Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Are Changing the License for Akka

lightbend.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 360 posts

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#21

Post by capableweb »

echelon wrote: post #19
capableweb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet they are doing this to prevent Amazon from deploying a version of Akka as a service on AWS. Yes, it's pretty clear they no longer want to participate in the Open Source ecosystem, as allowing people to run the software however you see fit is a integral part of Open Source, together with being able to modify and reshare said software.

> Open Source ecosystem Free money and labor for Amazon ecosystem. Honestly I'd love to see a license that was "Apache for everyone but Amazon (or other $100B+ companies and their subsidiaries)" Open source is being weaponized in ways that Stallman never predicted.

> Free money and labor for Amazon ecosystem.

"Free software for everyone" is precisely what Open Source is

> Honestly I'd love to see a license that was "Apache for everyone but Amazon (or other $100B+ companies and their subsidiaries)"

Yeah, that's basically what the BSL license Akka is moving to is. Only projects earning over X amount per year need the business license, for others it's free.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#22

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

xanathar wrote: post #11

> Sadly, open source is prone to the infamous “Tragedy of the commons”, which shows that we are prone to act in our self-interest, Like, when somebody releases something open source, then notice that they can actually make money out of it and they change the license at the last minute. Oh the hypocrisy. Seriously if you're bothered by people making money out of your product, keep it closed source, nothing wrong with…

> But if you decide to open source something, keep your promises, no matter what.

I don't understand the sentiment of "once something is OSS, it has to be so forever". They owe you what exactly? More of their free time & money to hold up something you call a "promise" but is just their choice of license made many years ago?

They are being reasonable about it, you still get the source, you can still use it for free on a revenue Its fine to spend your nights and weekends on passions projects when your young, its also fine to demand money for shouldering much of its development when said project grows large many years later and you have obligations towards your family. Its called being an adult.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#24

Post by capableweb »

keewee7 wrote: post #17

Isn't Akka an important component in various Scala projects like Apache Spark? What are they supposed to do?

Other libraries depending on Akka shouldn't have to change, as they are merely published as "libraries", not deployed to "production".

Libraries generally never have "annual revenues more than US $25m", so it should be free for them to use the code as well.

Realistically though, they force you to contact them to get a "Additional Use Grant" in case you want to use Akka for other open source projects:

> I use Akka for an OSS project. What does this mean for my project?

> The license offers a customizable “Additional Use Grant” that grants production usage for other OSS projects including Play Framework.

> If you are running an OSS project using Akka, please contact us at akka-license@lightbend.com and we will do our best to continue to support your project.

I wish them luck on their endeavour, but I know what I'd do if I was building a OSS project needing distributed actors, and it's not to send them an email asking if I could please use their software.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#25

Post by capableweb »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #22
xanathar wrote: post #11

> Sadly, open source is prone to the infamous “Tragedy of the commons”, which shows that we are prone to act in our self-interest, Like, when somebody releases something open source, then notice that they can actually make money out of it and they change the license at the last minute. Oh the hypocrisy. Seriously if you're bothered by people making money out of your product, keep it closed source, nothing wrong with…

> But if you decide to open source something, keep your promises, no matter what. I don't understand the sentiment of "once something is OSS, it has to be so forever". They owe you what exactly? More of their free time & money to hold up something you call a "promise" but is just their choice of license made many years ago? They are being reasonable about it, you still get the source, you can still use it for free on…

> I don't understand the sentiment of "once something is OSS, it has to be so forever". They owe you what exactly?

If I contributed to the project, I did so under the premise of the LICENSE that was active when I contributed. If I didn't like OSS, I wouldn't have contributed to a OSS project. Them changing the license is a middle-finger to me as a contributor.

> Its fine to spend your nights and weekends on passions projects when your young [...] Its called being an adult

With all due respect, fuck you. Equaling "open source" to "young people can waste their time" and "software needs to earn money" to being an adult is a really shitty opinion to put out there.

