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Open Source (Almost) Everything

tom.preston-werner.com

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Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#61

Post by nicpottier »

secoif wrote: post #58

I like to imagine how awesome github's potential UX could be be if they decoupled, open-sourced and allowed contributions to their front-end . Something along the lines of stable and opt-in unstable UI branches with frequent releases.

What?!

If there's one thing time has proven it is that open source projects (usually) leave a lot to be desired in the UI department. UI is one of those things where a benevolent dictator is a good thing, it gives you consistency and given a talented designer leading the team gives you a far better product.

The typical path for for open source UIs seems to be to try to please everyone, which means making something that isn't great for most people who don't want to spend half a day customizing their interface.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#62

Post by danssig »

StatHacking wrote: post #31

Tom, 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…

>then your position in the market is based on imperfect information (and therefore, monopolization power).

Good! Who wants their living standard to be dependent on a never ending rat race of constantly out-innovating competitors? Especially when there are really big players out there that can throw huge resources into taking your market share.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#63

Post by bad_user »

dhx wrote: post #55
audioHack wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complexity of self-support versus value of paid support. Something like RHEL, the support is worth it to many businesses. Something like Github... I could see it being less of a priority once it is up and running.

The costs of setting up a geographically redundant GitHub clone and continuously updating software and configuration are far in excess of the mere $200/month GitHub charges for their Platinum plan: unlimited users, unlimited public repositories and 125 private repositories. Even the Bronze plan for $25/month with 10 private repositories is exceptional value to businesses that only develop a few pieces of software. At…

And how many businesses really need support for geographically redundant GitHub clones with continuously updating software and configuration ?

If anything, them having this option at all makes no sense, as the real value of GitHub is in the collaboration and discovery tools it brings, useful for contributors working remotely.

Unlimited users, unlimited public repositories -- I have that on my own VPS. I just configured my own Git repository. It's a piece of cake. Even companies like Adobe get along just fine with a Wiki and a Perforce repository.

Basically when selling a product or a service, you do have to ask yourself: how big is the market for this? And I'm not seeing many companies really needing private installs of GitHub and that market is even smaller if the product would be open-source.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#64

Post by bad_user »

stock_toaster wrote: post #14
tomp wrote: post #9

I have a question for the OP... Why the MIT licence, and not putting your code in the public domain? Is it the liability issues, or the attribution, or something else? I mainly pose this question because I am choosing a licence for my projects, either the MIT/Apache licence, or public domain.

My understanding is that there are more legal gray areas with public domain than there are with even very permissive licenses (MIT, new-BSD, etc). I vaguely recall something about potential issues with public domain and other license incompatibilities, but I don't recall the specifics (and am certainly not a lawyer), so that probably isn't a useful datapoint. Apache license has patent clauses that make it quite diffe…

The copyright law differs between countries.

For example a piece of work that is not copyrightable in one country (even if it is the country of origin) may be copyrightable in another. Also in the US any work published before 1923 is in the public domain, however other countries are not bound by this year.

As far as this discussion is concerned, it is also debatable in some countries if the author is allowed to put his own work in public domain. Basically, there's no such thing as putting a work in the public domain, unless you don't mind limiting its usage (because if a piece of work is not accompanied by a license and is not in the public domain of the country you live in, you have no right to use it).

So if freedom is what you want, new-BSD or MIT are best. Plus, you keep getting the credit, which is nice.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#65

Post by secoif »

nicpottier wrote: post #61
secoif wrote: post #58

I like to imagine how awesome github's potential UX could be be if they decoupled, open-sourced and allowed contributions to their front-end . Something along the lines of stable and opt-in unstable UI branches with frequent releases.

What?! If there's one thing time has proven it is that open source projects (usually) leave a lot to be desired in the UI department. UI is one of those things where a benevolent dictator is a good thing, it gives you consistency and given a talented designer leading the team gives you a far better product. The typical path for for open source UIs seems to be to try to please everyone, which means making something th…

To be clear, I wasn't actually thinking about 'design', more like, features. Perhaps you're right, and perhaps I'm longing more for some kind of plugin architecture.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#66

Post by RyanMcGreal »

sogrady wrote: post #43

This 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 hardwar…

> Instead, they leveraged open source and commodity hardware to control their costs and were able to scale more effectively than existing search alternatives.

I would propose a caveat that Google's initial strength wasn't merely that it scaled better but that it used a search algorithm that produced better results. As Tom Preston-Werner argues, Google jealously guards their PageRank algorithm because it "represents core business value".

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#67

Post by __david__ »

sjs wrote: post #51
StatHacking wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

(That was mostly incomprehensible, but I'll respond anyway...) You're making the faulty assumption of thinking that someone who wants some source code that is only available under the GPL will just use it and decide to license their work under the GPL as well. Every time I need some code for a proprietary product I'm working on I pass up GPL and AGPL code. If there's no MIT or BSD licensed code that does what I need…

> So somebody who is making a proprietary thing is not restricting anyone by using an MIT or BSD licensed component.

Of course you are! You are restricting your customers' freedom. The idea of the GPL is bigger than just giving you, a software developer, freedom to use it. The GPL ensures that your final end user also had all the freedoms that the you, the middle man, had. They can stand on the shoulders of you, who were given the freedom to stand on the shoulders of someone else.

