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FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

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Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#161

Post by growse »

zeeg wrote: post #141
James_K wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read what I wrote? I said that I don't think they need to give people access to their software. That it might even be unfair to expect them to do so. But if they don't do it, they can't call themselves FOSS. It would be unfair to expect a restaurant to sell everything at a 50% discount, but if they said they were doing that and it turned out they weren't, I'd have every right to complain.

Where do we (Sentry) ever call ourselves FOSS? If FOSS is represented by the community in this thread I want no part of that toxicity. We do what we think is good and for developers and customers, and the broader open source ecosystem. A lot of us have been doing that for quite some time and will continue to do so.

> Where do we (Sentry) ever call ourselves FOSS?

If you don't, it's pretty weird to want to do what you "think is good for the broader open source ecosystem".

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#162

Post by arp242 »

James_K wrote: post #128
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't want competition, why give your source away? Why not? I mean you're literally arguing against the business decision we are making. We believe in Open Source, we believe in funding Open Source, we are trying to find a balance that is possible to walk for a SaaS business. I'm surprised people generally take the binary view that "either Open Source with no protection or go proprietary completely". > Also,…

> We believe in Open Source But you don't believe in it enough to do it. > I'm surprised people generally take the binary view that either Open Source with no protection or go proprietary completely Because FOSS is about community contributions. People contribute to something owned by the community for the good of the community. Yet here you have claimed the near-exclusive right to profit from the code. FOSS is sayin…

> Because FOSS is about community contributions. People contribute to something owned by the community for the good of the community.

Absolutely not. This is never what it meant.

If you go back the Four Freedoms then it talks about "freedom to do with the software what I want", and certainly not about "software developed with a specific methodology" or "community contributions". The OSD says more or less the same, in a different way.

Ask Richard Stallman: I'm 100% convinced he will tell you the same. It has ALWAYS been about giving users freedom about their own computers, never about "the greater good of the community" of anything else.

The disagreement about the DSL is that the "use the software for any purpose"-freedom is breached. You can disagree if that's a big deal or not, and if that will or won't impede community contributions, but "you must accept community contributions" never played a part of that and never should play a part in that. I will quite literally take down every single one of my many free software projects if it ever becomes to mean that, and suspect many others will too.

On a personal level YOU may think that this is important, and that's fine. But that's something different. Usually I would take this as a "I care about this" and not be too pedantic about exact meaning of "Free Software" or whatnot, but you're incredibly fastidious about the "correct usage of FOSS" all over this thread, it's a hugely painful that your understanding of what it even means is just factually incorrect.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#163

Post by growse »

arp242 wrote: post #132
growse wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you would rather have completely closed source instead of Open Source-but-for-one -detail? Yes, because it's more honest about its intention. "but-for-one" is not open by definition , and trying to draw an equivocation is, ironically, free-riding off the virtue and benefits of actually open source projects.

> it's more honest about its intention They're not dishonest. That you're unwilling or unable to accept anything other than a black/white worldview is not their problem. And "not open by definition" according to what definition of "open"? It's a vague and nebulous word that can mean any number of things. You don't get to single-handedly define this. Hell, people were using "Open" to mean all sorts of things long befo…

Pretty much everyone I know in the industry uses the definition of "open" defined by the OSI, in relation to "open source": https://opensource.org/

It's not a new term.

> They're not dishonest. That you're unwilling or unable to accept anything other than a black/white worldview is not their problem.

You can't be "a little bit open source". You are or you aren't. Some people might not accept that the definition is clear and well-formed, but for a lot of us it is. If you want to write proprietary software, great. People just get annoyed when it's dressed up as "a bit like open source".

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#164

Post by LtWorf »

WJW wrote: post #113
jen20 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of the source being available but software not being “free” is fine by me. I want the source so I can fix bugs instantly instead of trying to convince some mid-tier product manager having gone through 5 tiers of support. That is a huge benefit over source-unavailable proprietary software, or (heaven help us) SAAS.

"I could fix it myself if needed" quite often comes up on HN and other programmer forums but I honestly have to wonder how many people could actually fix deep issues in production grade software. For example, there are plenty of bugs open on the issue trackers of (say) postgres or kubernetes yet despite the source of those being available I'm willing to bet a vanishingly small amount of users would be willing or capa…

I wrote a simple patch to postgres last month.

