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

My hobby became my job, 50% extra pay, just needed to let go of GPLv3

goauthentik.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 46 posts

Re: My hobby became my job, 50% extra pay, just needed to let go of GPLv3

#21

Post by freedomben »

version_five wrote: post #9

I'm curious about this line: As a company and a real legal entity, we would have recourse if something like AWS/Elasticsearch were to happen What does that mean? Didn't AWS just take advantage of the terms of the license and do something they were allowed to, couldn't the same thing happen here? What recourse would there be?

I had the same thought. Elastic was a real legal entity too, and clearly they didn't have recourse...

There are a number of errors/incorrect info in this blog post. I don't mean to be critical, but I hope nobody is looking to this post for advice because it has some bad advice (such legal recourse, what different licenses achieve the objective of protecting from the concerned case (GPL doesn't)).

Re: My hobby became my job, 50% extra pay, just needed to let go of GPLv3

#22

Post by erik_seaberg »

version_five wrote: post #9

I'm curious about this line: As a company and a real legal entity, we would have recourse if something like AWS/Elasticsearch were to happen What does that mean? Didn't AWS just take advantage of the terms of the license and do something they were allowed to, couldn't the same thing happen here? What recourse would there be?

I read this as “we would have a way to prevent competition,” which is good for them but not users.

Re: My hobby became my job, 50% extra pay, just needed to let go of GPLv3

#23

Post by nottorp »

mcguire wrote: post #7

Tl;dr: "I would like to justify my decision to dump the GPL for money."

But MIT is even less restrictive for a competitor.

What I'm guessing is they had external contributors so the thing was about getting them to relicense under MIT.

Re: My hobby became my job, 50% extra pay, just needed to let go of GPLv3

#25

Post by gowld »

The article is confusing.

The difference between MIT and GPL is that MIT favors immediate users who are developers, and GPL favors end-users. These interests are always in tension, and one of them just be chosen as favored.

In both cases, the original authors are giving up their rights for the benefit of users.

So no one has standing to attack the original authors. If you use the original software, you can enjoy it either way. If you are in business, MIT is better for you. If you are a user of an intermediary, that's for you and the intermediary to deal with, no the original author.

If you are afraid of the intermediary being evil, than go directly to the original source, or find a GPL or MIT(!) intermediary.

Re: My hobby became my job, 50% extra pay, just needed to let go of GPLv3

#26

Post by mcdonje »

>The drawback of building commercially on top of open source software using GPL is that the copyleft aspect can put some people off. Not every person or business wants to have to expose their code for every minor change or bug fix they may add...

That's the entire point of copyleft licenses. Businesses want to benefit from the community without giving back.

Re: My hobby became my job, 50% extra pay, just needed to let go of GPLv3

#27

Post by benterix »

The author talks about several very different issues: (1) him switching between GPL and MIT, both of which are open source licenses, (2) Hashicorp switching to BSL, which is not an open source license (by the OSI definition), (3) Red Hat providing sources as per GPL requirements to paid customers only and stopping to provide it to the whole world (there is more to it when you remember how red Hat started, why CentOS appeared, how it they were bought etc.). There is only some superficial similarity between these two (as the author says, nobody objected when they switched from GPL to MIT).

Re: My hobby became my job, 50% extra pay, just needed to let go of GPLv3

#29

Post by gowld »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #24

I looked at OP's account. No comments at all, and every submission leads to his own website. Many of them marked as [dead]. I thought this was strictly against HN guidelines?

"Guidelines" are never "strict."

Guideline: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."

OP has made 5 submissions in 7 months. All for blog posts tangential to their product, not even direct product offerings, not even directly pitching their product. (I read the posts and still don't know what they actually sell.)

Nothingburger.

Re: My hobby became my job, 50% extra pay, just needed to let go of GPLv3

#30

Post by weare138 »

I'm not sure what the overall point here is. The headline and article are framed in a way that makes it seem switching from GPLv3 was the catalyst for increased profitability but this is never clarified or quantified:

Two years later, Sid at Open Core Ventures (OCV) contacted me about creating a company, building on the features and functionality of authentik. It was a dream opportunity: work full time on my hobby project and make 25% more in the process. But I had to let go of the GPL license.

It seems the investors stipulated the license change to secure funding versus the change itself resulting in increased profitability. And the justification seems based on speculation about marketability:

The drawback of building commercially on top of open source software using GPL is that the copyleft aspect can put some people off. Not every person or business wants to have to expose their code for every minor change or bug fix they may add, and they will sooner find a competitor with a more permissive license than adopt your software. This is obviously not ideal when you’re trying to get traction and grow a business.

OCV proposed we switch back to MIT.

Obviously something like the MIT license is more attractive to corporations. Now they can just steal all your hard work, integrate your code into their commercial product and not even have to pay or so much as credit you now. I'm sorry, it sounds you may have just been hustled out of your app.

Post reply on HN