with thousands of people with expertise, experience, motivation and values? I think not.
If Goog releases under AGPL, if Bing uses it, they will be able to look at the implementations, its improvements and merge them "back".
If Microsoft doesn't want to use the code, then they will have to spend years developing the same (and find the right people for it - which are already in Google). In that timeframe, Goog will keep improving - otherwise, a better alternative will eventually surpass them.
Yes, the can plain steal and don't enforce the license, but, Microsoft stealing?!?!?!? =P
This model relies on two things: - You are willing to work continuously on it because it makes you happy - You want to be on top because of how you do your job, not because you know a secret - Money is irrelevant to you: you live (luckily) between 80 and 100 years, and suppose that you are on your 30s - if I was given 100 million dollars, I will probably not be able to spend them as I won't have time to do it (think Larry Page or Billionaires, but at a smaller scale). If you get a huge amount of money, after some years of "livin; la vida loca", would you return to code?
I would.
Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything
#43This is another datapoint that generational attitudes towards the value of software have shifted.
In the early days of software, it was an afterthought: what made it possible for IBM and others to sell the more valuable hardware asset.
Microsoft (founded 1975) perceived the economic opportunity attached to volume distribution of user facing machines, and helped usher in an age where the value shifted from the hardware to the software.
Google (1998), by contrast, derived effectively zero revenue from software directly. Instead, they leveraged open source and commodity hardware to control their costs and were able to scale more effectively than existing search alternatives. While they didn't sell software, however, they continued to perceive it as a competitive advantage, and thus a minority of their overall development was shared via public repositories.
For Facebook (2004), Twitter (2006) and GitHub (2008), like Google, software is the means to an end rather than the end itself. Unlike Google, however, most do not behave as if code itself is a competitive advantage. You can argue about what their actual product is - a critical mass of users, the data they generate or both - but you can't build the case that it is primarily the software.
And if the software doesn't represent a competitive advantage, the follow on benefits of releasing it as open source software - whether it's general goodwill, amortizing development costs, greater efficiencies in hiring and recruitment, etc - are believed to outweigh the costs.
Hence Cassandra, FlockDB, Hip Hop, Hive, Jekyll, Resque, Storm, Thrift and so on.
None of these entities open source the entirety of their infrastructure, but it is increasingly common to see open source as the default rather than the exception.
Software has and will continue to have value. But in an increasing number of cases it will not represent a competitive advantage, and therefore assuming the burden of maintaining it internally will become less attractive.
Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything
#44Tom, I agree with everything but the "core business" stuff and the MIT License. The same principles apply to your core business - independent of what it is (not only GitHub). By opensourcing all of your business, you will gain all the synergy you mentioned (i.e. libgit2) within your core . Your competitors will benefit from it, but they won't be a challenge to you as long as they don't have the passion and insights f…
> they can do whatever they want with the software What if they want to build something on top of it that is not open source? They cannot and that is a restriction. It is the definition of a restriction. > When someone closes the source, it's restricting others freedom, not his. How so? No one is restricted if somebody makes a private fork of a codebase. That's like saying that if I don't go to the bar down the stree…
You can't go to your college with an Uzi and start shooting classmates. Although you "can", it is not allowed.
Is the constitution restricting your freedom? NO, that's not your freedom, that's power on taking others' life.
Another example - a less extreme and more realistic one - is a judge (or a jury). Are they "freerer" than you because they can put you on jail? Is your freedom "less" than theirs? No, you have the same freedom, what they have is power over you in a circumstance already """agreed""".
If someone wants to build on top of it, if he can't find a link like some closed drivers do with GPL software, then they are improving it. If they use your code as a base, why don't give back?
Note that this only affects you when you provide the service (AGPL) or distribute the software (GPL).
As long as you don't distribute it and use it "internally" (as US Army and DoD does) you don't have to show the source. If you provide public access to the system, then you have to show the code. So, you become another giant to step on his shoulders.
As for money, you only need (IMO) the amount for doing what you enjoy, not more (it isn't a goal per se, it's a way, not a goal). If you want to have an empire and build a sphinx with your face on it, then you have a problem with your brain's reward system, not with money - nothing will fill you up (stop using cocaine! :D hahahah! =P)
Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything
#45[deleted]
Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything
#46Another company that came to mind while reading the article is Shopify. While their core business is eCommerce, they have open sourced some of the major components of their system while still keeping the app that glues them together proprietary.
Some notable mentions: Active Merchant (payment processing library) Active Fulfillment (external fulfillment for Amazon/Shipwire/Webgistix) Active Shipping (shipping carrier integration) Delayed Job (job queue)
Obviously there is a lot more work that goes into making a product as polished as Shopify, but they have released a large amount of core domain knowledge for other people to use and improve upon. While someone might be able to come along and use the same components to create a competitor, they still win in the end by having more people contribute.
Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything
#47The MIT license has no patent release. I think this alone should eliminate it for all but the most basic of projects. Yet the author doesn't even seem to realize this.
As I understand it, this is exactly why the contracts and grants people where I work like it...
What is the consequence of using an open-source license without patent release? Does that mean that if your employer open-sourced some software that contained patented IP, then people must obtain a license from your employer?
And what happens in the reverse situation, where a third-party contributor commits code that contains patent-protected IP?
Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything
#48The GNU Project has extensive commentary on a variety of open-source licenses. They recommend the Expat or FreeBSD license over the MIT license, because MIT has released code under numerous licenses so the term "MIT license" may be legally ambiguous.
Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything
#49The article begins by discussing their choice to open source an integral part of their product. The article ends with an admonition: "Don't open source anything that represents core business value." It seems like Grit certainly represented core business value, yet they open sourced it. I'm guessing that what they really mean is that you should open source almost everything that represents core business value, but one…
> one piece should always be left out
Another way is to make one piece of the open-sourced version run slower than an equivalent optimized closed-source version that does the same thing in the proprietary distribution of the same product. That way the business can make the claim "completely open sourced", knowing if anyone forks their product it will run slower.
Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything
#50Another company that i think does very well in open sourcing is Kitware. All their projects are open-sourced; and I know from personal experience that these are very good pieces of code that they just give out for free. Apparently, their strategy is that their flagship product (vtk) is so big that there is more benefit for a small company to have lots of other people looking at the code, using it and sometimes improving and committing back the changes; also, that there are just too many cool things that one can do with it, leaving Kitware enough opportunities to create customized products for a fee(of course, they also provide paid support services as well). For me personally, it meant that my monetary constraints (grad student here) were not a hurdle in my research.