Some other patch that was written by someone else at my company is now part of postgres.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#165

Post by karmakaze »

James_K wrote: post #26
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's concerning, though, is that it's completely unclear that the author understands why this license makes sense, so it's liable to be misused. It feels more accidentally-stumbled-upon. The author of the post (me) was part of the group at Sentry that created that license. I can’t dispel your interpretation that my writing is “confused” but I can assure you that a lot of thought went into the license. That blog p…

For what it's worth, your writing is confused. For instance: > There cannot be a limbo where the rights holder prevents the flourishing of a fork out of lack of interest or fear. The entire point of this license is to prevent forks of software. It makes it especially easy to do so by simply pushing small incompatible changes on a two-year schedule. But the really strange part about this is that it assumes a developer…

This is key.

> The entire point of this license is to prevent forks of software. It makes it especially easy to do so by simply pushing small incompatible changes on a two-year schedule.

I couldn't say it's the motivation, but this easy ability to make forks unable to effectively stay in sync goes against the motivations of free software. And for that reason, "I'm out."

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#166

Post by zeeg »

James_K wrote: post #144
zeeg wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do we (Sentry) ever call ourselves FOSS? If FOSS is represented by the community in this thread I want no part of that toxicity. We do what we think is good and for developers and customers, and the broader open source ecosystem. A lot of us have been doing that for quite some time and will continue to do so.

EDIT: actually, you couldn't be more blatently lying about this. https://open.sentry.io/ > We're Open Source The title of the page. You really thought you could sneak that past me. You cannot seriously make a reply like this when you have an entire domain name dedicated to the tile "We're Open Source". That is the most obvious of obvious lies. Even the page title "yes, we're open source" is a kind of passive-aggressi…

https://github.com/getsentry

You suggesting we are anything but what we are just makes you look like you have an agenda at best, or foolish at worst.

All you're doing is harming the broader community by arguing about nonsense which is factually proven to be untrue. You came in here trolling as best you could, making false statements without reading or educating yourself on any components. Making statements as if you're a legal expert, as if you're an expert on open source history, on who or what Sentry is or has been.

1. A majority of Sentry's source code permissive open source. This is a fact, and easily verifiable.

2. FOSS is not Open Source. So when you constantly equate the two you simply come off as misinformed.

3. Sentry has continually shown good faith in a variety of activities, including donation of services, financial backing of large projects, financial backing of our dependency graph.

4. We are not rug pulling - we migrated our BUSL-licensed projects to FSL. BUSL is already non-compete source-available, FSL is the same thing but a more aggressive time-delay, and a better license conversion mechanism.

5. There is no "vague legal speak designed to [do anything harmful]". If its vague to you, maybe you should stay away from licensing, or you should start contributing back intead of creating toxicity on internet forums. In fact, the FSL is designed to be _more easily understood_ than prior licenses of its type.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#167

Post by James_K »

arp242 wrote: post #159
James_K wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if you had donated to a "charitably minded" organisation, then later discovered that they were only an "almost charity". I don't think you would be pleased with that. This is how someone donating their time and code to FSL projects might feel. They are not "quite upfront" about the fact that they aren't FOSS [1]. Open source is constantly under attack from various corporate entities, so it makes sense that we…

"Open source" is not a charity and you don't donate to Sentry. People have come out of Guantanamo Bay less tortured than that analogy. > Asking people to be clear about what is and isn't FOSS is a basic consequence of that. You are throwing around wild accusations bordering on the conspiratorial and making demands that are just beyond reason. The simple good-faith reading is that the Sentry people want to be as "open…

Go to this link https://open.sentry.io/ and explain how it is made clear that Sentry isn't actually open source. You can't. No amount of good faith turns "We're Open Source and we don't feel the need to qualify that statement" into "we aren't open source but we'd like to be close to". They are even directly asking in that page for help (for people to volunteer their time). The title of that page is a lie and they make no attempt to clarify it. I can't think of any good faith reason why they wouldn't just write "We're Source Available" since that is a more accurate description of what they are and they've been repeatedly told this. It's obviously less misleading not to over promise when you don't actually know the truth of the matter. The only justifications I can imagine for that title are that they either don't understand that they aren't open source, or that they want to appear open source to attract customers. Given they've had it explained to them repeatedly and even members of their company admit in this thread admit that they aren't open source (but claim they don't say that they are which is a lie) and that the page in question is advertising their product, I can only conclude the latter justification. That they are doing this to move product rather than to inform people.

