Shareware is back (sort of.) Not a bad thing per se, by the way…
Indeed, turns out living from donation isn't sustainable long term, specially when other companies build products on top without return to upstream.
We Are Changing the License for Akka
211–220 of 360 posts
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#212I’ve never quite understood the amount of rancor that changes like this elicit here. It seems like people come out of the woodworks acting like they have been personally affronted by this, or that this is somehow directly affecting their lives. Is everybody here (planning on?) using this software to build companies with more than $25 million in revenue… and they can’t use something else with a more permissible licens…
The reason it brings people out of the woodworks is the way that it erodes trust. How many more people will decide that they deserve more money, and relicense their software, leaving me in a bind? I used to know that software licenses were generally stable, and an Apache2.0 project was safe to use, and I could contribute and use the software knowing generally that my contributions would be part of something that continued to become greater over time.
Now, I don't know if I can contribute (which includes usage, because the more I use it, the better I understand it and the more confidently I can recommend it and help others to use it) to software that's trying to do the OSS paid support model, because that company might decide at any point that they're not "getting enough value" and relicense to terms that don't work for me, thus causing me to need to either live with the software as is, no bugfixes or new features, or rework it out of my architecture.
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#213It seems like Lightbend have decided themselves to redefine what "Open Source" means for them, a slight warning sign of whats to come. > Sadly, open source is prone to the infamous “Tragedy of the commons”, [...] This situation is not sustainable and one in which everyone eventually loses. > So what does sustainable open source look like? I believe it’s where everyone—users and developers—contributes and are in it to…
> Just because you didn't manage to build a company around a Open Source library/ecosystem, doesn't mean Open Source is not sustainable. It just means that your company is not sustainable. But I guess it's hard to blame yourself when you see others using your code without paying for it. This almost religious attitude makes no sense to me. Clearly other’s use of that code wasn’t very sustainable, since the author now…
Here is Akka's dependency specification: https://github.com/akka/akka/blob/main/project/Dependencies....
How many of these would have to opt for this source available approach before Akka would no longer be sustainable?
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not many people would have imagined that the monopolists would weaponize open source like they do now. What do you think "weaponize open source" means? It doesn't look like it means a thing, and lounds like a poor attempt at shoehorning "weapon" in a discussion on how a potential user's income is something noteworthy.
The cloud giants have gigantic moats in terms of infrastructure, marketing, process, and so on. Traditionally, one of the best paths for an upstart company to challenge an established giant was to develop superior technology. Indeed, this is how some of the cloud giants themselves got their start against the dinosaurs of the day. But in a tech culture where open source is not just common but expected , this path is s…
I don't think that the Akka license change is aimed at cloud providers. Akka is a toolkit for building highly concurrent, distributed, and resilient message-driven applications for Java and Scala [1]. It's not possible for AWS to offer their own "Akka service" the way they offered Redis as ElastiCache. This change affects companies that build software using Akka. For example, here's a case study regarding an oilfield services company that uses Akka:
https://www.lightbend.com/blog/low-cpu-utilization-fortune-5...
[1] As found on https://akka.io/
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not gratis anymore for companies >$25M in annual revenue. It's not free as in speech anymore for anyone.
If we consider the idea of "free speech FOR x" then is it really free speech for nobody? Most people can do anything they want with it.
I can't combine it with GPL'd programs.
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#216I have a side project in data management that I have worked on for years (https://www.Didgets.com) and it is finally reached the point where it is an MVP with real value. I have considered adopting an open source license for it, but there are so many to choose from (I read somewhere that there are over 100 accepted kinds of OSS licenses).
Stories like this one make me nervous about choosing the wrong one. Once you let the genie out of the bottle, there is no putting it back in. You can change the license for future versions, but some big company has the right to fork your code at that point and bury you with their superior resources.
How do you choose a good license without shooting yourself in the foot?
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#217I have a side project in data management that I have worked on for years ( https://www.Didgets.com ) and it is finally reached the point where it is an MVP with real value. I have considered adopting an open source license for it, but there are so many to choose from (I read somewhere that there are over 100 accepted kinds of OSS licenses). Stories like this one make me nervous about choosing the wrong one. Once you…
AGPLv3 or GPLv3 is a good choice to ensure that all changes stay out in the open. Then the competition becomes who can change the code faster and reach more customers.
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#218To everyone who thinks that $2k/vCPU is a lot of money, it's not. First, if you're running it on an 8-core server, that's $16k per year, which is about what many companies are paying for an enterprise support contract. It's not much when you consider that it gives you access to Akka engineers at the cost of 1/10 of an FTE. Second, the $2k number is a list price. All large enterprise deals are negotiated, and nearly a…
> First, if you're running it on an 8-core server, that's $16k per year, which is about what many companies are paying for an enterprise support contract. Which is exactly why this is so unreasonable. The minimum spend for the "standard" license is 40 cores -- which means you're paying at least $80k/yr for a support contract which won't even assign you an account manager or guarantee a response any faster than "4 bus…
I did not see the part about the minimum spend. You're right; they'll probably run into significant resistance on that from the smaller customers.
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we consider the idea of "free speech FOR x" then is it really free speech for nobody? Most people can do anything they want with it.
I can't combine it with GPL'd programs.
Not even locally?
And even then that's mostly because the GPL won't let you. You can combine it with MIT license programs, right?
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Time have changed and it is well possible there is a need and room for source available licenses. Open Source is established term which offers specific freedoms which brings specific benefits (and challenges) to businesses. While many Venture funded companies might want you to believe they are being unfairly taken advantage by the clouds it is not the full story. Elastic for example relies on A LOT of code contribute…
We've had Source-Available licenses for years (MS-PL for instance, as well as many various ones from Sun/Oracle, etc.) There's basically been a resounding "Meh" about them and the people who work on software that adopts them generally move to an open fork or the project perishes (see also the fate of Solaris, Illumos, and Oracle.)
Quite. Proprietary source available projects are 'meh'.
In the past few years, it seems several notable company-backed projects have switched from the Apache licence, to some proprietary licence. I'd much prefer if instead they tried switching to a strong copyleft licence. (Granted, 'delayed open source' is far better than 'never open source'.)