Me (40+ years old) and many others do open source because we want the world to be about more than just money. Just because you cannot understand that nor want the same thing, doesn't mean that we're wrong and you're right.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#26

Post by [deleted] »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #22
xanathar wrote: post #11

> Sadly, open source is prone to the infamous “Tragedy of the commons”, which shows that we are prone to act in our self-interest, Like, when somebody releases something open source, then notice that they can actually make money out of it and they change the license at the last minute. Oh the hypocrisy. Seriously if you're bothered by people making money out of your product, keep it closed source, nothing wrong with…

> But if you decide to open source something, keep your promises, no matter what. I don't understand the sentiment of "once something is OSS, it has to be so forever". They owe you what exactly? More of their free time & money to hold up something you call a "promise" but is just their choice of license made many years ago? They are being reasonable about it, you still get the source, you can still use it for free on…

[deleted]

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#27

Post by joisig »

xanathar wrote: post #11

> Sadly, open source is prone to the infamous “Tragedy of the commons”, which shows that we are prone to act in our self-interest, Like, when somebody releases something open source, then notice that they can actually make money out of it and they change the license at the last minute. Oh the hypocrisy. Seriously if you're bothered by people making money out of your product, keep it closed source, nothing wrong with…

> But if you decide to open source something, keep your promises, no matter what.

Presumably all older versions of the software that were Apache licensed remain so. They are switching to BSL (closed, but source available and each revision switches to Apache licensed 3 years later) going forward.

I don't see how this is worse than keeping everything closed source from the start, which is your suggestion? Shouldn't we be thankful for all the work they've done so far for free, and if somebody doesn't like the new licensing model, then they can fork it from the last Apache-licensed version and keep going from there?

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#28

Post by maxboone »

capableweb wrote: post #25
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if you decide to open source something, keep your promises, no matter what. I don't understand the sentiment of "once something is OSS, it has to be so forever". They owe you what exactly? More of their free time & money to hold up something you call a "promise" but is just their choice of license made many years ago? They are being reasonable about it, you still get the source, you can still use it for free on…

> I don't understand the sentiment of "once something is OSS, it has to be so forever". They owe you what exactly? If I contributed to the project, I did so under the premise of the LICENSE that was active when I contributed. If I didn't like OSS, I wouldn't have contributed to a OSS project. Them changing the license is a middle-finger to me as a contributor. > Its fine to spend your nights and weekends on passions…

How is that morally different from your contribution being used by non-contributing companies to turn profit.

The existing codebase stays OSS, and can be forked. The work they put in starting now, is going to be proprietary for three years.

It feels like a stupid change anyways, as companies can just keep using the old OSS version.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#29

Post by ocdtrekkie »

hedora wrote: post #10

I hope this works out well for them. One issue with the BSL is that old versions of the software are open source. So, with this change, you can still use a 3 year old version of Akka for free. Does akka change rapidly enough these days to justify the price?

Presumably the issue for enterprises is security patches. If you use a three year old version of code which the source is available for inspection, the likelihood you are using already-compromised code is high.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#30

Post by ocdtrekkie »

echelon wrote: post #19
capableweb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet they are doing this to prevent Amazon from deploying a version of Akka as a service on AWS. Yes, it's pretty clear they no longer want to participate in the Open Source ecosystem, as allowing people to run the software however you see fit is a integral part of Open Source, together with being able to modify and reshare said software.

> Open Source ecosystem Free money and labor for Amazon ecosystem. Honestly I'd love to see a license that was "Apache for everyone but Amazon (or other $100B+ companies and their subsidiaries)" Open source is being weaponized in ways that Stallman never predicted.

That's more or less what SSPL is. The problem is the OSI and FSF are basically religious pharisees, so dedicated to their texts, they're missing the actual point. People backing the OSI/Amazon over Elastic/Mongo/etc. are literally killing open source.
Post reply on HN