> People have come out of Guantanamo Bay less tortured than that analogy.

A charity is an organisation of people can donating money or doing volunteer work to contribute to a cause they see as in the common good. An open source project is an organisation of people donating money or doing volunteer work to contribute to a piece of software for the common good of its users. They are more than a little similar. Even if they aren't, people deserve to know where their work goes if they are doing it for free.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#168

Post by James_K »

bentlegen wrote: post #158
James_K wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you don't want to competition from large cloud providers, but you also want your source to be available to users, and you want to give them a guarantee that the software will not simply die once you stop maintaining it. Then release your software under a source available non-compete license with the caveat that it will become open source when you stop working on it. (Basically what you have already done.) Don't p…

> Then release your software under a source available non-compete license with the caveat that it will become open source when you stop working on it. (Basically what you have already done.) Done. Note that the license website is pretty clear that it is not Open Source. If you find a place where that is not true, you can open an issue on the website’s repo and we’ll address. https://fsl.software/

> Note that the license website is pretty clear that it is not Open Source

Then fix this one: https://open.sentry.io/

You have admitted that you aren't open source and that this is a blatant lie so remove it.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#169

Post by arp242 »

growse wrote: post #163
arp242 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's more honest about its intention They're not dishonest. That you're unwilling or unable to accept anything other than a black/white worldview is not their problem. And "not open by definition" according to what definition of "open"? It's a vague and nebulous word that can mean any number of things. You don't get to single-handedly define this. Hell, people were using "Open" to mean all sorts of things long befo…

Pretty much everyone I know in the industry uses the definition of "open" defined by the OSI, in relation to "open source": https://opensource.org/ It's not a new term. > They're not dishonest. That you're unwilling or unable to accept anything other than a black/white worldview is not their problem. You can't be "a little bit open source". You are or you aren't. Some people might not accept that the definition is cl…

> You can't be "a little bit open source". You are or you aren't.

Of course you can. There are 10 bullet points on the OSD. If you meet 9 then it's 90% there. This is obvious better than 80%, which is better than 50%, which is better than 0%.

> Pretty much everyone I know in the industry uses the definition of "open" defined by the OSI, in relation to "open source"

OpenLinux, OpenDOS, OpenGL, OpenBSD, OpenStep, X/Open (later: Open Software Foundation, The Open Group), Common Open Software Environment, OpenVMS, etc. etc. Some of these are also "Open Source", some are not, and for some "Open Source" doesn't even make sense. But all of these usages of "Open" predate "Open Source", and I'm sure there are dozen more examples if I cared to look further. Oh, and here's Bill Joy using "Open Source Code" in 1985: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DdoGPav3fc&t=826s

The fact that HN has a discussion about "what Open source really means" demonstrates that NOT everyone has the same definition, otherwise these discussions wouldn't exist.

To lay claim on not just the phrase "Open Source" but the very adverb "Open" is not just historically incorrect but also hugely unreasonable.

Re: FSL: A License for the Bazaar, Not the Cathedral

#170

Post by James_K »

zeeg wrote: post #166
James_K wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: actually, you couldn't be more blatently lying about this. https://open.sentry.io/ > We're Open Source The title of the page. You really thought you could sneak that past me. You cannot seriously make a reply like this when you have an entire domain name dedicated to the tile "We're Open Source". That is the most obvious of obvious lies. Even the page title "yes, we're open source" is a kind of passive-aggressi…

https://github.com/getsentry You suggesting we are anything but what we are just makes you look like you have an agenda at best, or foolish at worst. All you're doing is harming the broader community by arguing about nonsense which is factually proven to be untrue. You came in here trolling as best you could, making false statements without reading or educating yourself on any components. Making statements as if you'…

1. Then call yourself "mostly open source" instead of "open source"

2. I know. I type one because it is shorter. As cool of a pedantic ad-hominem as this is, my arguments all hold up when you replace FOSS with open source. So imagine I have done this.

3. Irrelevant.

4. Irrelevant.

5. Irrelevant.

Stop calling everyone who disagrees with you toxic. Stop lying about being open source on your website https://open.sentry.io/.

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