That's why it baffles me when people make the claim that the GPL stifles freedom. It seems such an selfish, narrow view.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#68

Post by StatHacking »

__david__ wrote: post #67
sjs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(That was mostly incomprehensible, but I'll respond anyway...) You're making the faulty assumption of thinking that someone who wants some source code that is only available under the GPL will just use it and decide to license their work under the GPL as well. Every time I need some code for a proprietary product I'm working on I pass up GPL and AGPL code. If there's no MIT or BSD licensed code that does what I need…

> So somebody who is making a proprietary thing is not restricting anyone by using an MIT or BSD licensed component. Of course you are! You are restricting your customers' freedom. The idea of the GPL is bigger than just giving you, a software developer, freedom to use it. The GPL ensures that your final end user also had all the freedoms that the you, the middle man, had. They can stand on the shoulders of you, who…

As we say here, "your freedom ends where others' start". You are not forcing anyone to distribute the software or do whatever they want to as long as you respect others' freedom.

What you are doing is not giving the power to restrict others if you distribute it so you keep it flowing. The only way of achieving freedom and equality is (IMO) to equally distribute power on all, so you will end up with the phrase at the beginning.

If you want to use that sense of "restriction", it is restricting power, not freedom. Restricting power is granting others their freedom.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#69

Post by StatHacking »

danssig wrote: post #62
StatHacking wrote: post #31

Tom, 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…

>then your position in the market is based on imperfect information (and therefore, monopolization power). Good! Who wants their living standard to be dependent on a never ending rat race of constantly out-innovating competitors? Especially when there are really big players out there that can throw huge resources into taking your market share.

If your marketshare is based on amount of resources, then your position is sustained by entry barriers, not your skills.

If someone can gather the resources and do better than you, then it's better for all the market - not just you. What you do with AGPL is making sure that if it is based on your knowledge, you will be able to improve from who has already improved from you.

If you can't stand someone to do better than you and you can't learn from him, then you have personal issues - and those are holding back everyone. There is nothing bad in not being the best (I think is bad measuring success on money and market share, that's circumstancial) and if you are not willing to improve, then you are in the wrong place.

The same applies (IMO) to patents and industrial secrets. A patent is "public" industrial secret: while you know it, you must act as you wouldn't unless you pay. I think that is for lazy people, they want money for an idea from people who actually implement it - work. Open source is a good example about this.

A free market relies on perfect informatios on whatever technology is being used, otherwise, there is no real competition in the supply and you might end up with a captive demand.

Yes, most business models would need to adapted to this, it is not what most of the markets do. Think of the Nuclear Power Plant market (to be extreme and explain my view). There won't be many suppliers because of the activity, if you totally "opensource" the industry, you will still be buying plants and paying a lot of money - but you will be "safer" because you rely on it.

The same applies to software, there are big players who are willing to outsource and pay more (because is out of their core business or just don't have interests on the topic) if the supplier fully opens and doesn't lock in them. You will end up on a better and "fairer" position.

Re: Open Source (Almost) Everything

#70

Post by sjs »

__david__ wrote: post #67
sjs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(That was mostly incomprehensible, but I'll respond anyway...) You're making the faulty assumption of thinking that someone who wants some source code that is only available under the GPL will just use it and decide to license their work under the GPL as well. Every time I need some code for a proprietary product I'm working on I pass up GPL and AGPL code. If there's no MIT or BSD licensed code that does what I need…

> So somebody who is making a proprietary thing is not restricting anyone by using an MIT or BSD licensed component. Of course you are! You are restricting your customers' freedom. The idea of the GPL is bigger than just giving you, a software developer, freedom to use it. The GPL ensures that your final end user also had all the freedoms that the you, the middle man, had. They can stand on the shoulders of you, who…

Agree to disagree then. The alternative to Windows and OS X is not GPL-licensed Windows and GPL-licensed OS X, it's no Windows and no OS X, and we still have BSDs, Linux, and other open source systems in the ecosystem.

Nobody who wants an open source OS has been restricted, and those who want a different experience than open source provides have the freedom to choose a proprietary OS. If someone wants an open source Windows or OS X they can make one[1][2]. They are not restricted.

In the real world where not everyone is a programmer people don't feel restricted by proprietary software. Only in some hypothetical ivory tower manned by RMS are non-developers restricted by proprietary things.

[1] http://etoileos.com/ [2] http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

I'm equally baffled when people can't accept a world where there is more than one type of license and software. Open source has its place in kernels, dev tools (editors, compilers, etc), education, and so on. That does not mean it's unequivocally the best and only model for all software in the world. I felt empowered after switching from Linux to OS X and I'm a developer, because I'd rather not hack on my OS to make it usable. I'd rather hack on the cool stuff that I want to hack on. I'd rather just use iPhoto than try to make F-spot, or whatever the photo app of the day on Linux is, not crash when importing photos, or upload to my online gallery, or usable for day to day use. I'd rather just use Billings than try to build my own open source version from scratch, presumably while still trying to pay the bills with other work. I'd rather just use Acorn than wait for GIMP to be usable by version 3.2 in 2020. And so on.

I still use open source software too. Emacs, iTerm2, v8, Firefox, WebKit, Ruby, GCC, LLVM, and many small projects. And contribute to other smaller projects that I'm actually capable of understanding and contributing to such as node, GitX, and many libraries around the net. I open source tools that I make that I think others might find useful, and if someone takes my MIT licensed tool and uses it in a proprietary thing I think it's great that my code was able to help someone else. I don't selfishly demand that they contribute everything they add back to me if they don't want to. My code helped someone accomplish their goal faster or better and that makes me happy.

If you don't understand that's fine, but I am absolutely not restricted by the proprietary software that I choose to use. I won't even call you narrow or selfish for not understanding.

edit: While writing that list of open source software I use, I realized that only Emacs and GCC are GPL. Why is it that the most popular open source software is not GPL licensed? If the GPL encourages and fosters collaboration why is the MIT, BSD, and MPL licensed software more active and popular? It almost seems as if removing the restrictions from the GPL encourages collaboration. The Linux kernel is a notable exception, so I'm not saying this is 100% true, but the evidence seems to support it in many cases.

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